Surgery date approaching!
Hi!
My surgery date is October 8th so we are just 3 days apart!
I've been reading all of the posts here. If you are looking for something specific, you can always do a search. Lost of valuable information out there. Good luck!
~Suzy
Age: 42 | Height: 5'9 | Surgery Date: 10/08/15 | Starting Weight: 279.2 | Surgery Weight: 266 | Goal Weight:165 | Current Weight: 224.8 | WL so far: 54.4 lbs
on 9/18/15 12:55 pm
If your pre-op nerves are keeping you awake and affecting your work, ask your surgeon for a short course of klonopin or other mild tranq. Don't drive if you take it during the day!
Surgery day is a breeze. Once you check into the hospital, you will be completely taken care of pre-, during, and post-op. Your work begins as soon as you're able to get up and walk around, usually late in the day after the surgery. Make it a point to walk a few minutes every hour. When the nurses wake you up at night for injections, BP readings, whatever, take a few minutes and walk around some more before you go back to sleep.
Your other job will be starting to drink liquids again. As long as you're hooked up to the IV, you won't get dehydrated, so you'll start with a few ounces of water. Take as long as you need to to get it down, but get it down! Keep sipping whatever liquids they bring you. It's astonishing how quickly you'll go from barely managing to get 2 oz. of water down to 4 oz. to 8 oz. and more over just a few days post-op.
The most important job for you in the hospital and when you get home is to keep sipping liquids almost constantly and keep walking around consistently. The biggest bugaboo most of us face post-op is dehydration. If queasiness keeps you from drinking enough water, call your surgeon for an anti-nausea med. You MUST keep drinking. Protein intake will gradually go up as your stomach tolerates it -- this is less important in the first few post-op weeks than water.
Good luck!
psychoticparrot
"Live for what today has to offer, not for what yesterday has taken away."
on 9/18/15 2:26 pm
Some posters here report high levels of pain after surgery. I had very little, just soreness at the incision sites. I was able to walk around in the hospital with little trouble, except from the after-effects of anesthesia, which of course makes you feel a bit groggy.
I did have trouble with post-op queasiness, not in the hospital, but in the first few weeks at home. I had bouts of dehydration because I was too queasy to drink enough. If that happens, call your surgeon immediately and ask (demand if you have to) an anti-nausea med, like Zofran. If I'd taken that as soon as I was discharged, I'd never have had the two hair-raising trips to the ER in the following 6 weeks.
Wow, did you ever ask the right person about throwing up! When I started w/pureed and then soft foods, I found it very difficult to judge when to stop eating. Just one tiny spoonful too much, and I was off to the bathroom to toss it back up. I had no pain with it, just unpleasantness. This happened at least 2-3 times a week. Looking back now, and from reading posts about it here, I realize I should never have tried to eat the full amounts suggested in the surgeon's plan, at least not in 3 meals a day. A spoonful or two every 2-3 hours would have prevented a lot of trips to the bathroom. Fortunately, my sleeve held up fine and I never suffered any pain from it.
Take all this information with a grain of salt and understand that everyone's experience is a little different. Some have pain; some don't. Some are back to work in a week; some take 6 weeks. Recovery from major surgery is not fun; don't expect it to tickle. Be very kind to yourself and very gentle to your sleeve. Your recovery will take as long as it takes. But it will end, and enjoyment of food and life and weight loss will be yours.
psychoticparrot
