Good luck !

As a friend of mine says before traveling, I hope everything is really boring (ie uneventful)

Just wanted to wish you well with your surgery on Tuesday. Looking forward to "seeing less" of you in the future!

Best wishes, Will.

Thanks, all. My surgery was yesterday. I feel relatively good today. I'm pretty sore. Not hungry at all.

I'm home resting and doing many of the threapeutic things I have to do for the next few days.

Thanks again for all of your good wishes.

Hello, folks. I'm starting to feel a little stronger now, so i thought I'd update.

After my surgery on Tuesday and most of Wednesday, I felt like a million bucks except that I didn't have much of an appetite. Between the time I left the hospital on Tuesday afternoon and began to get an appetite on Friday night, I had dropped another 14 pounds. Since I've een eating again, I have put four of that 14 back on. I'm just under 280 right now.

I can't exercise right now except to walk as I still have a belly full of staples and will until the last week of April. I get tired easily and very quickly. I haven't slept during the day today, so I take that as a sign that my strength is increasing.

Silly me was convinced that could go to work on Friday. I lasted three hours and paid for it in total exhaustion for two days. I won't try that again soon.

Right now, all of my food has to be ground like baby food. It doesn't look very appetizing. But, it tastes pretty good (most likely because it was the first solid food I had in four days).

My mom was in town to keep an eye on me after surgery. She left today so I wanted to fix her a nice dinner as a thanks on her way out of town. So, I cooked some nice filets, asparagus, bernaise and salad.

I was able to grind all of mine up and eat about three ounces of steak, and a stalk of broccoli for dinner. I even had a teaspoon of bernaise on my "steak". It actually tasted pretty good despite looking like Alpo.

The greatest thing about this surgery, other than not dying in my 40s, is going to be the cost savings on my grocery bill. This week, I shopped for the whole two weeks and spent $60 including $22 for two steaks. My normal grocery bill was running $200 twice a month.

Beginning next week, I'll start transitioning off of ground food and onto regular food. I really want a Paradise Pup char dog more than anything in the world right now.

PS, I used the servioes of Big City Chefs to prepare some meals for mom while I was down and out. They did a fine though expensive job of doing ten separate entrees for $325. I have four left which I have frozen until I start eating again. Oddly enough, the vegetable risotto was the best of all the entrees I tasted.

Thanks for the update. Great luck!

I had to fly to LA on business last week. It was nice that, for the first time in several years, I didn't have to ask for the seatbelt extender.

I behaved well in LA feasting on excellent cooked fish and sushi as opposed to Langer's Pastrami. It worked out pretty well.

We ate dinner at Dukes in Huntington Beach one night and sushi at a place called Sambi in Downey one night. Both were good. Neither spectacular. I did sneak in a double double animal style my last night there. It was indeed spectacular.

I have found a good resource for used clothing on the obesityhelp website message boards. I gave away quite a few pairs of pants to other folks who have had weight loss surgery.

Thus far, I have dropped from a 53 waist to a 48 waist. I squeezed into some 46 shorts today that fit well enough though a bit tight. In another few weeks, they should be comfortable. My weight is currently 268. Down from 328 in December. I've only dropped six pounds in the six weeks since the surgery.

At the eight week mark, I can begin lifting weights again. I'm looking forward to that as I have done it for years. this time, I'll be keeping a good balance between weight lifting and cardio.

It is probably time for another sleep study. I rip the mask off at night feeling like I am getting too much oxygen. The weight loss has likely caused me to breather better meaning that my CPAP can be set at a lesser air flow.

I'm off for a little vacation in South America next week. When I return, I'll have the first adjustments to my lap band. That's when i should really start dropping weight quickly again. If the next sixty goes as quickly as the first sixty, I should be closing in on my target loss of 130 lbs by the end of summer.

That sounds great. Congratulations!

Congratulations on your progress so far! It is truly inspirational. Since starting a new, less stressful job 15 months ago, I have gained 15 pounds. Since I do not want to gain a pound a month for the rest of my life, I just joined a health club this week and am starting to work out for the first time since baby #2. Your story of getting healthy is an inspiration to me! I hope to be done to my pre-baby #2 weight by the third anniversary of LTH this time next year!

Susan

Or, King's Thursday, you could always go back to your old job!

The stress alone could help you drop the fifteen, plus!! (Although it doesn't seem to be working for me.)

Seriously, we miss you!

Suzy

LTH,

In my own way I've been trying to get in, at least a little, better shape and have been going 3-4 times a week to a gym. This morning what do I see but a spread of Dunkin Donuts, muffins and coffee. What's a fat man to do when the gym is giving away donuts*?

XSport Fitness on Elston


Enjoy,
Gary

*Actually, I think they were super duper healthy type muffins, not just straight donuts. (But still....... )

G Wiv wrote:LTH,

In my own way I've been trying to get in, at least a little, better shape and have been going 3-4 times a week to a gym. This morning what do I see but a spread of Dunkin Donuts, muffins and coffee. What's a fat man to do when the gym is giving away donuts*?

XSport Fitness on Elston

No, carbs are good for you after a workout, even (or especially) donuts.

(*yeah, I got that link via Google )

I thought that I'd do a little picture update. My weight loss has slowed dramatically over the past few months. However, I am lifting weights again which may be offsetting some of the fat loss.

The first picture is the one taken on the day of reckoning in December 2005. The second was taken this morning with a camera phone. Sorry if the quality is not so good on the second.

I still have a long way to go as you can see. I think I'm stuck with the family jowls for good.


December 2005


June 2006

Will, that's still a significant difference. Thanks for the update!

Hi, Will - I've been following your story since you first posted - the pictures are great, but do you mind me asking how you feel? Do you have more energy? Are you moving more? Do you feel better?

You look like you do - thanks for coming back and keeping the thread/community updated. Making such a huge change can't be easy. In this set of Chicago food forums, I know I find it inspirational to find others who are being pro-active about their health. I know, I'm babbling - just wanted to say I'm reading and I'm sure quite a few others are, and that we all wish you the best.

Hi, Dayzella. The way I feel is proabably the best part. Back in the fall, I was beginning to have some signs of serious health problems (eg high BP, high cholesterol, high blood sugar). I really didin't feel well at all most days. I was pretty tired, lethargic, and hd lost a good bit of my mental sharpness.

These days, I feel great. I have a lot of energy, a little bounce in my step. I sleep for a couple of hour less per night. But, I wake up without an alarm clock feeling very rested. My energy level is much better which seems to make my mood better.

My BP is now pretty close to normal. My heartbeat is down from 110 beats per minute resting to about 75. My blood sugar is normal.

I think all of those things plus getting good sleep (I'm still sleeping with the CPAP at night) probably contrubute to simply feeling beter during the days.

Next week, I'm going to start working with a nutritionist to change my eating patterns a bit. I still make poor choices due to a busy schedule sometimes. I need to figure that part of it out so I can get "unstuck" from my current weight.

I got my second adjustment to my band yesterday and there is a noticeable difference in the amount of food that I can eat. For breakfast, I have begun eating these South Beach Diet Cereal Bars. They actually taste pretty good compared to other protein bars and are moderately high in protein.

The bar weighs an ounce and a half and one pretty well fills me up for the morning due to a pretty high fiber content.

I'm really having trouble getting animal protein down these days. I can't seem to chew it well enough, no matter how much I chew to get it down my pipe and into my stomach. Steak and Pork are completely out of the question. I can get chicken down if it is moist and hot. If it is dry or room temperature, it's quite difficult to swallow.

I think that this is the adjustment that will really kick my weight loss in again. I have been holding pretty steady for about two months now at 268 with a pretty rigid exercise plan.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can ease up a bit on my regimine and rejoin you good folks for some good food and great company.

OK, so the purpose of this little thread is to share both the good and the bad of my experience with you. In the past week, i have really experienced some bad.

After my last saline fill, I developed an infection around the port that is implanted directly under my skin. At first, it became very red and swollen, followed by a blister like appearance for a few days.

Unfortunately, when the skin broke, it left me with a hole about the size of a quarter through my top layers of skin.

Its still very sore, and infected. I have taken one cycle of antibiotics to no avail. I have an appointment with my physician today to have it looked at.

Until I can get on top of it, I have decided to temporarily halt my exercise schedule (under the belief that sweat rolling into the wound cannot be good for it).

Hi Will.

Hope you feel better soon.

This thing seems to be healing up well. The doctor didn't seem too concerned about it

HI,

I feel better knowing your doctor is not concerned.

Now that we know you're ok, do you mind explaining what the saline solution is all about?

Best regards,

Oh, sure. The band (the larger end in middle of the picture) has a ring within it that is tightened via the introduction of saline solution. The doctor gauges your weight loss and adjusts the band depending if you're losing too much or too littl weight at a time. When it is first installed, it is not tightened, as illustrated in the bottom picture. Once the saline is introduced, it begins to create a separate stomach as illustrated in the middle picture.

There is a port that sits directly under my belly skin. That is the smaller end of the device that you see in the picture. To tighten it, a needle is used to introuduce saline through the feed tube to the ring within the band.

The tighter it is, the longer it will take my "little stomach" (see the middle picture) to digest, thus making me feel full longer.


Picture 1

Picture 2

NYTimes article on complications from obesity surgery:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/health/24health.html

During my due diligence phase of learning about weight loss surgery, I took to reading the message boards at Obesityhelp.com. You tend to see the worst of the worst there where complications are concerned.

I guess because people are more likely to talk about their bad experiences than their good. None the less, I view the 180 day mark as the free and clear period of the bulk of complications resulting from the surgery.

I would encourage anyone considering this surgery to do tons of due diligence undertsanding both the health risks of carrying excessive weight and the health risks of complications before making a decision to proceed with it. Expose yourself to both the best case stories and the worst case stories. Then, grill your surgeon on his or her patient risk experience.

The most serious common complication from either form of weight loss surgery is bowel blackage as a result of scar tissue growing through the bowel.

It is not the magic pill that many think it is. It requires good patient management by your doctor and a ton of of discipline on the part of the patient to be successful.

On a side note, my wound, which hasd been cleaned twice daily and bandaged has gone from about the size of a quarter on Wednesday to slightly less than the size of a dime today.

YourPalWill wrote:It is not the magic pill that many think it is. It requires good patient management by your doctor and a ton of of discipline on the part of the patient to be successful.

We know someone who had the surgery a long time ago, back before it was adjustable. She has gained back all the weight plus more.

Just as an update, my weight is down to 259 now from 272 in the July picture. That's 13 pounds in almost two months. I'm pretty pleased with that beacuse i went on a cruise with food available 24/7 in july and I have been traveling alot on business lately.

Business travel is my biggest challenge. I have to motivate myself to exercise on the road and layoff the pizza delivery and/or room service to the hotel room.

Will, you are doing such a fantastic job in your weight loss journey. Congratulations!

Will we even recognize you when we see you next??

Suzy

Will, I read that the Wish Center has closed. Do you know more? Is this affecting your own program in any way?

hi will, i just discovered this thread about your weight loss surgery, and am following it with great interest. since you havent posted in over a month, i'm getting concerned. can you take a minute and let us know how you're doing? i hope your silence is just because you are travelling alot. take care, joan

Hi Will, just like "Justjoan" I just discovered this thread. Who knows where I have been, considering I read the forum daily. How inspiring! I'ver read every post with interest, and I'd love an update. This comes after my doctor's appointment today. I'm 29, and my blood pressure was 145/90. I've been working out daily at the gym and really watching my diet for the past 4 weeks, yet my blood pressure hasn't lowered in the past month. Prior to this I still ate well, but didn't exercise as often. Mildly discouraged, my doctor said to lose 15 pounds, keep exercising on the elliptical machine yet cut out weight lifting. And the thought of the strict DASH diet makes me frown. I'm ready for lifestyle changes, however, I never considered my lifestyle that bad. I maintain a low-fat diet, cheating about once a week, exercise, don't drink, don't smoke. Hopefully by next month my numbers will improve. If not, I'll be needing some names of nutritionists.