I had taken pictures the night before surgery and measurements of my body to help me recognize the loss. It really helps. Sometimes the scale doesn't move...but your pants button does. Sometimes neither move, but you'd sure as hell be surprised to see the numbers of how much your neck shrunk. This is me the morning of surgery.
January 2, 2014 - Time to slice!
I arrived at the hospital early in the morning, I was to be the first surgery of the day. I was so nervous! I had a lot of love and support, but hubster still did NOT want me to have the surgery. He was so worried about the side effects, he was fearful of me going under the knife, he just didn't want anything bad to happen to me. The thing was, although he was going through all my illnesses along side me and they drastically affected his life (I can't even tell you how many times "forgetting my insulin" or "SHIT!!! LOW SUGAR!!!" happened) the fact of the matter is...HE wasn't giving himself 5 (or more) shots a day, he wasn't doing the balancing and maintaining, he wasn't sleeping with a mask on his face and a huge oxygen machine (he just had to lug it around.) I'm lucky to have my amazing hubby...despite how he felt, he knew how bad *I* wanted this. He came to every meeting I asked him to be at, he researched info and talked to people with me, and like always, he was there by myself holding my hand and supporting me. Support is HUGE. FIND IT!!! No matter where you may find it...you are GOING to need it!!! Oh, and something I forgot in the last post...do NOT flip out after a bathroom visit if you've eaten nothing but red JELLO and liquids for a few days like I did. Hubby was NOT supportive of that LMAO. In fact I think the conversation went a little like this :
Me: RICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! HELP!!!!!!!! COME HERE!!!!!!!
(Rick rushes into the potty room)
Rick: What's wrong, what can I do?
Me: I'm bleeding!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK!!!!!
Rick: Uh...No. That's where I draw the line. (turns to walk away)
Me: SERIOUSLY!! I could be dying!!!
(Rick rolls his eyes and keeps walking away abandoning me to pass into my eternal sleep ALL ALONE!!! - JERK!)
(Aidan walks by in the hallway)
Aidan: Mom, can I have some of this JELLO?
Me: NO!! I can only eat certain things and you will NOT be stealing one of the ONLY things I CAN eat...and raspberry JELLO is my favorite flavor!
Rick: (quizzical look) How much of that have you eaten today?
Me: 2 boxes, why?................................................................................................Oh.......
(Rick walks away shaking is head and muttering under his breath about what he got into when he married me and giving him ulcers or something....to be fair, BOTH my parents warned him!)
So we get to the hospital. My nerves vanished as soon as I walked in the door. The nurse who walked up to the desk was a friend of mine I hadn't seen in a long while! We met because our boys were in cub scouts together for a few years. Seeing her made everything so very much easier! I got to focus on catching up with her rather than what I was about to do.
Rick and I were shoved into a storage room for broken medical equipment (Go Army!) where I could change and sit around for a bit waiting for everything to get prepared. There were a few others there also having WLS surgery. (Word of advice, when heading to surgery - ANY surgery - do NOT take it as a chance to have a family reunion!! It's annoying to everyone involved. Bring your 1 special person and leave the rest to visit later. One woman brought damn near 14 people with her!! The nurse that led us to the elevators to the OR was seriously frustrated, and it was disrespectful to all of us going up...it's rather a kinda private moment when you are in a gown, ass on display to the world, nerves shot about to go under the knife)
Storage Rooms are Cool!
We arrived up to the Operating Room floor. You want to talk about chaos...this was it. They were in the middle of a training, it was the first day back after Christmas and New Year holiday after all, but still...it did NOT help my anxiety any to have 60 people gathered around in one small room, lots of noise, lots of in and out and all around...I was not doing well at this point.
They got in settled into a corner and drew the curtain. Way no bueno. There were 5 other people having surgery that morning. If you'd have asked I could tell you all of their names, date of birth, and what they were there for. So not practicing of patients privacy. It really pissed me off. The nurse who was going to be with me was an absolute peach. Her name was Stacey and she did SO much to calm me down!
Eventually, I had seen the happy juice doc, my surgeon, and the doc who would be assisting. It was time to go...
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