Archive for September, 2007

In my posts, I have been nothing but honest. Today will be no different. I am feeling so much better since Thursday, the five week postop mark. Actually cleaned house and have been quite active all weekend. I even walk faster! No more creeping along like a hunch backed 80 yr old woman… as I am finally standing up straighter.But there have been some mental effects of the plastic surgery that I was not prepared for. I don’t know if anyone else has experienced these thoughts and feelings, but they came to light in such an unusual way. I knew these feelings were evident, but tried to deny them.

Let me go back to BEFORE the tummy tuck. When I looked in the mirror each morning, I SAW fat. There was a hanging panni to remind me I once was fat. I thought I was still fat and it drove me to follow the rules, to do right, to continue counting calories, sugars, fat, carbs, etc. It kept me on the gastric bypass straight and narrow.

AFTER the tummy tuck, the “fat” (really skin) is gone. I am normal! I am not fat anymore. My goal is met. I can stop losing weight. I can stop trying to cross every “i” and dot every “t” in the weight loss patient’s book of rules. But, food still makes me sick. Everything I eat (after gallbladder removal) makes me hurt.

I find myself wanting to be normal again. I don’t want to eat like a glutton, or eat like I used to. I just want to be normal… to eat a meal and not have pain. Not have to run to the bathroom cause the food is passing right through me. I want to enjoy food again. I want to stop being held captive by food. Before wls, I was captive to wanting it and not able to stop eating it. After wls, I am just as obsessed only in a different way. I HAVE to plan each meal, count every calorie and carb, determine whether it has too many sugars, and I get sick of staying with the same ole routine “safe” food . It gets boring. But to try new stuff means getting sick too because it upsets my tummy or works against me due to no gallbladder.

My point: I have never regretted having wls. I have never grieved the loss of food. UNTIL NOW. Yes I am having some inner strugglings with food. I felt so guilty for feeling this, and while in a conversation with Tim yesterday, how I hated to ‘fess up… come out with it… tell what was really plaguing my mind as of late. I feel sad at times because I feel like I’ll never be normal, never be able to eat like others (not even in moderation it appears right now). Sometimes I just want to eat without having pain (regardless of the culprit: wls or gallbladder!)

But I realized… like a person who has a heart attack and is forced to stop smoking, stop eating fried foods, start exercising, start taking heart medication, forced to make dietary and lifestyle changes that he/she doesn’t really WANT, so wls has forced me to make changes in my life as well. After all, my health was declining. It was only a matter of time I would be on insulin, or perhaps had a heart attack or stroke. But, I wasn’t really taking these factors into consideration. I just kept thinking the same thing that many of you thought right after you came out of wls… I never thought it until NOW… and that thought is: “OH my God, what have I done to myself?”

Everyone thinks that plastic surgery is the best surgery to have.  After all, it means that the journey is OVER.  Weight is gone, skin removed, how can it not be a happy occasion?  In all honesty, plastic surgery is the worst surgery I have ever had.  It’s a very difficult recovery time.  And then, there’s that nasty drain tube!  It made my life miserable! 

But I finally got my drain tube out after having it with me for a month! It didn’t come out in your conventional way:  letting the surgeon remove it.  Instead, Tim had to remove it at home over the weekend. 

I sat down on the sofa Saturday after making a batch of SF peanut butter cookies.  Immediately I noticed my underwear were all wet. I went to the bathroom to look as to what was going on… and my drain tube had pulled loose and worked out approximately 5 inches! I called my plastic surgeon who informed me, “The tube has to come out.” In my mind, I’m thinking “Yes I know, I’ve been calling your office everyday for two weeks to inquire when it can be removed.”  Then I realized that he meant it had to come out RIGHT NOW!  This would not wait for an office visit on Monday morning.

I could not picture myself pulling this tube out… so I resorted to Tim! Yes he was the lucky person who got to pull out twelve inches of plastic tubing! I will not lie. I do not miss that foreign material being in me. It hurt and pinched so bad! But now that its gone, I am free to move! Free to sit down and stand without having something pinching the fire out of my pubic region! I can honestly say I am feeling much better, more like myself, than I have in weeks! Four weeks and two days to be exact!

Last night I freaked out. My tummy was more swollen than a starving Ethiopian child’s tummy! I stood sideways and looked at myself in the mirror, appalled. I will be honest. I could not bear to look. And then, I could not fit into most of my pants! I had to drag out some large size 4s (which the maker probably really took some size 6s and put 4 labels in them to make the customers happy). I am supposed to get smaller, not BIGGER!

At the restaurant, I kept looking at all the women and making comments to Tim of how skinny or how heavy they were. I was driving myself crazy comparing myself, and thats something I don’t normally do. I was in a foul mood all evening long, and then at bedtime I was in tears. I admitted that what I was really afraid of is: GAINING MY WEIGHT BACK. After all, it appears that I am gaining weight. I have the reflection in the mirror staring back at me…. the fat tummy (yes, I realize its swollen after surgery, but still…. there it is looking at me)… and the fact that I can eat more at meals than I was after my gastric bypass (yes, I realize its supposed to be that way… but the fact is still the fact)…

From a post on the Bariatric Eating message boards, it looks like these feelings are very normal. And as usual, I am all for helping others in their journey as I receive help myself… so I am posting this… two weeks after my abdominoplasty… the nurse states that its normal after a patient resumes normal or more activity to swell at night which I did…. this morning I am more back to “regular swelling” than “huge swelling”… and I am somewhat in a better frame of mind. But, I am still afraid, what if I gain my weight back?