New here - Surgery booked and I am nervous!
Forgot to tell you to ask to have your pain meds (I had panadol) through your I.V. They did that for me the first night and next day gave it to me in the tablet. Found that hard so requested the rest through I.V. Plus it works quicker thst way too. Also if you feel nauseous they should give you maxalon through it as well and that will knock it on the head. Last 2 things.... the first night/day after surgery ice chips are good to suck on to help get fluids in. And get up and walk for 10 mins every hour as soon as they say you can. Good luck.
Its normal to be nervous but its a life-changing surgery that will help you manage your weight and live longer.
If you could just post anything you wish you had known pre-op:
1. The pain from them expanding your chest cavity to perform the surgery. You should walk the MOMENT you can after the surgery and save yourself the pain. More movement the more it will dissipate (that air and thusly the possible pain from it.)
2. How positively life changing it would be. You can't put it into words when you start to lose weight. Its almost like being reborn and having a new lease on life. YOU must have this surgery if you fear your weight is having a negative effect. ITS A MUST.
3. Start drinking water and make it your main food. Its still hard to drink water but nowhere near how bad it was before. Put daily reminders morning noon and nite. DRINK DRINK DRINK water.
4. Buy small plates and cups. Anything around 4-6 in plates to hold the food. It will help you judge how much you will eat. Oh yes, the cups should be 4-8 ounce cups for the water to drink. Don't go out and buy 100 plates and 100 cups. Buy like 10 of each and feel out if they will help you. Walmart sells cheap ones.
5. Start investing in protein shake powder. If you get chocolate or vanilla you can add your own "stuff" to it. I like to add peanut powder like PBfit and make it into a chocolate peanut-butter shake or I'll add a few strawberries to the vanilla and make it into a strawberry shake. I ALWAYS make sure the protein powder has low sugar and calories and I'll look for the Whey protein to be the main ingredient.
These are just MY top five, because you asked, others will think differently.
Trying to lose weight and change my lifestyle! My main goal is 220.
Although I haven't had my surgery yet I do have a bit of advice to offer that may give you some peace of mind. First of all, you may have well-meaning friends who tell you the surgery is dangerous because they heard of someone who had complications. Try not to let this get to you; the surgery is safe. If you delve into these stories, you will usually find that the patient went to a dodgy clinic in a country where medical practices are not well-monitored, and had surgeon who was less experienced or didn't provide good aftercare. Or the patient was severely morbidly obese, in which case the surgery was risky but not operating was also risky.
You may be wondering about how much discomfort you'll be in after surgery. Watching YouTube videos to find out about other people's experiences won't really help much, because there's so much variety. You'll remember the bad stories and forget about the many people who had a good experience. Be mindful of that. Also, different people have different tolerance levels for pain and nausea.
Since you were able to move so rapidly from first contacting a doctor to getting surgery, you probably haven't had much time to learn more about it. Here are some links that might be useful to you.
Here's a good discussion of my packing list for the hospital. If you're having a shorter stay, you may not want all of that stuff.
Here are some channels on YouTube where doctors discuss the procedure: Matthew Weiner, Duc Vuong, Guillermo Alvarez. Of course, you don't want to follow medical advice from the Internet without discussing it with your doctor. However, these channels have good descriptions of the surgery and recovery, and the information they provide seems fairly consistent with that I've received from my own doctor.
