Bariatric Betty's 1st surgiversary! Pics, measurements, and excitement

Yesterday I celebrated my first surgiversary - and it was AWESOME!  My day started off with my husband, 12 year-old and 9 year-old having me sit on a bizarre contraption.  My husband had balanced a pillow on top of a folded folding chair, on top of an upholstered storage unit.  Then he took the chair legs, one son took the chair back, and the other one grabbed the chair side behind me and they lifted me up!  I felt like there should be trumpets playing - or maybe Hava Nagila ;)!

I don't have a picture of that - everybody in the house with opposing thumbs was involved and I didn't know to get my camera set up with a timer!  I did try to take a picture of me "planking" sideways while they held me up later (I was trying to copy something I'd seen someone else do) and could have gotten us on America's Funniest Home Videos if we had been taping...  Also, word of advice to WLS patients who might think that sounds good - loose skin hanging sideways in a picture is NOT your friend.  So... this is a picture of two of them presenting me with roses later on :)

 

My family has been such a support to me during my journey, and I have great confidence they will continue to be.  Here's a picture of me one year ago:

 

 

 My family stood by me then, and they stand by me now.  They understand I can't let my social interactions revolve around food.  And when we do eat out together, they try to find places I'm comfortable to eat.  All day I kept thinking about "a year ago I was in pre-op right now, a year ago I was coming out of surgery, a year ago I was talking my first walk..."  It was very emotional. 

Here's another thing that was emotional for me to do.  Make a new composite.  This is 3 months pre-op, 1 month post op, 4 months post-op, 6 months post-op, 1 year post-op.

Now for some hard figures to spell it out.  My highest weight was 243.3 pounds.  On my surgiversary I was 143 even, just over 100 pounds lost.  In the picture on the left, my weight was 237.  Here is a comparison of measurements from 3 months pre-op to today:

 

                     November 2011                2/16/2013           Inches lost

Waist            45.3 inches                      33 inches               12.3

Hips            46.5 inches                      34.5 inches               12

Chest band         41.3 inches                   33.3 inches             8  

Thigh            24 inches                     18.8 inches                 5.2

Bicep              16 inches                      11 inches                  5

Total inches lost 43.5!  I didn't measure my neck, but I can guess I lost at least 6 inches there as well.  Insane. 

Volunteering at a school event that required standing for an hour used to leave me sweating like a pig.  Now I run 5ks. 

I used to be diabetic, taking oral meds and insulin injections 4 times a day.  My diabetes was reversed the day of surgery, and now my only concern is my Reactive Hypoglycemia, which I can avoid. 

I am still being treated for depression, but my meds have been cut in half.

I now have enough energy to work outside the home, at my son's elementary school. 

I no longer need to take naps to make it through the day (although occasionally I will take one for fun)!

My biggest change is one my husband helped me realize at about 4 months post-op.  He came down one morning, looked at me and got very concerned.  "Are you OK?  Is something wrong?"  "No, why?" I replied.  "You're not smiling.  You ALWAYS smile now.  I haven't seen you not smiling since your surgery!"  It's true, I'm a much happier person now.  I still get upset occasionally, the kids can still get on my nerves, and I can still have grumpy days, but for the most part I'm very happy.  I feel like I've got everything I have ever really wanted.  Loving friends and family, a safe home, being appreciated at work, and being healthy. 

This is GREAT, but now comes the hard part.  My sense of hunger is coming back.  My pouch can hold more than it used to.  There won't be much more changes in my measurements.  My weight is stable +/- 2 pounds daily.  I am going to keep trying to get my body fat percentage down a bit, but as it will be replaced by muscle, it won't show up on the scale.  The compliments will decrease as more and more people get used to seeing me, or never knew the bigger me.  I have to keep working the program, eating according to the rules, exercising the same - or I will regain.  My calorie consumption will need to stay about 1200 calories a day at my current activity level.  I dump, so I will not be able to indulge in carbs without getting sick - and that's a good thing. 

I will eat to live, not live to eat.  I will find ways to treat myself that don't have anything to do with food - like yesterday.  I was properly fitted for new bras by a pro named Nancy at Nordstrom's.  My 4 new bras cost over $300, but I'm going to be wearing the heck out of them so I know I'll get at least 100 wears out of each, and they do EVERYTHING I needed them to do, plus - they're PRETTY.  People who have never been obese might not know but it is very hard to find a really supportive and comfortable bra size 44DD/EE.  Forget about it being attractive.   It was hard to swallow that bill yesterday, but it was harder to swallow the similarly ones for bras that looked awful. 

My next treat will be getting my rings re-sized.  I have been winding medical tape around them to keep them from falling off.  It will take a while to save up for it, because I'm going to incorporate some stones from other rings (my 10th anniversary and my late mother-in-law's ring) as well. 

It comes down to making the right choices every day.  Most days I do really well, but some days I don't.  I recently read Al Roker's "Never Goin' Back" and feel the same way.  This will never be "over", but I will never go "back" either.  It is worth everything to be here for my family longer, and be able to enjoy life more.  I give thanks to my family, friends, surgeon, and God for this second chance at life.  Forward!
 

Bariatric Betty's a shadow of her former self - PICS!

I'm blown away.  After seeing some pictures people had taken of them "wearing" a pair of pants they used to fit in pre-surgery by fitting both legs into 1 leg of the pants, I decided to try it.  So yesterday I dug through my old clothes and couldn't find any of my old size 20 pants - I donated a lot of clothes right after surgery.  But, I did find a pair of size 18 jeans and tried it.  It worked!  The funniest thing was that they were tightest around my calves and ankles, the THIGHS fit in easily.  So when I went to visit my father-in-law with my boys I had a documenting session.  This is the picture my son Justin took of me!

Seriously?  Holey cow. 

So, the second part of my documenting was the body tracing.  Flashback: the weekend before my surgery, my younger son Ian and I were talking and I realized that even though I thought I had explained the surgery really well to him, he thought I would be coming home from the hospital skinny, or at least signifigantly smaller!  So, in an effort to explain the reality, I laid down on a piece of posterboard and had him trace my torso.  Then I filled in some of the internal organs involved in red (a little hard for you to see on the pink posterboard, but it worked for him and that's who I made it for).  Then I used a blue marker to show where the cuts would be made on my skin, and what the surgeon would do on the inside.  Then I explained that when I got home, the outline of my body would still be the same, that is would take months of my new eating and exercise for it to get smaller.   I ended up cutting it out yesterday and laid it against a blue background.

About 5 months post-op I was curious to see how my "new" body would compare to the old one, so I laid down on the pink posterboard again and had my son trace me again.  That's the smaller outline you can see inside.  I was surprised (and pleased) to see that it had changed that much at that point.  Then I decided that when I had reached my equivalent of "goal weight" (my doctor never set a number, but I had suggested being in the 150s and he thought that was great) I would do it again.  That evolved into thinking that I would have my son trace me again on a different piece of posterboard and cut it out so I could lay it over the old me. 

Now I'm in the 140s (never really thought that could happen 8 months ago) and my guess is this is pretty close to my final weight.  I'm down to 28.3 % body fat I would like to see that go down a little (healthy is considered 25), but I think that will be more turning fat into muscle, so the scale won't change that much.  95 pounds down from my initial weight.  So, time for the tracing! 

OK, I have to say that my son's tracing must have angled in under my muffin top, my chest, and the rest of me, and apparently when I lay down my bat wings go underneath the rest of my arm.  I considered having him retrace me and tell him to try to make sure the chalk went straight down - there were a couple spots that his tracing seemed to have two different tracks (I cut on the larger one).  But then I decided no - he had done all the other tracings of me without directions like that - he might have been angling those as well.  So you can see from my picture at the top that my arms are not stick-like - so take this as more as a perspective, not reality - but WOW!

So after I spent a while wrapping my head around THIS I realized something else.  I lost 30 pounds BEFORE the pink one was made.  My pink self could have been BIGGER.

This shows me as literally a shadow of my former self.  But I don't see myself as a shadow.  I see myself as distilled, or concentrated.  The essence of me, with the excess and unneccesary boiled away by walking, jogging, swimming.  I am distilled.  I am high proof. 

Bariatric Betty laughs and victories (scale and non-scale)

OK, for everyone who needs a laugh... My "shrinkles" (wrinkles of excess skin) continue to be amusing.  Most recently I found out that when you have goosebumps on top of shrinkles, it can look really bizarre.  Note to the non-WLS patient readers - we get cold, a lot.  Imagine that you had lived most of your life wearing multiple wool sweaters in all weather, and then suddenly they were taken off.  Our thermostat is out of whack, so we tend to get cold easily (and stay cold a long time) just like the elderly.  Anyway, catching site of myself naked while chilled led me to an instant one-phrase description: Pink Seersucker!  That's what my skin looked like.  I was amused enough to consider taking a picture - but not crazy enough to do it.  Pseudonym or not, I don't want naked pictures online!  So after googling pink seersucker online, here's my best representation of what "shrinkled" goose-bumped skin looks like:

The only thing I would add is that the goosebumps appear about 4 times larger than they do on normal skin - I think mostly because the skin is so loose.  It looked a cross between goosebumps and hives!  

During my stall, I've kept looking for NSV's.  The most recent one was I went through the last of the clothes that I purchased 6 months ago (at 5 weeks post-op) at our school district's sale (Budget Bin).  On the last day of the sale, you can purchase a bag for $5, and then fill it with anything!  I chose to buy a lot of clothes that way, since I was still a size 16 in pants, and 2x/1x in tops.   Everything was just on faith that I might fit into them someday.  I got a lot of pants, because I had already discovered during the first 5 weeks of shrinking that while you can wear too-big shirts forever, too-big pants will FALL DOWN.  Of course, it is flattering and emotionally strengthening to wear correct sizes, but during the rapid weight loss phase, you simply can't affort to keep buying new clothes.  So, I got a lot of 14s and 12s, some 10s, and 1 pair of size 8 and one pair of size 6 pants.  I really never expected to go below a size 10.  When I was starving myself to be skinny in high school I wore a size 10 at 112 pounds.  Since I know that wasn't a healthy weight, I knew I would never be that small again, but then there is vanity sizing. 

A size 10 now isn't a size 10 from 25 years ago.  Talking with some neighborhood moms has reinforced my estimation that you can weigh 30-40 pounds more (plus have given birth to children - that means wider hip bones, people) and still fit in the "same size" you used to.   So when I got down to a size 10 I was surprised and pleased, but I knew that it's also a lie they sell us.  Then a little while ago I blogged that I bought some size 8 jeans.  They actually fit.  That was unexpected for me -although not for my mentor Jojo, who has been telling me I would fit in a size 8 or smaller since I was pre-op.  She's smirking right now and thinking "I TOLD you so!".  I had only gotten the size 8 and 6 pairs of pants because they were "free" since I had extra room in my bag, and from upscale shops.  So here's the NSV - the other morning I was getting ready for work and realized the the jeans I was putting on were stained, and everything else that fit was in the laundry already.  I dug through my drawers and found the Size 6 Ann Taylor khakis and thought "Why not try them?" and they FIT.  Well, they fit around my waist and hips - they weren't petite so I had to wear boots with heels so I didn't trip (note to self- never again wear heels to work, walking constantly for 2 1/2 hours in heels is PAINFUL).  Now for the reality check - I also just tried on a 10 petite pair of jeans that I found in the same drawer which I had missed before and other than being highly unflattering - they were snug around my waist.  But still - I'll take the NSV - I fit into a size 6 pant!

The stall has broken!  My second longer stall (about 4 weeks) and the scale started moving again.  This wasn't as hard for me as you might think.  I'm very happy with my success so far, and when the first big stall happened and I started to wonder if I was at the end of my weight loss - and then I came to the conclusion that if it was, I was OK with that.  No longer diabetic, no longer morbidly obese or even obese, able to jog and keep up with my kids... if I was "stuck" there for the rest of my life, how bad would that be?  Totally worth changing my life for.  Four pounds and a month later and I stalled again.  Again, I didn't feel the panic and frustration I felt before surgery during stalls.  Keep working the program, just be happy for where I am... and apparently I'm not done yet!

As of this morning I am under 150 pounds for the first time since college.  This was the most remote possibility I considered in weight loss when I talked about goals with my surgeon.  Despite what BMI charts would lead me to believe, I don't believe I can be a healthy weight below 135.  Being top-heavy with a large chest and broad shoulders, not to mention my excess skin, the range of 113 - 141 for "normal" for average people people my height doesn't translate well.  So I had talked about wanting to get down into the 160's, that I would be thrilled to be in the 150's and I guess the lightest I could imagine being happy and healthy at was the 140's.  And now I'm there.  Whoa. 

So I'm not even 8 months out and I've lost about 95 pounds.  I don't think I need to lose any more (although my vanity would like to be able to say "I lost 100 pounds!").  I would like to exchange some more fat for muscle (around my abdomen, where I have always carried the most fat) - but wouldn't everyone?  We don't get to choose where our fat comes off.  My non-existant rear-end has thinned out further, and my legs which always were one of my best features have enough excess skin hanging on them that when I lift my leg up while laying down, it looks like one of those drippy-candles my mom used to have in old wine bottles.

You know, with the excess wax pooling around in layers at the bottom!  It's weird.  I have the bat wings under my arms, too.  All of this I consider battle scars and a strange source of pride - although I have taken effort to learn how to display the best part of my evolving body.  I will wear sleeveless shirts and dresses, but will keep my arms down and in close to my body most of the time - especially if there are pictures.  I'm most comfortable wearing a swimsuit with a skirt to hid the excess skin folds around my rear.  My chest is actually decreasing in size (YAY!!!) - although with the amount of skin I have it still fills a "D" cup easily.  If I ever have plastic surgery it will be a long-dreamed-of breast reduction - although I now wonder if the excess skin was removed how much additional reducing would be needed.  This is a bonus - even at that too-skinny stage in high school I was a 32DD.  I don't know why my body has decided to let go of some of the volume there now, but I'm not complaining!  So much has changed about my life; my body and health, getting a job, and how I can participate in more things with my friends and family.  But inside I'm still the same person, I just enjoy my life a lot more.