Long time no blog...

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I finally finished that hell of a 6 month medically supervised weight loss period. My insurance approved the surgery quickly once everything was done. The doctor's office had some illnesses every time someone got my jinxed file. But, my surgery was finally scheduled for January 15th. I was so elated. My long wait finally came to an end!!!! I had to do some more pre-op testing. I was nervous through all of that. I kept thinking that something could happen that would cause the surgeon to not let me have the surgery. I did the two week liquid liver shrinking diet. That was very difficult. I had this big ole hungry stomach that didn't get any food... But, I made it through that.

The day of the surgery came. I had to be at the hospital around 9 in the morning. I have a two hour drive to the hospital. I didn't really sleep the night before, so getting up was no problem. Besides, I am usually at work at 7 am so it would have actually been sleeping in for me.

It took three people to get my IV. I sat in a little room with no door waiting for a while for my surgery to start. I was finally wheeled into the OR. Next thing I remember, I was waking up. I had some horrible pain in my stomach. They do the surgery laproscopically but they have to blow the abdomen up with air in order to work. It took a while for me to wake up. I remember seeing my son in the corner of the room and trying to get him to come over and see me. I was reaching out with my hand gesturing him to come to me. Once I woke up I got to eat a few ice chips. I had a catheter in and I hated that part the worse. It made me feel like I had to pee. I kept asking for them to take it out. I wanted a drink of water in the worse way. My mouth and throat were so dry, but I couldn't drink water. I had to be happy with the ice chips. The nurse from the recovery room finally wheeled me to my room late at night.

The rooms are huge. It's bigger than my living room at home. Once the catheter came out. I got to go for a walk. I had a morphine pump, but I'm not really big on using pain medication. The bed wasn't really comfortable. Technicians had to come in all the time to check my vitals. I ended up walking a few times during the night out of boredom.

The day after, I had to go down to radiology for a swallow test. I turns out that I had some swelling in the opening from my esophagus to stomach so nothing was going down. It took me an extra day in the hospital for the swelling to go down. Obama was speaking in Baltimore the day I was leaving the hospital. It would have been a mad house had I needed to stay any later.

The ride home was horrible! Baltimore has extremely bumpy streets. Every single bump made my stomach feel like it was going to shoot out of the top of my head! Fred kept apologizing and I finally had to tell him to stop apologizing. He didn't put the bumps in the road!

We had a friend watching the house and Jesse's dog freaked out. She went and stayed outside in the freezing cold. He said every time he shined the flashlight on her she'd run out of the light. My mom and dad finally had to take Jesse over to get her. Since I had to stay an extra day, they went and got all my dogs and took them to their house. Luckily all the dogs behaved,even the big beast of a dog! He could have cleaned off a coffee table with his monster tail!

The pipes in the house froze while we were gone so we had no water. We had to turn on some heat and put a heater in our pump house to thaw everything out. Luckily no pipes broke. That would have been a disaster. Our pump house needs to have an old fashioned 60 watt bulb on during the winter. That bulb is enough to keep the pump house warm. We forgot to check the bulb and it had apparently burned out. :(

This post is getting much too long... I think I'll post it now and post another later. :)