17 DAYS AND COUNTING

Well it is 17 days till my surgery and I am very excited. Up until yesterday I seemed to be more scared then excited and something just clicked and I began to think of how great it will be when I am on the losing side. I decided I can only worry about that which I can control and since I did my homework and found a great surgeon and somehow got my insurance company to pay for it I will just leave it in the good hands of my doc. I ordered the "step up to the plate "30 days of food for post op to make things easier. Even though I am a chef I thought this way made allot of sense since it packs all those protien calories into the 6 meals per day.Has anyone else tried this product? If so is it any good or did I just waste $300.00? After the surgery how long does the pain last and how long will the DR. prescribe pain pills? I currently take high doses of oxycontin and percocet for an arthritic hip and wonder how will this effect the time release nature of the oxycontin? MY DR. seems to realize that I will need higher doses of pain meds to get through this I just hope he follows through with it. I do not like those DR. who think pain meds are bad and should not be used what are they sadists!!!!!One more question based on a previous weight loss I had allot of loose skin and it hung down so low I had to move it to urinate if this happens again would this be considered a neccesary plastic surgery since I heard that excess skin is potential cancer causing . Anyways I am counting the days and look forward to hearing the responses to my questions.

Hey Joel, Glad to read that you're excited about surgery. I'm almost three weeks post-op and am 100% glad I did it. My pre-op anxiety was high, but in retrospect, surgery was a breeze. The pain from the surgery itself was minimal, kind of like a bad case of intestinal flu...more like cramping...not anywhere near as bad as I had expected (never having had surgery before). I was on morphine for the first day, which was sweet. It helped me sleep a lot. From then on, they switched me to something called torodol, which they gave me every six hours as needed. When I went home, I had Tylenol 3 with codeine. Since coming home, I've only needed it a few times, mostly to sleep. What I will say about pain is that I experienced low back pain when sleeping on my back. I couldn't change positions for the first few nights. If I tried to move onto either side, it felt like my guts were being pulled. That's when I used the Tylenol 3 to get me through the nights. Now, at three weeks out, I'm able to sleep on my side again and have stopped using the pain meds altogether. I have lost 30+ pounds since surgery, but not enough to get rid of my spare tire. My primary care physician said I should see him every time I get a rash, infection or any other problem with the flab, mainly so he can build up a documented case for plastic surgery. Like WLS, if there's medical necessity, he said insurance should cover plastic surgery. Hope these answers help you, Joel. Good luck as you get into your final week pre-op. Let us know how it goes. Joe