Becky,
  Thanks for your encouragement earlier. I'm near the Dyersville area. I used to live in Anamosa/Martelle and am very familiar with Cedar Rapids. My daughter was born at St. Luke's and my son (from Korea) was officially adopted in the downtown court house. I went to Mt. Mercy College for social work (as an older student). I moved to Iowa in 1978 to pursue my degree in English at the U of Iowa.
  Still a daily, hourly struggle with the clear liquid diet. It won't be so bad after the surgery as my stomach will be smaller and the "hunger hormone" shouldn't be there (for a few months anyway, I'm told). Meanwhile, I'll continue to do what needs doing.
  Thanks too, to Carol and Karen for your words of wisdom!
 

Just  hang  in  there ,  it  will  be  worth  the  trouble.  I  plan  to  just  follow the  schedule     they  have  in  the booklet  and  focus  on  the  schedule  rather  than what  I  am  eating.  maybe  that  will  help. 
  I  am  not  getting  excited  because  they  don't  get  in  an  hurry  getting  you  a  surgery date  so  i  am  just  going  to  do  my  own  thing  and  if  it  happens it  happens.  
     Keep  in  touch     Karen

Hi Sandy,

I am sorry you are struggling so much with this two week eating plan.  Keep focusing on your end result because that's what's important.  Getting to the operating room takes some discomfort and this is part of it.

Have you tried chicken broth?  I loved that and ate quite a bit of that.  Also liked liquid Jell-O.  I mixed it with double the water, or else I just drank it warm when I made it.  Are you allowed to have Gatorade?  I can't remember if I could have it or not, but that is something that would be a different flavor for you with some nutrients too.  

Wish there was some magical answer for you but when you are on this short term eating plan, the options are few.  Focus on your goal and not on what you are deprived of.  If you can do that, you'll make it.  This is just the beginning of eating the right way for the rest of your life and you can do it.  Keep trying and don't give up because you need to be in the right shape to have your surgery.

Keep posting and letting us know how things are going.  Maybe others have more suggestions for you, too.

Hang in there..........you're almost to the operating room and it won't be long now!

Carol

Oh what the hell, I'd like to get thisposting over with for some reason although no one should want to learn about stuff like this, apparently it can happen and it did to me. Years ago I was so busy with 2 jobs one was working for 13 hrs at a time sitting on a high stool in front of a counter with no space in front to position your legs properly.One of my sons was having cancer issues and needed me to drive him to therapy every other day, my mom sick with having her  amputated leg not closing or healing properly and needed rides to doctor a lot., my other son was busy being an underage alcoholic and a constant worry for me. Somewhere before all these problems I had acquired my chihuahuas, who shall remain nameless for this posting.  Because of them, I started having my exhusband ,who had come back to my town after 11 years of separation, drop over during my 12hours shifts days to play with them so they could have a nice life, exercise and attention.. I was a person who had to exercise to keep slim during the  winter inactive time and  work out kinks from stool sitting at job. At this stupid  job , new owners started making us wear  shirts tucked in to our pants and there was no way to hide sorta fat winter thighs in such an outfit. When a old girlfriend of mine called me one day,  she told me that she had liposuction and that it really solved a lot of her chubby thigh problems and that I should have it done and that she knew a great doctor that didn't charge very much.  I thought to myself okay.  $1200 and I can spend more time with my dogs and not go to gym so much and still lok okay in my work uniform  I set up appointment and tried not to think about how much it was going to hurt because she said it was like being beaten with baseball bats for about a week and then your fine and never have to worry about chubby thighs again..  I imagined that only about 1/3 of a cup of fat would need to be removed from each thigh but the night after my procedure the doctor called me at my home and said that he ended up removing much more than he originally thought he would , 2 liters.  I was all bruised from my waist down to my knees for several weeks but I was very thin.  Only thing later when the swelling went down my skin was old and withered looking and the muscles in my legs didn't go with my skin anymore.  I couldn't handle it and started using my mom's computer to search out someone who could correct this new seemingly overnight senile skin  condition.  Sheesh!   I ended up connecting with a famous plastic  surgeon , Dr. Lockwood who said he could fix this with a body lift for $30,000.  I tried to win some money once at a  casino place (where I never go usually) one day and lost $800 in just a few hours.    later on Internet I connected with some doctors in Iowa City that said they were specializing in doing these body lifts too for $7,500. I had email relationship with one of them for about a year and a half.  We discussed things and it seemed as if they had a way to correct my deflated skin issues.  I finally gambled again  and had horrible circumferential belt lipectomy surgery in  2001.   These doctors  tightened me up alright but  crudely  and they just removed all the good skin I had and tightened up the bad skin everything going against the grain of how my hips and pelvis tilt and no consideration for future comfort or ability to move or even sit really.  Shee****hey were in a big hurry to have a certain quota of doing these so they could get a research grant to do more and I was a cash paying lab rat. Anyway, I f.....;d up and it only took a few hours for whole my life to be  ruined in a clinical sterilized environment.  I sort of pushed through a lot of years of being too busy to notice what was happening to me after my mom died and so much real estate matters had to be resolved.  Finally I'm settled with only 3 or 4 more years of hiding my pain at work  to endure  I can't believe I was so dumb to ever get involved with this stuff but it happened.  My life is sorta over and I'm very embarrassed to be like this.. I tell almost no one about what happened to me. I was so healthy and strong before all this. My weight 115 lbs. Sheesh!  I still am healthy but I wish I could get sick and die soon.  There is little point.  But I suppose Steven Hawkings. the Noble prize winning crippled physicist, could have said this too, only he didn't pay for his infirmity. There's  the rub. That is much of the reason my family relationships have deteriorated I feel.  I am sorry  that one of my sons  has lost me as a useful vital person in his life.  He knows some of my condition and I'm sure he hates me and rightfully so for being stupid and probably for being vain but actually I was convinced at the time I was being practical, not vain. But now I see I was being vain and superficial.  Oh well, that's how my life story turned spookish   I have no idea how to live except one day at a time painfully.  My exhusband came to live here recently at exactly at the right time. Poor guy, I've really started to deteriorate so much just lately and when not at work I get to spend a lot of time in bed and he helps with pet dog. I probably would never had the patience to incorporate him back into my life if this hadn't happened to me.  He is different, not your common popular type "Joe"  person,  seemingly bland on the surface but very kind and intellectually  observant of many things . So maybe that's why the bad thing  happened because I see now how special and unique our long time knowing each other is and I love sort of shutting the world out of our :now" sort of hobbled life together. When we were apart I would always think in the back of my mind... how stupid to be apart because If he were to grow  sick someday how could I arrange to be with him to help him and stuff? But then I would try to correct my thinking as petty sentiment that can't be dabbled with if you want to go forward with your life and stuff. . This seemed to be the philosophy of the "me first"  era that I was trying to conform to anyway.  As the world turns... he ends up  helping me more than I him.    Even though my legs are now all twisted and seem to be out of their sprocketts the doctors I see try not to diagnose that I have bad problems because it would seem like my, now famous since $30,000 doctor died,  doctors, who have high quota of doing this, hurt me. I take out more life insurance  at  lower " for the healthy" premium rates after their  good reports because I'm pretty sure I can't live much longer and I've been very slowly but  mortally wounded. Each life insurance policy has a clause that if policy owner commits suicide within a two year period money can't be collected. With each new policy clause I trick myself into extending the  date for possible suicide which I would have no idea how to go about (?)and so I  keep  going because of  the life insurance and also because of the memory of loving life. If I die soon, while working ,my work policies would pay my children  a lot.  If I die when not actively working I have only  $35,000 for each child. Not great but could  come in handy.  
Please don't puke too much after reading this post

Well the  phone  rang  and  now more  tests.  Have  to see a  pulmonary dr  now  on the  13th.  Don't  think  it  will ever  end.  But at  least they  called.  Karen