Graduation Pics, inspirations, rants, & warnings

 

Last Friday I graduated from the St. Vincent Sisters of Charity Bariatric Center.  It is a ceremony they hold once a year (although they skipped last year) for people who have reached their goal and are more than a year post-op.  It was a great excuse to get dressed up and have a night out with my husband - and it was AMAZING to be with all of these other successful people who have so much in common with me.  Walking across the stage, with my before/ after pictures and successes being shown on power point, my hand being shook and handed a rose and certificate.  It was a wonderful recognition from people who help the obese become healthy, and from my fellow patients.  Speaking of fellow graduates...

The 62 of us who graduated lost over 7,200 pounds combined, which equals over 25,000,000 (yup, that's MILLION) calories burnt and not consumed.

22 of us used to be diabetic, and only 4 still are.

We used to take a combined 374 pills daily.  We now take 170.

One woman at my table has lost 240 pounds in the past 16 months!  Holey cow.  She was also diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and has just finished radiation after her radical hysterectomy.  She is very hopeful that the chemo will put her into remission, and shared that the oncologists said they wouldn't have been as hopeful if she hadn't lost the weight - because she wouldn't have been able to tolerate the treatments.  I know that the surgery has extended my life and quality of life by getting rid of my diabetes and other risk factors.  But in her case, literally months after her loss, she found that she could get lifesaving treatment that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. 

Seeing my Personal Care Coordinator, Diane Harris, was wonderful as always.  My surgeon has left the practice, and I have struggled with whether to follow him.  Seeing Diane reminded me that she and the other support staff are a large part of the team effort that have helped me this far, and I will likely stay at St. Vincent.  Here's me hugging her to death!

 

My husband was there to support me, as he has been through the whole thing.  We even got a chance to dance a bit.  One of the physician assistant's stiletto heels took the skin off one of my toes, but I didn't let it stop me from enjoying the evening.  Here's me and my rock.

and for a reality check, here's me with my family before surgery, 103 pounds heavier

 

So, parts of the graduation were frustrating and puzzling for me.  First - it was a dinner.  A dinner, for bariatric patients who try to avoid food-based social gatherings.  Well, at least the food would be bariatric friendly, right?  Sort of.  The first things we were served were typical catering fare - a salad and a bread basket (although the bread was flat and crisp bread, which some bariatric patients can eat a little of - not many, but some).  Salad tends to be tricky for WLS patients - lettuce is notorious for getting caught in our stomas, because it's difficult to chew it into small enough pieces.  We also are told rule #1 is Always eat your protein first - so being given bread and vegetables before our entrée was against THE RULES.  OK, well, there were probably another 75 people there who weren't patients, so they could enjoy it.  Would it have killed them to put some cheese on the salad, though? The entrees were were either salmon with squash or for vegetarians like us (many WLS become vegetarian post-op because meat and fish prove too hard to digest) we had a portabello mushroom with melted cheese, roasted tomato, and beans.  That was pretty yummy, although it was still lower in protein than I would normally eat for a meal. 

 

I made it through the dinner without anything getting stuck, which is always an anxious concern of mine.  Although, being in a room of fellow patients, I knew if it happened nobody would look at me funny if I had to make a hasty exit to the restroom.  Then they came around with coffee and tea - another no-no for WLS patients, we can't drink with our food, or for an hour after we eat.  But, again, there were non-WLS people there, and they haven't trained themselves to not drink, so that was understandable. Here's the thing though - I saw several patients at my table drinking tea and coffee!  What?  You're here for following the rules and being successful so you break the rules???   But then they brought out dessert!  Dessert.  Really?  And not some bariatric friendly ricotta-stuffed strawberries - oh, no.  Cheesecake.  OK, that was just cruel.  In a funny twist, they place one in front of me, but not my husband.  The ovarian cancer survivor and I both gave him our pieces, and frankly I avoided looking to see if any of the other patients were indulging.  I didn't want it to seem like I was going to judge others for their decision, so I just talked to my hubby while he enjoyed it and ignored the rest.  The fact is we are all tempted to take a taste of something now and then - even if we might dump.  I try to be strong not only because of dumping, but because if I have some grain or sugar I'm likely to crave it for days.  Honestly, it would have bothered me less to see WLS patients tasting the cheesecake than drinking after eating - that washes the whole meal out of our pouches and then it isn't digested well and makes us hungry again. Still can't believe some of them did that.

 

We danced, talked, had our pictures taken and waited for the raffle drawing of an Ipad Mini and Fitbit Flex (ooooh, I wanted the flex!).  What a night!

 

I also got great news earlier that day.  My mammogram came back clear.  I had gotten scanned two weeks prior and been told to expect a call - between my breasts having changed so drastically since my only other scan (8 years ago) and the fact that the new digital scans pick up things that weren't visible on the old films...  I've been spending the last two weeks worrying.  I was greatly reassured by other WLS patients that they often get calls to come back because of the way their breast tissue has atrophied looks strange on the scans, which helped keep me from panicking.  Part of the reason it took so long was because my previous films were taken out of town.  At least now they will have them locally for the future.  WLS people - be prepared for mammogram scares!  That was something I never read about in all of my pre-op prep. 

 

RANT WARNING..... (this is nothing new info wise, just me venting)

 

I am still working hard to make good food choices, and staying active.  Maintaining my weight loss is VERY important to me.  I continue to dislike eating out/ away from home, and have started to get more push-back from my mom on that.  When I told her I was surprised the graduation was a dinner she said "Well, maybe it will help you get over eating out..."  Uh, right.  Part of the reason I don't like to eat out is that eating out vegetarian can be a little bit of a challenge, but eating out bariatric-friendly vegetarian can be VERY HARD.  And even when appropriate food is available, the way it is prepared greatly varies how it will be tolerated.  Even in the best of circumstances, there are times when eating (even at home, my regular diet) results in severe GI distress.  My mom, who originally said that she wouldn't mind if we wanted to stop having traditional Thanksgiving meals together and just get together afterwards, now lays guilt trips on me for not eating at her place.  Sigh.  No Mom, it's not that I don't want to be with you.  It's that I would rather eat at home.  I don't go eat at my friend's homes either.  And the rare times I eat out - it's usually with you.  When I'm at home I have the most control not only over the food, but the fact that I can run to my OWN bathroom if I need to, and lay down on my OWN bed if my stomach hurts later.  This doesn't happen very often anymore, but about once a week I have at least some indigestion.  That's often enough.  It happened Saturday night even though I ate at home, and I had to miss 1/3 of a play while I was in the bathroom.  It's worth it everyday when I am healthy and happy, but eating is NOT a fun social activity for me any more, it is a deliberate, planned, and strategized necessity.  No, I don't mind you eating in front of me.  What I mind is you continuing to invited me to eat out/ over at your place and then not understanding when I decline and say we will meet you after the meal. 



 

Did I mention I get frustrated?  :)  This journey has been and continues to be a rewarding challenge, some days it's easier to focus on the rewards, so days it's hard to see past the challenges. Seeing all my fellow WLS patients and their successes was very inspiring and made me think about how far I've come.  It's not easy, but it's worth it.  I have a free album credit on Snapfish - I think I'm going to use it to make an album of my journey from pre-surgery to graduation!

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 has an attitude

It's all in the attitude.  How you interpret what happens around you, when you hear bad news, when you hear about something wonderful that someone has done...  Your personal take on everything is shaped by your attitude.

I'm praying for all the families and friends of the victims in Aurora, Colorado.  I'm praying for the family of the shooter.  And while I cringe in horror at the unspeakable violence, I give thanks that more didn't die.  It seems amazing to me that with 70 people shot, the fact that the deaths were limited to 12 very loved people is close to miraculous.  I think about the girl who wasn't injured but stayed in the theater instead of escaping so she could keep pressure on the neck wound of her friend, or the boy who died shielding his girlfriend and I find inspiration.

Does this mean I find the silver lining in everything?  No.  Am I always positive?  Definitely not.  But I try to make a concious choice to react in a positive way as much as I can. 

This morning I was getting ready for couch-2-5-k training, getting ready to finally start week 5 after delaying it in hopes that my sons would catch up.  The thought of jogging 3 5minute 1/2 miles with 3 minute walks in between was stressing me out a bit, and I was nervous on how I would handle it.  I had told the kids that they should jog as long as they could and then walk for a while.  Before we even left for the rec center, my almost 12 year old was complaining.  "I hate training."  "I REALLY hate training days."  "I don't want to train."  "Training is boring."  "It's too hot and humid to train." This last one was funny given that we train inside on an air conditioned track.

Attitude.  You know - I can handle the kids not being able to jog as much as me.  It's disappointing, and I wanted them to be able to run my first race with me, but I'll get over it.  It's more important that they are being active and healthy.  But the attitude...


I repeatedly said "I understand that's how you're feeling, but we're still going.  Please stop complaining."  When we got there, the complaints turned to "Can I do it on the treadmill?  This is so boring.  At least there I can watch TV."  No, start walking the 5 minute warm up.  Immediately he started walking slower and fell behind my 9 year old and I.  I never saw him jog.  He says he did "for a little" before his leg started to hurt. 

I got so frustrated that after I lapped him three time while he was complaining I just tuned him out for the rest of the workout.  When I finished and was tired and sweaty he started making excuses while simultaneously complaining some more.  I told him I didn't want to hear it.  That I would talk to him later, but that if I talked to him right now I was going to yell at him, and I didn't want to yell at him.

How do kids learn that it is the hardest things that bring the most satisfaction when you accomplish your goal?  How do they learn to stick it out, to push themselves, and to not be afraid to fail?  I can tell them to do stuff, I can show them by example, I can cheer them on and express disappointment or give them consequences if they bail.  But how do you get them to start making that choice to endure, to grow, and to surpass themselves?  Whatever the key is, I haven't found it yet. 

I'm going to try to talk to him about it shortly, now that I've had a shower and lunch.  He has dreams that on various days include the NFL, being a computer game designer, a chef, and a police officer.  No matter what your dreams are, to succeed in life you have to keep going when you're bored, or frustrated, or unhappy.  He did Tai Kwan Do for 5 years and earned his black belt when he was 9.  That was when we could drag him to practices and tell him that he HAD to do his best, and he would.  That last year as he tested and prepared for his black belt I thought he got it.  At least for Tai Kwan Do.  I hoped that would carry over into the rest of his life.

I don't need either of my kids to be gold medalists, millionaires, or elected to an office to feel I've succeeded as a parent.  I need them to be able to take care of themselves, work hard, do their best and be able to feel proud of their accomplishments without needing external rewards.  There's a lot of room to grow here.
Since we left the rec he has been making an effort to be helpful and respectful.  He knows he's in trouble.  I hope I can impart more wisdom than anger.  And then he will be helping me with chores for the rest of the day.  After making my morning harder than it needs to be, he can help make my afternoon and evening easier.