5 days post op- What I learned

I am now 5 days VSG post op. Yesterday afternoon I began to feel alot of the discomfort diminish. Alot of it was the gas used during surgery. I won't deny that it was not a challenge. What are some things that I found helpful? 

1. Attitude: Hard to believe but this was the number one thing that I found to be the most helpful. "The suck factor is temporary". And Boy did it sucks at times. I reminded myself that I have many post op people around me who are doing great and live a healthier life because of the sugery. If this is what i have to pay to have that then sign me up!! 

2. Patience: I am engineer who believed that I just have to do this and it will be solved. Ya well, that didnt work so well. On my first sip after surgery I knew that I had to sip and be patient. There is no longer the rush to get through a meal. I have had a couple of sips over the last couple of days that left me "taking deep breathes to ease the discomfort". It only took once and I will not do that again. Every day I work towards reaching my liquid nutriton goals. I am doing good with water. My goal today is to get in three envelopes aka 6 servings of liquid nutrition. I was able to do two yesterday and only one on Thursday and Friday. Today I am working towards 3 1/2- 4. 

3. Heating pad. Hard to believe but using this helped me relieve the gas pains. I have one that I can warm up the microwave. I wish that I had checked it before surgery. It does not get as warm as I like. I will pick up an electric one. It wont go to waste. When I lost alot of weight before I used it to warm up my bed during those cold winter nights.

4. Sleep. I made sure that I slept when my body asked for it. I did decide to stop the pain killers on day 3. It left me like a zombie making it difficult for me to focus on my drinking plan. 

5. Emotions. I know, the guys don't need to hear this but I figured it would be good to know. Day 3 and 4 I was on the most insane emotional roller coaster. One minutes i was crying and the next minute I was angry and impatient. I took a look at things and realized that for month before surgery we are on this ride of "yahoo's". We start our diet and we loose lbs. We are in the classes, we then are told that they are submitting for approval, then we get word we have been approved. Okay, these are all yahoos. Then we get the surgery and the yahoo's have taken a break. We are more like "Oh my god" everytime we move! I realized that the emotional response made sense. Once I realized that my emotions moderated and I am feeling better. I am confident that the "yahoo's" will be returning and those will be even better than the pre-op!! 

6. Food shows. I know some people canno****ch these. However, I have watched them to get my appetite up a bit. I am no****ching show marathons but just enough so that I "want to eat". Do I want to have what is being shown, maybe but I look at results and it did get me to eat..

7. Start thinking about the puree stage. I have my follow up on the 18th. I am going to be gathering some of my soup recipes and others that I can transition to a puree. I will have those with me to show to Maise. This way she can fine tune things in person. 

8. Gas. Okay! We know that ladies don't fart. Well, I gave that up. I started farting and burping like crazy yesterday. Honestly, I feel so much better! I live alone so I can make as much noise as I want! Yesterday I was having so much of it that I was concerned that I would be able to do my own version of the guitar solo "classical gas". 

Sorry for being so wordy but this has been an amazing experience!

Well said Grasshopper.  I would also add 9. Know the difference between pain and discomfort.  For many people (I'm one of them), pain med side effects are worse than the pain, e.g., nausea, vomiting, constipation.  Pain meds won't help with the gas - walking, farting, and a heating pad will (as you know).  And the gas is downright uncomfortable!

I was talking to my parents on Thursday. I explained my physical pain as "doing a million sit ups". It is not pleasant but I just didn't feel that I needed the side effects of the pain meds to deal with it. I knew that moving around, time, and resting was really the only way to resolve the pain. The "Emotional Pain" is something that is also not resolved by pain meds. I have learned to pull up a chair and sit right in it. I feel it, process it and reframe it. I look at something and look at it from a different perspective. I used to frame everything where I was the victim. Now I frame thing as someone who learns from those rough times. There are lessons everywhere we look. We just have to look outside ourselves. After doing all this I realized that the emotional pain was not that HUGE and that eating over it was only going to make ME HUGE!!! I would suggest anyone who is pre-op to work on those emotional pains. It is hard to do but i am glad that I did that work before surgery. It is making my surgical recovery so much easier. 

Good for you for doing the work on the mental side of weight loss.  A book that was life-changing for me was Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth".  For the first time, I 'got it' about the chaos going on in my brain that would make up stories that weren't true.  I'm still a work in progress, but I'm getting better at understanding that this moment in time is the only real thing there is.  The past is no longer real, and the future is not real, so the conversations I'd have in my head about how I should have handled things, or what I can do if only I lose weight are not real either.  The trick is to recognize these thoughts, hear them, and then tell them to go away.  

So feel your present moment to its fullest - it's the only real thing there is!

Thank you for your honest post. I know everyone recovers differently, but everything you said made a lot of sense. I am about 4 weeks untill my surgery, I do have freak out moments and fears, but I am trying to look at the long term benefits. Best of luck to you in your journey. It sounds like you are well prepared!!!

Thank you for your kind words. When I felt fearful I reached out to my support group. Every one nodded that they had those feelings. If you name the fear, dig down into it and find out where the fear is coming from, then it starts to loose the power. I freaked out once and realized that I was loosing spontaneity with my eating. I will need to plan more. As I dug down into it, I was worried about others would think if i brought my own food. So, I was worried about what people would think!! Further work made me reframe that view. I realized that me living up to what every one else thought that I should do has not had very good result. I now have to dealing with a hundred pounds to loose! Poof, that fear disappeared. Share your fears and remove their power! 

The best lesson I learned during my work was that I dont have to control, solve and handle everything that involves me. I let others do it for me. I am happy to say that they did a great job. Probably better that I would have done! 

The hours before my surgery I had people asking me if i was nervous. I said "NOPE". I was happy to say that I truly wasn't. I rolled into the operating room. The last I remember is the anesthetist telling me that he was giving me something to relax. Then the next thing that I knew was that I was in recovery and the nurse was telling me that "It was done". 

I had my surgery at UMass in Worcester. The nursing staff there was wonderful. They wanted us to keep our pain to a minimum. When they got me out of bed the next day and got me into the chair, they gave me medications to really work on the pain and I felt good. I got up 5 days post op today and I can honestly say that my abdomen is just a bit sore like I had done some extra ab work at the gym.  the first four days post op had me feeling like I had done about a million ab crunches. I just moved slower. Coughing still hurts but I am confident that even that will get better! This time is temporary and a way for us to learn some great lessons. These lessons will make us even stronger. 

I call my brain the Obesity Brain. It does not think normal. It looks for immature solutions that are based in immediate gratification. You how in life we just do something because we thing it is the 'best". Then we find out that there could have been something even better if we would have waited a bit more! I keep that in mind when my Obesity Brain starts talking. Sometimes I just tell it to SHUT UP! It is like having a 5 year old run my life!! LOL. 

Thanks for the book! I will check it out. 

Hi Kay.  I note you mentioned Maise - is that your Nutritionist?  At U-Mass?  I had a meeting with her this past Friday.  I'm in the pre-op stage -- was originally planning on having RNY surgery, but now trying to learn more about the sleeve.

Your post contains a lot of great information - thanks for sharing.

Yes. I am at Umass. I had my surgery at Umass Worcester last Tuesday with Dr Perugini. He is cute!!!! The aftercare nurses were wonderful. I felt so well taken care and a bit of love too! I went with the sleeve. I do enjoy eating healthy food options. My biggest problems was portion sizes.

I had been looking into WLS for over 4 years. I did not like the band or the RNY. I didnt like the RNY cuz of being replumbed. I am in the low range. I began talking to people this spring and someone mentioned that if they could do it all over again she would do the sleeve intead of the RNY. I had not heard of the sleeve so gave me some info on it. Of course when I got home i did additional research. I always said that I wished that someone could make my stomach smaller. I looked at what my eating problems were. I concluded that I would eat HUGE portions of healthy food! I can get onto the binge train and that get pretty crazy. I needed something that would help me control my portion size. The sleeve seemed like the right fit. 

Another recommendation is to go to some of the "in person" support groups. There are some good groups on Facebook associated to UMass. I am on there alot. I also go to the meetings in other places. There is one in Shrewsbury and in Leominster along with the one at UMass. I swear those meetings got me ready for this. The support and honesty is what we need.  Doing the work before surgery ensures your success post surgery. I knew it would be rough for a few days afterwards and everyone said that on the 4th or 5th day you start getting back to yourself. I woke up this AM feeling pretty good.

I believe in being STRONG and ACTIVE PARTICIPANT in my care. I will meet with her on the 18th prepared with things that she can review. Honestly I get more information when I come in prepared.  I need more than just fundamental stuff. You have to ask for it! I will be working on coming up with carb free/high protein recipes so that I can enjoy the foods that I love..have the flavors with out all the "carbs". It is possible! I will do it!!! Be open and honest with her. But when you walk out of her office, you then have to start being honest with yourself! 

Can you tell me more about the "in person" support groups -- I plan on going to the ones at UMass, but I didn't know about Facebook groups or meetings in Shrewsbury.  I want to learn all I can -- it seems the more I learn about the sleeve, the more I'm leaning towards that.

Also, I hear what you're saying about portion sizes -- I'm not a sweet eater - I lean more towards "real food" like meat and potatoes (or pasta!) but I eat too much of it.  I'm trying hard to work on reducing portions - smaller plates, one serving only, etc. and I'm eating veggies now, cutting way back on the carbs.  I'm really liking the veggies now - just takes longer to prepare meals now.  But like I told Maise and Jennifer (psych), I'm committed to taking care of myself now and getting healthy - I've been putting others first for too long now.

Again, thanks for sharing.