Puree Week - Day 7 and can someone please shut off my brain?

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 158.2 |

Puree Week⟫ Day 7

My head is a bit of a mess at the moment. I snapped – very unfairly – at Book_grim earlier because she was crunching crisps and it just made me feel so angry. I did apologise and tried to explain that today may be the first time that I’ve actually regretted having the surgery.

I’m trying to get my thoughts into gear so bear with me. Whilst I was on Ozempic, I kinda knew the side effects I could expect, whether it be vomiting or diarrhoea, and make the choice about what I ate knowing the consequences. The weight loss wasn’t speedy or guaranteed but I felt more in control. Ever since the surgery, it just feels like everything is out of my control. I can eat smoothies then suddenly I can’t; I can’t drink whatever I want when I want; I can barely identify hunger triggers; I feel truly lost with the whole change from puree to mashables – everything just feels really confusing. I was reading on Reddit and someone said when they overeat it makes them sneeze(?!) and I instantly found myself thinking what if this isn’t a cold but me constantly overeating? It’s like utter insanity in my head and I am so struggling with it.

I should be celebrating – the weigh in this morning means I am 0.5kg away from being 50kg lighter than I have been in years. But all I want to do is cry and drink a bottle of fizzy pop without suffering the wind from hell. My incisions are itchy and painful, the horrid tugging is back and I feel wretched.

Positivity! Yeah, okay, I can do that. I have been feeling like a real slug-a-bed recently, and the cancellation of the wet room deep clean bothered me more than I realised. So I set myself up in the bathroom with help from Book_grim and Stripes, and cleaned the cats’ feeders - -scrubbed off the accumulation of years worth of wet food and kibble. Then I scrubbed the toilet bowl, the seat, dusted off the cat fur that had gathered (yuck) and put a nice smelling rim-block. I know Book_grim was worried that I was overdoing it – and she might have been right – but I just needed to feel in control of some part of my environment. Yes I’m feeling it – everything hurts at this point – but I also feel like I achieved something. It might be small to a lot of people but to me, it felt like I did something that I really wanted to do that wasn’t related to weight loss or surgery. And I think I needed that.

Stripes made my dinner this evening: mashed potatoes, pureed spinach, onions, eatlean cheese and milk and it was lovely. I didn’t finish it but it was very tasty and made a nice change from what feels like a lot of sweet things. That or cup-a-soup which is another staple. I’ve also made myself a smoothie using the chocolate protein rice pudding with Greek yoghurt and some milk and that should see me through to the end of the evening, and I had two scrambled eggs for breakfast so I think I actually managed to eat my five meals today. Nearly.

Sometimes I think I need to stay away from places like Reddit, etc. I know the posts and comments there are going to be out of the norm, but it seems like everyone is dropping weight like it’s going out of style whilst my weight loss feels so slow. It’s three weeks since the surgery and I haven’t even managed to lose a stone yet. I think any other month, I would be relatively happy with that rate of loss but because of the surgery and comparing myself to other people, I feel like I’m failing? Add to that Mom’s voice in my head telling me that I should be able to lose 2 stone between surgery date and my first hospital appointment on 6th January and I definitely feel like a failure. I hate that I am letting that into my head; I hate that I am letting that affect my mood; I hate that I am judging myself so harshly when if someone was talking to me about all of this, I would tell them to take it easy and let things just work they way that they are meant to. I hate that I don’t seem to have the ability to relax and trust the process.

It doesn’t help that I am wondering if I am sabotaging myself in some way, like I deliberately don’t want to lose two stone by the appointment because that would be proving Mom right, and I really quite desperately don’t want her to be right. Like, how fucked in the head is that – I would rather fail than prove my Mom right. That’s quite a sobering thought and I think I need to sit with that for a bit – figure out how to put those thoughts, those feelings into perspective so that they don’t poison the things that I do. There are times when I desperately hate my brain and this is definitely one of those times.

Puree Week - day 3 and a slight setback

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 159.6 |

Puree Week⟫ Day 3

The mashed potato with eatlean cheese was lovely, but omg the portion sizes are gonna take some getting used to! Stripes made an 8th of the pack and I still left more than 2/3rd of it. I was a little disheartened by my progress which was when the tsunami of diarrhoea reminded me that things can always be much worse.

So today, the plan is to go back to liquids – milk, cup a soup with bone broth, maybe a smoothie. I would still like to try a scrambled egg for breakfast though! I need to remind myself that this is for the long haul and that quick fixes don’t work. So what if it takes me longer to get up to a ‘full’ meal which is meant to be about 5 tablespoons – the longer it takes, maybe the more weight comes off in the meantime. Speaking of which, I am getting heartily sick of seeing 159 and 160. Even bouts of diarrhoea don’t seem to be making the scales shift in any meaningful way. I wonder if some of this has to do with the voice in the back of my head again – how nice would it be to excise that once and for all?

I didn’t have my counselling session as I was stuck in the bathroom, so that should be happening today. Other than that, I want to sip sip sip, do some crochet and some reading. That should be more than enough for today!

I can feel that I did too much yesterday – all the walking around, faux-socialising, trying on clothes and doing some (very rudimentary) resistance bands stuff. The ache around my incisions is not as sharp as it has been, which means I am slowly starting to feel the pain from my knees and back – it didn’t go anywhere, it was just masked by the tugging, etc that I was experiencing. I’m sticking with the paracetamol at the moment but if things get much worse, I may have to resort to some gabapentin dissolved in liquid which says just how much pain I’m in because that stuff tastes RANK!

TW: Gnarly Incision Photos!

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 159.4 |

Post Surgery Diet⟫ Week 2 of Liquids

Not sure what is was I ate yesterday that caused a reaction, but I have a rather upset stomach. Not quite liquid but kinda yellow in colour, which makes me think it has to be the pineapple that I’ve been blending into my yoghurt and milk. I think it might be time to get rid of that tin of fruit (it’s been open and used since Monday I think) and will move on to the mango. I have strawberry yoghurt but I think it might taste better with the coconut stuff I got in the shopping.

Jay suggested that I try adding my antidepressants to the yoghurt since they refuse to dissolve fully in water and that sounds like a a decent plan to me. She also recommended some protein yoghurts but I’m not sure how I feel about those. I tried Kvarge a while back and couldn’t handle the texture but my tastebuds have definitely changed since the surgery and it may turn out to be okay.

I’m meant to be having five small meals a day from Friday (a period of puree begins tomorrow) so today is the last fully liquid day. I read somewhere to try something new and then allow four hours to see how the body is going to react to it. I don’t think I want to start the day with a weetabix – for some reason, that feels like it might be too big a change from all liquids, so I think I’ll go with a slightly lumpier yoghurt! Wow, I make it sound so enticing!

And in further gross things that my body can do, a chunk of scab came off of one of my incisions. I’ll try to include a picture, but be warned, it’s not exactly pretty! I don’t even know when it came off – I went to moisturise the incisions and there it was, looking like an extra incision but not attached at all! If it helps, the image is taken by me looking down at my stomach, so you’re basically seeing down my torso. You can’t see the two incisions on the right side as (a) they’re hidden by my boob! And (b) they’re pretty much healed up now!

* white square is the incision that always looks like it’s one second away from exploding when I sneeze. It has a weirdly protruding bit that freaks me out and makes me panic every time!

* yellow square is the scab formed from glue, stitches, skin, etc which decided to detach itself! Gross yet fascinating!

* aqua square is the actual incision – still has some scabby bits on it, but generally speaking is pretty much healed.

* bright pink square is the biggest incision that was there – I imagine, this is where they tugged my stomach through (boak*) and now it kinda looks like an infinity symbol, although that might be me being fanciful!

The girls have likened them to my tattoo healing abilities – sometimes, within days my tattoos look like they’ve been there forever; other times, old tattoos can look like they never intend to heal fully. Based on the pictures of incisions and healing wounds I’ve seen on Reddit, etc, I think I’ve been quite lucky with how they look. I wouldn’t have said that a week ago, but time and hindsight definitely help!

My wool turned up, so today I think I’m going to work on my hat and maybe watch some TV, as well as doing some reading. The sneezing is aggravating and I hesitate to say that it’s getting better in case I implement Murphy’s Law, but rest is never a bad thing!

Brace, brace, brace - incoming sneeze!

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 160 |

Post Surgery Diet⟫ Week 2 of Liquids

This cold has escalated until I feel like it might just be the flu. Of course, if I had installed a braincell, I might have realised that some of what’s going on is withdrawal from a variety of meds. I haven’t taken most of my normal stuff since the day before surgery, but the emotional whiplash may well be because I went cold-turkey on my antidepressants. I don’t even know why I didn’t think about the effect it might have on me – physically and mentally – but it might explain some of the rollercoasters I’ve been riding.

Yesterday I tried an options hot chocolate sachet with skimmed milk. It tasted okay, but the texture felt really strange on my tongue and I couldn’t finish it. Then suddenly it was like everything on my insides needed to be on my outsides immediately and there followed a few urgent trips to the bathroom. Stripes said it might be dumping syndrome since that’s pretty much the first time I’ve had ‘chocolate’ so I think I’m going to avoid chocolate for the foreseeable.

We went through the manifesto agenda and I think we might have the beginnings of an idea as to how to move forward with cleaning schedules, etc. It’s never easy having those chats – doesn’t seem to matter how mature people are trying to be, me and Book_grim rub each other up the wrong way and things escalate to unpleasantness, and suddenly we’re running through grievances from years ago. It doesn’t help that I feel like absolute lukewarm shit.

The scales are driving me insane because the numbers are going up instead of down. Not by huge amounts, but it’s more than a little disheartening to find that it doesn’t look like there’s been any weight loss in week two. I’ve heard of the three week stall but not week two and of course my mind has run away with the idea that I’ve been doing things wrong and that the surgery didn’t work on me. Ridiculous and not helped even slightly by the fact that I am meant to be moving to pureed food from Friday. We put through an Asda order, with weetabix, protein sources, veggies – things with texture that can be blended to something smooth. I’m a little scared of it to be honest – sometimes it feels like the surgery literally just happened, other times like I’m dragging my feet with regard to progress, etc. I don’t want to mess this up – I don’t think that I am messing it up – but there’s this voice in the back of my head (no points for guess who it sounds like) telling me that I need to get a move on and put some work in, that if I’m not actively losing weight, then I’m failing.

There’s so much head stuff that needs to be worked through. Today, I have the last few presents arriving to be wrapped up (as well as some due on Thursday), but other than that, I wonder if I might just be doing myself a favour if I wrap up with cup-a-soup and sleep the day away.

Stripes found the dissolvable antipressants so I’ve started taking those – I’ll build them up but it’s good to know that we’ve got them here. She also made me a pina colada smoothie for breakfast, although it’s difficult because not only can I not taste a damned thing, I’m struggling to breathe with a blocked nose so I don’t know how much of it I’m going to be able to consume. Some Vicks vapour rub under my nose, have taken my paracetamol and drunk some protein water, and I think it’s definitely time to shut down the tech and see if I can sleep again! Might post more later!

The Great Pre-Puree Experimentation

Well apparently I was tired! I vaguely remember the cats being fed but that was all she wrote. I settled down without additional pillows around 8.30 pm and the next thing I know, it’s 6.30 in the morning! I didn’t post to the blog yesterday – had it all written out but then did nothing with it! So I’ll just add it on to this one.

Yesterday, I began the great pre-puree experimentation. I put a Muller Greek coconut yoghurt in with some pineapples and some milk and blitzed it in my bullet. It tasted kind of like a virgin pina colada, a very different flavour to what I’ve been consuming lately. It made a nice change – everything was beginning to just taste of bone broth! So today for breakfast, I had the same but with a strawberry yoghurt instead of coconut.

We were meant to be having the bathroom deep cleaned but the person who accepted the job can’t make it today. We’ve postponed until Friday but if they try to reschedule again then I think we’ll ask them to cancel so we can offer the job to someone else. So instead of the bathroom getting a deep clean, I have a few things I wouldn’t mind getting started on.

* getting all of the shakes together, listing them all and figuring out the best place to sell them;

* unpacking my parcel from SimplyBe so that everything is laid out and I know what fits and what I want to shrink into;

* I wrote some things into the family manifesto but we haven’t had the chance to discuss them as yet. With the deep clean of the bathroom postponed, maybe aim for next week with looking at the points I raised?

Vee and Shar are talking about visiting this weekend, although to be fair they have been talking about visiting since before I went into the hospital. I don’t mind either way to be honest – maybe they’re right and I just don’t like visitors? Or maybe I just don’t want to feel judged in my own space. Ohh, zing, apparently catching up on sleep makes me snarky and a little bit sassy!

Stripes is out at a Carer’s thing and Book_grim is asleep, so I think I’m going to grab a book and snuggle down to read.I’ve already done the Home Bargains order so we should have cat litter by next week. I think I’ve finalised the last of Stripes’ presents (Book_grim and the Oldest are already all bought and wrapped). So another industrious day of reading and sleeping then! This sneezing thing is still hanging around and sometimes, my incisions look like they’re on the verge of popping open which freaks me out. On the other hand, the two on my right side seem to be pretty much closed and done with. It’s the other three that are really scabby, look a bit oozy and the whole ‘tugging from inside’ sensation is one I would happily never feel again!

_ - _ + _ - _

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 160.1 |

Post Surgery Diet⟫ Week 2 of Liquids

I managed to read two ARCs and get the reviews up, so feeling rather industrious. I vaped my weed last night and I think I crashed out around 10pm. So when I woke up just before 3 am, I was less than pleased to realise that I was awake-awake. Sigh.

Today I decided to try to get down a SlimFast shake. It seemed like things were okay, but before I’d finished the last sip, I had to make my way to the bathroom and spent about 30 minutes in there. And as a way of showing just how flipping exhausted it made me feel, I didn’t even bother getting onto the scales to see if I lost some weight!

I think I’m going to gather up all of the protein shakes, slimfast and sachets and try to figure out how to sell them. It just doesn’t seem worth it to keep trying with them when I was having such little success pre-surgery, so why continue to put myself through that now. I’m on my last bottle of protein water and trying to decide if I should buy some more. When I like the flavour, it’s all good, but I think there have been far too many days where I’ve ended up throwing a lot of it away, especially as you’re meant to consume it within 24 hours of opening.

I was catching up with Jay and talking about how cold I feel all the damned time and she confirmed that it doesn’t actually get better! So I think it might be time to lean in to the whole thing – brushed cotton fitted sheets, brushed cotton pillow cases along with one of my velvet duvet sets and the heated blanket should stop me feeling like my limbs are blocks of ice! Stripes has her ED Counselling session today but she said she’s happy to change my bedding when she gets back.

And tomorrow is the day for the bathroom deep clean, which I am weirdly excited for! We’ve done stuff in the bathroom before (especially over the summers when we had the flies infestation – YUCK!) but it would be lovely to see what someone could achieve without the ‘sentimental’ attachment to the stuff that’s there. I think we all need to make sure things we definitely don’t want thrown away are either in an appropriate basket, or put away on top of the window ledge, so basically it’s a case of taking everything down, wiping it clean, etc, then putting everything back I know Book_grim said that there was a bag of stuff in the kitchen from the Airtasker that completed that but I don’t know what’s in there or if either she or Stripes have had a chance to go through it yet.

I think I want to risk having something to eat (maybe a mushroom cup-a-soup) but I don’t know if Book_grim is awake yet and the kitchen is so damned cold, I’m not sure I’m “hungry” enough to make me face that cold! I might write more later, but in the meantime I think I’m going to snuggle down under the duvet and see if I can regain the sensation in my fingertips!

First Post-Op Shower

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 159.6 |

Post Surgery Diet⟫ Liquids

Do you know what would be lovely? If an existential crisis was a one and done kind of thing. Instead, it just keeps on happening in dribs and drabs, catching you by surprise, and generally making it very difficult to remain on an even keel. Since meltdown Tuesday, I have found myself looking at my life through slightly different spectacles. I can see where I have utterly cocked things up, but I can also see where I have lain down and let myself be walked all over. It’s a strange feeling, realising just how much I’ve put up with over the years in the name of love and family.

Anyway, my main ‘tasks’ for today were to have a shower, dye my hair and (hopefully) feel a little less grebby. Stripes painted my head with a little help from Book_grim – I went for Crazy Colour soft lavender but when it was on my head, it looked a heck of a lot more like deep purple! I was meant to leave it on for 30 minutes, but the three of us were talking so it was on for over an hour. And the colour took – kinda? Some of my hair looks deep blue, some light pink, but definitely some lilac in there!

And I finally had a shower. I was really worried the whole time I was in there that I didn’t want the incisions to get too water-logged, and I tried not to rub or pull at any of the skin on my stomach. It is absolutely insane how covered in bruises I am – places that I cannot imagine just how I’ve bruised. My stomach feels weirdly empty/hollow – it’s all sagged in on itself. It’s not the most appetising thing to look at, that’s for sure.

I had a mushroom cup a soup with bone broth and made with skimmed milk and it was very tasty. I think it’s been my favourite cup-a-soup so far. It tasted really creamy but wasn’t heavy. 9/10, would definitely, happily have that again.

We’re all booked in for Tuesday for the wet room deep clean, so that’s another thing ticked off of the list. In the new year, I would like to get someone in to do the toilet in the hallway – literally scrub the sink, tiles and walls, make the actual toilet sparkle, and tidy up the storage in there. Actually, I wonder if it’s worth considering swapping the storage from the toilet to the bathroom – it might be worth it in terms of having more space in the bathroom? I shall mention it to the girls.

I decided to treat myself from the SimplyBe Black Friday sale. I’ve ordered the huge chocolate brown puffer coat I’ve been eyeing for a couple of months, some trousers, jimjams, tops/vests, some cycling shorts for when we resume using the resistance bands and an absolutely gorgeous navy/purple dress. I have NO idea where I might wear the dress, but I fell in love with it and just really, really wanted it! I’ve chosen a variety of sizes because I want to have something that fits me available all of the time. I remember from losing weight in the past that having all of your clothes just be too big can actually make you feel worse about how you look, but for the coat I went for the biggest size they did!

Book_grim is back to work tonight and Stripes has asked me to have a go at a piece of digital art manipulation, so it looks like we’re slowly getting back to normality! Works for me.

So weird to not realise just how badly I smelled until I’ve had a shower!

The Good - toilet issues, cars and new horizons....

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 160.4 |

Post Surgery Diet⟫ Liquids

Good grief, there’s just so much to write that I don’t know if I have the mental capacity. Maybe I should try to put it all into chronological order so that I can keep it all straight.

Around 6.40 am last night (strange to call it last night but since I didn’t actually go to bed, that’s what it was) I felt the urge - maybe that was why I couldn’t settle to sleep. Anyway, trying not to panic because I’ve read stories where the first BM post-surgery is like giving birth, I set up soothing music on my headphones, grabbed my phone and headed to the bathroom. They were right, it was a lot like giving birth – lots of slow gentle pushes and breathing, but nowhere near as bad as I feared. And no need for an enema, which is such a relief as I had absolutely no idea just how I was going to contort myself into whatever positions were required to handle the miralax.

I didn’t go to bed because by the time I’d finished, it was like nearly 8 am so I thought I’d spend a little time with Stripes. It was nice actually – she joined me in bed once she’d fed the cats, and I burbled nonsense at her for nearly an hour. Then I got to act like the parent for once and called the pharmacy on her behalf to find out where her prescription had gone. They had finally received her prescription and we managed to get it arranged to be delivered today, so win!

Had a phone call from the support team at Heartlands, checking in after the surgery. We had a good chat, he reminded me of the meds I had brought home from the hospital that I needed to begin taking and asked if I had any questions. I didn’t really – about showering, some of the bruising being so extensive and he let me know my first physical support meeting would be on 6th January up at Heartlands and a letter would follow. I asked about a weight loss goal for that meeting and he said they didn’t set them – this was to introduce us properly to the team, check in on how we were coping with foods, meds, guidelines, etc so all good. He did suggest I contact my GP to ask about a blood sugar level monitor but I didn’t do that today because everything went to shit.

I think I’ve figured out the best way to do this is to do a ‘normal’ post about the bog-standard stuff going on. Then a post with a warning about the rant it will no doubt contain that people can avoid if they don’t want to read it, especially since it includes decades old family drama/trauma.

Doing a poo meant the scales dropped nearly a kilo which blew my mind and set me up to be in the best mood since before surgery, especially as the fortuitous timing meant I could relay a good weight loss and progress to support team.

The car stuff. I’ve been thinking with all of the medical appointments I will be attending in 2025 and beyond that paying for Ubers is going to be prohibitively expensive and maybe it might be time to get a car again. It would be a nice bit of independence; since I fit in a more standard wheelchair, we won’t need an SUV, we can get a little run-around suitable for the three of us. Stripes suggested that rather than buying a second-hand car using my PIP money (if we get awarded it) then we could go the motability route. Which could be brilliant – it handles the MOT, services, RAC, insurance – everything. Bad point? Losing out on the money on the daily basis – that could be difficult. Found an absolutely gorgeous Chrysler Ypsilon (red with a black bonnet) and kinda fell in love, but also found a brown Vauxhall Mokka which I liked a lot!

And then I suffered a brain fart this evening and realised that it’s only the mobility portion of the award that gets taken for the car. The care component would still come to me, which means this could actually be something within our reach. Depending on whether I get the award. But one step at a time. There might actually be a way for me to end today not utterly homicidal.

Okay, I think I’m actually going to end the ‘nice’ part of today here. I might come back and write everything else or I might just let the desperate need for sleep win.

Applying compassion to myself - why do I feel like I missed the Mantra chapter on that?

SW⟫ 207.7 | CW⟫ 161.2 |

Post Surgery Diet⟫ Liquids

Well it’s just after 4.30 which was the last notification I received from Alexa about meds – I might have to cancel the ones in the middle of the night as I wonder if that’s why I’m not able to settle into sleep?

I wrote a response to someone on one of the bariatric subreddits regarding suggestions once you’ve had the op and before I knew it, I’d written reams! I might as well reproduce it here.

“Had my surgery on 28th so four days post op.

⟫ I definitely second the walking thing – I took it to heart and surprised a few nurses with my insistence on staggering around so soon after the surgery.

⟫ Don’t be too eager to get home – I miss the morphine as I came home the next evening.

⟫ Protein water is an absolute godsend as I’ve been sipping it constantly since I got home.

⟫ Pillows – so many pillows for every conceivable body part to rest against!

⟫ Cuppa-soups sieved with a scoop of skimmed milk powder is absolutely lush and allowed on (my) liquid diet. Use a teaspoon to eat it and be prepared for it to be lukewarm before you finish.

⟫ Heating pad or blanket – I press it against my incisions and it does help with the pain/tugging.

⟫ However slow you think you’re sipping, sip slower!

⟫ I use Alexa notifications to remind me to take my meds – sometimes it feels like it never shuts up but I’m slowly getting into a decent regimen.

⟫ Sleep when your body needs it – I’m struggling with this one. But if you crash in the middle of the day, just view it as your body telling you that it needs to rest for a bit.

⟫ Get some nice compression socks – I got mine from Amazon and looking down at the skeleton bones knee high socks makes me smile every time and that’s worth the £9.99 they cost me!

⟫ This might just be me, but I’ve felt very emotional – my skin feels thin as tissue paper, constantly finding new bruises from injections and bloods being taken in the hospital. Allow yourself to feel whatever you feel, try not to judge or rush yourself and remember this is a marathon not a sprint.

⟫ Last, but most important for me, hug those people who have helped get you where you are – you’ve been through the trenches together and things are going to get better, but a hug of appreciation/love/reassurance means a lot in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep because of the ruddy gas pains! Ahem, yeah, like I said, I’m struggling with sleeping.”

So weird to see how I would respond to someone else yet I’ve grown impatient with myself for being so slow, not getting moving quicker, not able to achieve things faster. Putting it here means that I might re-read it every now and then and remind myself about those principles.

Got my Amazon parcel sooner than expected so the miralax has arrived. I don’t know whether to try it or not. I read that unless you feel like you need to go but can’t, to let your body work it out on its’ own, especially as on the liquid diet you haven’t got a lot of waste anyway. On the other hand, some people say to get ahead of it and use something like miralax to soften the way and make it less painful. I’m going to wait until Friday (a) because the girls are out at a hospital appointment for Book_grim so I’ll have privacy and (b) no one else needs to be around for that! I don’t currently feel like I have a ‘bat stuck in the belfry’ so am going to push that a little further down the list of things to worry about.

I ordered a sitting up pillow on J’s suggestion using the money from S (I’m going to have to think of pseudonyms for them because initials is just too flippin’ confusing! I think I’m just gonna go with Jay and Sare) and it’s due on Wednesday. I am hopeful it will help with this constant aggravating ache in my chest from swallowing air but we shall see. At least I know it won’t go to waste – I can never have too many pillows! My brain is currently trying to think of reasons to stay awake but I think I’m gonna shut everything down and try to get some sleep.

Book_grim isn’t working tomorrow night so I want to spend some time with her. And I would really love it if Stripes would have a pamper day – long-ass shower, wash her hair, change her bedding and just rest. We made it through the first obstacle course and now we recuperate and build ourselves up for the rest of it that is no doubt coming down the road at us!

I think I’ll try to remember to unload all of my thoughts on the car situation tomorrow, if I remember!

Review : Compression Socks for Post Surgery

Review:⟫ Compression Socks for Post Surgery

I can’t be the only one who felt less than flattered by how the compression socks the hospital provided look! So, as a way of making myself feel better, I ordered some from Amazon! A pack of four Post Op Compression Socks cost £9.99 and came in a variety of patterns. I, of course, went for the skeletons, crossbones, etc because I have a slightly macabre sense of humour.

They were hell to put on! It took both Stripes and Book_grim to stretch them out enough to be able to get them up my legs and they are a SNUG fit. However, there is a major sense of comfort in that – it makes me feel like they’re doing what they should be doing and since I need to wear these whilst I’m having the subcutaneous fat injections to prevent blood clots, I thought I might as well enjoy looking at them. I have ample room to spread my toes but they are secure just beneath my knees. I don’t feel stifled by them, which is interesting as I haven’t worn socks for years because I find them so constricting, they make my feet sweat and I just didn’t like the way they felt! Perhaps it’s part of the whole losing weight that my feet don’t seem to be sweating as much in the socks.

I will keep a track of how things feel – I didn’t go through surgery to mess things up post-op – but I am very pleased with my purchase and feel that I will happily keep wearing them afterwards!

Surgery and Post Op!!

Surgery and Post Op

I want to try to get this all down as well as I can remember, and it also gives me some time to sip on paracetamol and protein water. We got there around 6.40am and there was a little bottleneck of people all trying to be the first ones onto the ward. Not that it mattered since we all got let in at 7am and were then assigned a cubicle. They did it that way so that the surgical staff could go round and meet everyone in one go, and the tiny curtains meant if you heard the first conversation you didn’t really need to hear it again.

It was a lot of answering the same questions over and over again: when did you last eat, when did you last drink, when did you last take certain medications. Weigh in and they had me as 164.4kg but that was including my trainers! All of that self-induced panic about not reaching their target and they weigh me full dressed in my trainers and barely comment on it.

Met the anaesthetist (not the one I had the meeting with back in March) and she was very matter of fact, truthful and reassuring – I really like I could trust what she was saying. She didn’t sugar-coat it – when I asked if certain things would hurt, she would answer honestly, which was really reassuring. Then we met the surgeon and had my first internal wobble. He explained that if you have a weak diaphragm, that can lead to bad reflux and if that turned out to be the case, they would recommend a bypass instead of the sleeve. It also said that the bypass might not be laparoscopic but rather open. I nodded but that was my first wobble.

They said we were in the morning rotation so around 11 am, and that someone would come and let us know when theatre were ready for us and I could put on the lovely gown. I had several blood sugar checks (I hate them with an absolute passion because for such a tiny prick it hurts so flipping much!), various bloods taken and was only allowed to sip water. Stripes and I played Waffle and chatted/gossiped about the people around us and were doing fine.

I had to do a pee sample which was not easy since I’d literally had nothing to drink since like 6 am, and even me saying that it had been over a decade since I had sex made no difference – it had to be a test that was completed.

And then suddenly someone stuck their head around our curtain and said theatre were coming for me and my stomach hit the ground. I had 11am in my head and it was closer to 9.30 so I just wasn’t mentally prepared. Stripes helped me on with some incredibly tight compression tights (I still don’t know how she didn’t break umpteen nails doing so), got me into the gown and my dressing gown and suddenly we were going down to theatre. That felt like the longest and shortest walk of my life (good job we went by wheel chair as I wouldn’t have made it on my crutches) and I guess I should apologise to Stripes as I’m pretty sure I was crushing her hand. Time came to say goodbye and all of the glib words I wanted to say, the reassurance I wanted to offer, just deserted me. All I could do was kiss her hand, tell her I love her and then I was taken through another corridor and I couldn’t see her any more.

I sat outside theatre for about half an hour (I didn’t know that they didn’t realise I was there) but a kind soul popped out to chat to me. They said that they liked to come out and talk to the patients, offer a little reassurance and it was gratefully received. They said they would pop onto the ward to remind me that they told me so that I would come round from the anaesthetic. Then I met Rebecca (part of surgeon team) and she had me laughing while we filled in paperwork and went over questions again. It was one of the new theatres so everything was very posh looking, and there felt like there were a LOT of people in the room. It was nice that they introduced themselves but I couldn’t tell you a single name mentioned to me!

Cannula was as nasty as I thought it was going to be, even with the recommended squeezing my ear hard and being distracted by someone talking to me. I had to apologise and admit I hadn’t heard a word they said – whoops! The oxygen mask was very similar to my CPAP mask so that was actually reassuring and I have to admit, I don’t even remember getting the ‘count back from ten’ command or anything. The next thing I remember is seeing Stripes in a corridor waiting for me and being so relieved that she was okay.

I felt like I was in a LOT of pain and requested morphine which obviously sent me loopy as I don’t remember much of the next few hours. The scars feel huge, lumpy and just the furthest thing from keyhole ever but I know that they’re going to go down. Everybody says to get up and get walking as soon as you can, so I did go to the bathroom which was not the most comfortable but I managed it. All of the meds are in these giant-ass syringes with no needle attached so you basically suck them out, and I struggled so hard because even the smallest amount of liquid in my mouth felt like it was impossible to get down.

I know they sent Stripes home at around 8pm and woke me up every couple of hours from then, but that was pretty much all I can remember of surgery day. I’m going to take my paracetamol and then snuggle back under my blanket – I’ll fill in the next day when I wake up.