What surprised you the most after you had your VSG surgery?

It benefits us all! :) To read that you spent so much time here is encouraging to me too. I keep reading as much as I can. I have felt a little guilty about spending so much time here, but I'm guessing you would say it's worth it.

Your journey is an incredible one. Congratulations!!

Thank you :)

I would read OH for hours pre-op, especially during the liquid diet and other rough periods. It was a good way for me to keep my head in the game and to prepare.

Perfection! I LOVE THIS!! I'm being sleeved on 11/13 and I am so excited! This was very helpful

A amazing list Gwen! It reflexs how strong you are. It added some on-site and thought I had not even thought about.

I hope I deal with it all half as well.

Penny

Wow Gwen, that list is amazing. I mean, you pretty much encapsulated everything.

I would say one big surprise is just how much effort it took for me to exist as a super morbidly obese (SMO) person. I mean, I knew my knees hurt when I got out of bed, I knew that I would do things like map out the distance from the hotel to the work conference, I knew I had to scope out the seating in a restaurant in case the chairs were rickety...but until I became "normal" sized, I didn't realize how much I just didn't DO because my body was not capable. I move around so easily through the world now - run up the stairs all day long switching laundry, changing sheets, running down to the basement extra fridge, popping out to the mailbox...just regular stuff that I guess I didn't do when it was just so damn hard to drag my frame around. I didn't know how tough existing was until I lost the weight.

Yes! I completely agree.

And this reminds me of another surprise - I wasn't prepared to go through a period of feeling totally disconnected from the body I saw in the mirror. That was a challenge.

Hey Gwen,

Can you say more about what you mean about the period in which you felt "totally disconnected from the mirror"?

Paige

I can try? When I looked in the mirror I didn't recognize the person I saw as being me. I could move my arm and the arm in the mirror would move, of course, but it was really hard to convince my brain that I was seeing me and that this is how I really look now. The image of myself in my brain is definitely SMO Gwen (although maybe not so much now) and when I lost weight it took a looooong time for that mental image to lose the weight as well.

I don't think that I was truly body dysmorphic, but I was worried that I was borderline dysmorphic. It was a pretty scary way to feel.

I guess it's sort of like the first day after you get your hair cut significantly shorter. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and do a double take. Or you're washing your hair and it's confusing that instant you realize that your hair stops sooner than it used to. Only it lasted for months and was my entire body.

I never thought about that, Gwen, but it completely makes sense that it will take awhile for our brains to catch up with the changes in our bodies.

Paige

YES! Everything was SO HARD back then! I know you recently went through this too, but over the summer when I was having some back troubles, I complained to my husband that this must have been what it was like when I was SMO. Getting in and out of the car, getting dressed, putting on shoes ... ugh! Needing to deal with a CPAP ... the worst.

Everything is so much easier. I vividly remember my last vacation SMO. We went to Bermuda and it was like we barely did anything the three days we were docked there. The last day we were tired and just stayed on the ship. Contrast that with when we went to London and Edinburgh last year and did at least 7 miles a day. Our last day in Edinburgh we walked from our hotel on the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle, did the whole castle, then walked DOWN the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace and then back UP to our hotel. SMO Jen would have DIED.

Jen