Exactly One Month to Surgery... Got Any Tips and Tricks?

My DS is one month away... surgery day on July 8.  I am looking for advice on:

• what worked for you
• what do you advise I have stocked
• what didn't you realize that you needed
• how long was your recovery?  
• How long was it before you could resume things like driving and working?

I want to be successful so, I realize I have to plan for just that.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Lisa

• what worked for you
• what do you advise I have stocked
• what didn't you realize that you needed
• how long was your recovery?  
• How long was it before you could resume things like driving and working?

Have stocked:
1.  protein powders - a mix of them.  Don't buy a big bucket of something you like today.  Go to Vitalady.com and purchase the sample pack.  Your tastes will really change after surgery.
2.  Egg drop soup
3.  wet wipes
4.  acid reducer (I took it for a couple of weeks, then stopped)
5.  SF jello and SF popsicles

What worked:  rest, sip constantly, walk a little, repeat.
I had to sleep in a chair at the hospital, and when I got home.  I did not go back to bed till 6 weeks after surgery.  So have blankets and lots of pillows in case you have to make a bed sitting up.

I got an infection in my incision, so recovery, driving and working were a little later than I had planned.

Good luck.

 

I went to vitalady but couldn't find the sample pack. Can you send a link?

all of what she said and Poo pourri and Ozium. 

Oohhh yea.  How could I forget those?

If you have a window in your bathroom, make sure you can open it.  If you have a fan, make sure it will work when you come home from the hospital. 

And put your deodorizers on the back of the toilet cause you need to be able to put your hands on it quickly.  In the early days, the urge to go comes on quick and you won't have time to look for things before you sit down.

Amen to that

Tell me more about the bathroom situation. Are you guys saying that you pretty much have diarrhea all the time and that it smells super bad? Or, is it that loose bowels are triggered by certain things. Please clarify.

Most of us have to do a liquid diet and a clean out to prep for surgery.  Then, you have surgery and you just sip water, some SF jello, some broth - for about a week.  Then more soft foods for 2-3 weeks.  Liquid in, liquid out.  And your intestines are swollen, and trying to heal.  So you will have diarrhea at the beginning.

Then you move on to regular foods.  At this stage, you will start your vitamins in earnest.  So you have firm foods, calcium, and iron going in - constipation.  There was a while there that I was constipated in the mornings, then had diarrhea in the afternoons.  I used to take 4,000 mg of calcium right before bed time.  So I always woke up constipated.  I used to take tons of magnesium in the morning - I was running to the john in the afternoon.  It's a matter of learning to balance your vitamin batches, learning which pills plug you up and which pills turns on the spigot.  And if you eat a lot of carbs or crap foods, you will be in the bathroom a lot.  Pavlov's dog.  You stop eating carbs and crap foods pretty quickly.

In all honesty.  The diarrhea thing is rough in the beginning.  But - IMHO - it comes down to you learning how your body will react to foods.  You balance your vitamins with your protein intake, your caffeine intake, etc.  You body does settle down into a routine also.

Immediately after surgery, you're going to poop a LOT, and because you'll be eating mostly liquids and really soft stuff, your poop will be really soft too. As you get back to eating real food, and taking multiple doses of calcium daily, things will firm up. Your poop stinks now, right? (*grin*) Did the smell change after your RNY? If so, there you probably already know what it's going to smell like after your DS. What you eat is going to affect it a lot, too. If you're really odor-sensitive, you'll probably want to avoid broccoli and asparagus and such. Carbs tend to produce a lot more gas than protein and fat do, and it's stinkier too.

Yea, it stinks.  Worse than before the surgery. 

But that also depends on what I eat.  If I eat crap, I get gas that could peal the paint off a barn and almost suffocate myself in the bathroom from holding my breathe.  If I eat cleanly, no gas and tolerable stench.

Honestly, I am willing to deal with it cause losing 100 lbs or more, not feeling starved, and not being diabetic any more is worth it.  My BM's weren't that sweet smelling before surgery!