Last time I wrote, I was about to see the surgeon who performed my weight loss surgery, and I was nervous that he was going to give me a hard time about the fact that I’d gained weight. Not only did he not give me a hard time, he reminded me that when I was at my lowest weight was when I was dealing with liver issues and suffering from chronic diarrhea. The liver issues resolved, the diarrhea stopped, some weight came back. It wasn’t unexpected.

At my appointment, he told me he wanted me to see the nutritionist for a regular visit, and also because they have a cool new machine that measures body fat without having to submerge you in the tank of water.

If I show up at that appointment and see a Tanita scale sitting there, I am going to be some kind of peeved! Ha. I kid. It’s an InBody machine, like this. I don’t know if it’s that exact model, but it’s similar.

Also, he asked if I was considering plastic surgery and told me they could refer me if I wanted. So I got my nutritionist’s appointment for mid-March and my plastic surgery consultation scheduled for February 29th, and went on my way.

As the appointment date for my consultation with the plastic surgeon drew near, I got more and more nervous and then finally I canceled and rescheduled the appointment. I knew the plastic surgeon was a professional, but the idea of standing naked in front of a strange man who would touch MY FAT PARTS had me a tad freaked out. I suspect most of you can feel my pain.

And then my appointment date with the nutritionist drew near, and I was in a busy time (getting ready to go on a short vacation) so I rescheduled that for next Wednesday.

So yesterday was the date for my rescheduled plastic surgery consultation, and as the day drew near, I don’t mind telling y’all that I was NOT looking forward to it. Fat or less fat, standing naked in front of a stranger is NO FUN.

My appointment was at 8:45 in the morning and I was making Fred go with me (and a good thing, too) so I left the house, picked him up at work, and went to the surgeon’s office. We’d thought that because my appointment was fairly early I’d get right in, but that wasn’t so. I signed in and had to sign some paperwork and give my driver’s license and insurance card for copying - the usual. If you’ve been to a doctor’s office, you know about all that. While I did that, Fred went and took a seat in the waiting room. Once I’d signed everything I needed to sign I turned around to walk into the waiting room, and there was this young, thin, blond woman sitting in the waiting room and if she’d been sitting in her seat the way it was intended to be sat in, she would have been sitting with her back to me.

However, when I turned around, she was twisted around in her seat looking at me, and I smiled at her - I always automatically smile at strangers who are looking at me, a habit I’d like to break now that I’m in my forties and don’t have to give a damn what strangers think of me - and she didn’t smile in turn. In fact, with a slight look of disgust she gave me the head-to-toe once-over, then turned around in her seat and continued texting whoever she’d been texting.

Highly amused - that’s the sort of thing that might have made me self-conscious once, but now I just think it’s funny - I sat down next to Fred, got out the notebook I carry around in my purse and wrote I just got a once-over and a look of disgust from the skinny blonde.

Fred nodded, took my notebook and pen and wrote She’s just here for the boobs.

I wrote We are TOTALLY old-school. If we were ten years younger, we’d be texting this back and forth instead of writing it!

We sat and waited to be called back to the exam room. A patient left, and I eyeballed her, trying to figure out what she’d had done/ wanted to have done, but I’m never any good at that sort of thing unless it’s over-the-top obvious.

Finally, my name was called, and we followed the nurse back to a room with two chairs and a TV. She asked a few questions, then started a movie entitled Body Contouring After Weight Loss (sound familiar? Probably you remember the big brouhaha when it won 16 Oscars a few years ago.) and we settled in to watch it.

It was BORING, but I will tell you that if the internet didn’t exist and I didn’t already know exactly the operations available and how they’re done and what the results and possible complications are, I might have found it riveting. Or at least interesting. A little.

We watched the movie, leafed through a couple of pamphlets, and then the nurse came to take us into the exam room. She asked a bunch of questions about my medical history, filled out some forms, and then told me to get undressed and put a sheet over my lap and a goofy little paper top over the top of me (she said I could leave my bra on, which I thought was a little odd), and then she gave me a pair of panties to put on. The panties, I don’t really know how to describe them. I guess “string bikini” would work. She delicately told me that rather than tuck my apron o’ flab inside the bikini, it should be outside the bikini so the doctor could see what he’d be working with.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my stomach flab wasn’t going to fit inside the confines of that bikini.

“Basically, she said you should let it all hang out!” Fred snickered. While I undressed, he went down the hall to use the bathroom. I’d just gotten the panties on and situated myself on the exam table when there was a knock at the door and the doctor and nurse came in. A moment later, Fred walked back in.

The women who’d told me that the surgeon had a good bedside manner were right. He told me to get up and come to the end of the table where there was a mirror on the wall, and he had me look at myself in the mirror while he - well, the only good word to describe what he did was “manipulate.” He manipulated my fat, showing me exactly what a panniculectomy would do, and then he was all “Any questions? Bye!”

I gave the nurse a confused look, and she said “Weren’t you interested in a lower-body lift?” and I nodded, so she went back out and got him. He apologized and said he’d gotten his wires crossed. He did more fat manipulation (at this point, though I’d kind of been holding up the sheet to kind of cover myself, I let it drop. Because the doctor and nurse have seen it all, I’m sure, and god knows Fred’s seen me naked plenty of times, so I wasn’t sure why I’d bothered to try to keep covered.) and showed me what the rest of the lift would entail.

Just a note here to point out when I say “lower body lift”, what I mean is “belt lipectomy” - ie, a tummy tuck that goes all the way around. Some practices include a thigh lift in the lower body lift, but this doctor doesn’t and I’ve heard of enough people who’ve had issues with their thigh lifts that I don’t think I want to chance it at this point.

He asked if that was all, and I told him I was interested in a breast lift (I should have told the nurse that I was interested in all this stuff beforehand, I’m guessing, but she said “Body lift?” and I said yes, thinking that there’d be a time during the health history or something where we’d get more in-depth and I could mention the breast lift, but that didn’t happen) and since I was wearing my bra, he had me sit on the table and unfasten my bra and take it off. He asked if I was happy with the volume of my breasts, and I jumped right in to let him know that I only wanted a lift, no implants. He got grabby (in a professional way, of course) and discussed how a lift would be done. He even said that he could extend the incision to under my arm and get the flabby bit there, which made me happy.

After that, he asked if there was anything else, and I grabbed my waggly underchin. He said I could get dressed and left the room. The nurse decided to take me down the hall to get pictures of me for their records and to send to the insurance company when they submit my preapproval request. Having naked pictures taken is about as fun as you’d imagine, but she reassured me a couple of times that my face wouldn’t be in any of them except the underchin pictures.

Then I got dressed and sat on the exam table. A few minutes later the doctor came back in and he sat next to me on the exam table and as I held a mirror up he told me that I had very good skin tone and looked youthful for my age (”Why, THANK YOU, doctor!”, I thought but did not say. ‘Cause he was stating it as a matter of fact, not complimenting me.) and rather than a full face lift (which I guess is how they usually take care of the saggy underchin area) he’d do a neck lift that would involve incisions around my ears. I could live with that - I just need to learn to stop tucking my hair behind my ears!

He carefully went over the possible risks for each procedure, and then Fred asked if all procedures could be done at the same time. Turns out that due to the time spent under anesthesia (and, I would guess, the recovery time), he’d want to do the lower body lift by itself, then the breast and chin lifts could be combined.

We had a few more questions, and then he left us in the capable hands of the nurse.

The nurse asked a few questions and went off to get a quote for us. Hopefully the insurance company will cover a panniculectomy and then we’d pay the difference between that and the lower body lift (the lower body lift, as we were told, is three different procedures - the panniculectomy takes care of the hanging apron at the bottom, the tummy tuck takes care of the upper abdomen (between the belly button and ribcage) and then the back part, which I believe is considered a “buttocks lift”). She wasn’t able to get us a quote right away, because she had to get some information from the hospital about anesthesia or operating room costs or something, so she said she’d call yesterday afternoon and give me the information, and mail it as well.

They never did call yesterday afternoon - I don’t know if she didn’t have a chance to get the quote together or just got busy, or what - so if I don’t hear from her by Monday afternoon I’ll call the office.

It takes around 4 - 6 weeks to hear back from the insurance company, so if they submit it right away, it could be mid-May before we hear back, and then depending on his surgical schedule, maybe it’ll be the end of May or sometime in June before I’d be able to have the lower body lift done. Originally I thought I’d wait until Fall to have it done if I couldn’t have it by the end of April, but I REALLY want this done (the hanging skin on my tummy bothers me) and Fred’s okay with that, so maybe I’ll be spending my summer recovering from plastic surgery!

I will, of course, let y’all know what happens!

Today marks two years since I had weight loss surgery.

First, the progress pictures, here.

And then the weight loss chart, here.

Yes, I’ve gained 14 pounds. I actually, to be completely honest, gained more than that before I came to an interesting conclusion. Physically, I am completely comfortable in my body when I weigh less than 170. And when my weight soared up into the 170s, I did an interesting thing. I stopped eating so much crap.

Lightbulb moment? Maybe.

So this morning I weigh 167. I’m mostly okay with that, though I prefer to be down around 165. But my weight can still bounce around by a couple of pounds from day to day, depending on what I’ve eaten and the time of the month, and like I said - as long as my weight is under 170, I’m perfectly happy.

It bums me out a little that I got so close to 150 and then started gaining weight. But to be honest, I refuse to kill myself to meet a number that I arbitrarily decided upon when I weighed over 300 pounds. If I were physically uncomfortable at this weight, it’d be one thing. But I feel great, I think I look okay, and in fact I bought a ton of clothes in size Large when I was in Maine in December, and a lot of them could have been size Medium.

And on a side note, I can tell you that when I weighed over 300 pounds - hell, even when I weighed over 200 - I would never have believed this. See, most days I wear these pants from Land’s End (in size medium petite). When I weigh anything under 167, they’re completely comfortable to me. When my weight gets to between 167 and 170, they feel tight in the thighs. It still amazes me that I can put on a pair of pants and have a good idea of how much I weigh without having to get on the scale.

I wasn’t looking forward to taking the progress pictures to show what I look like 2 years after surgery. I felt like there’d be a huge difference, because when you come down to it, a gain of 14 pounds at this weight is an almost 10% overall gain. But I’ve looked closely at what I looked like a year ago and what I look like now, and I can see the difference in my stomach and my butt, and my upper back, but I don’t dislike what I see.

I’ll like what I see a lot more when that extra skin is removed from my stomach, but at this point if I went to see a plastic surgeon and s/he said “We can’t ever do a tummy tuck on you because (whatever reason, since this is a made-up scenario)”, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I could live with it.

I’m going to see my surgeon next Tuesday for my 2-year followup appointment, and I expect to catch some shit for having gained weight but, well, what can I say? I’m happy. I’m healthy. I’m comfortable. And now that it’s two years after I had surgery, I can confess something to y’all: I don’t like my surgeon. He has the bedside manner of a personalityless toad. But he’s the best at what he does, and I don’t guess I need my surgeon to be my best friend; he’s lucky in that his office staff is really great, that’s all I’ll say.

Most days, I watch what I eat. I get plenty of protein and vegetables and some fruit (though I probably don’t get as much fruit as I should). I don’t count calories, and some days I eat too much processed stuff (I cannot help my love for Cheerios - without milk, because milk makes me gassy). I don’t have days like I used to before I had surgery, where I ate nothing but crap all day long. I can’t do that, because it makes me feel horrible - not sick, just lethargic and sleepy.

Sugar doesn’t make me dump the way it used to - I can eat candy bars or cake or cupcakes, though I don’t do that very often. But last week I we had barbecue for dinner, and something - I suspect either the coleslaw or potato salad - made me dump like nobody’s business. I was so nauseous and vomited so hard that blood vessels in my right eye burst and I’m walking around with a zombie eye now (don’t worry - it’ll go away eventually).

I can tell you that I have no desire to eat any of that stuff ever again in my entire life. And as much as it sucked, going through it, I’m glad to have confirmation that my “tool” - the surgery - still works.

I’m glad to report that I have no problems eating vegetables anymore, they don’t go through me like they did a year ago. I eat salads with no troubles at all.

I haven’t been exercising at all lately - for a while I was going to a walking path five minutes away, but then I hurt my knee and stopped until my knee got better, and… haven’t been back. I need to get back to walking or some kind of exercise, not to lose weight, but because it’s the healthy thing to do. It’s just SO HARD to force myself out there when the temperature is in the 20s (yeah, I know that those of you who live in the truly cold parts of the country are feeling just soooooo sorry for me right now), and just as hard to go out to the garage to jump on the elliptical, because the garage ain’t heated. What I’m saying is, my get up and go? Gone. But I’ll get it back; I always do. Once the early morning temperatures rise into the 30s, I shouldn’t have such an issue with the cold.

Anyway. So, that’s where I stand right now. My next big thing will be plastic surgery. After I see my surgeon next week, I’m going to make appointments for consultations with a couple of plastic surgeons. What I absolutely want to have done is a tummy tuck (or lower-body lift) and breast lift. And I would really, really like to have something done about the loose jowly skin under my chin because that bugs me more than anything. I’m hoping that that will happen around the end of April, which will allow me enough time to recover before I need to start working in the vegetable garden!

I’ll absolutely post about the plastic surgery process, and I may post again before that - if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I may do an entire entry answering questions!

I told someone late last week that I was going to update around June 30th, as that would be exactly 18 months since I had surgery. Turns out, after some heavy thinking and counting on my fingers, June 30th was 17 months, not 18!

Still, I’ll update.

Things are going well here. Right now my weight bounces back and forth between 153 and 155, and there seems to be no correlation between what I eat and drink, and what I weigh. I can handle a fluctuation of two pounds, though, without even worrying that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning weighing over 300 pounds again.

I should say that I fluctuate between 153 and 155 except for the week before my period, when I pack on another three pounds, and I swear to god I can feel every single one of those three pounds in my ankles.

I want to get below 150, still. Am I going to stress those last three to five pounds, though? Um, HELL no. There was a time when weighing under 200 seemed like a pipe dream, so I’m not going to whine about it. What I can do is actually cut back on the carbs and do some intentional exercising and see if that gets me anywhere. I’m definitely more active since we moved to Smallville than I used to be, including spending hours bent over weeding the vegetable garden, mowing the lawn, pulling branches onto the burn pile, raking the side yard (magnolia trees can dump some serious leaves on a lawn, if you didn’t know), filling up the bird feeders, cleaning out the bird baths, pulling the hose around to the front of the house to water all the potted flowers on the front porch - the list goes on and on. But even though I’m more active, I don’t do structured, intentional exercise, and I really need to. For one, I could use a little more muscle to help me out when I’m pushing the lawnmower around (we have a riding lawnmower, but I find it easier to use the push lawnmower - did I just say that? Have I gone CRAZY?) and when I’m hauling wood this winter and oh, all kinds of things will be easier when I have some muscle on me.

Did I mention that we have a laundry line and I hang all my laundry out to dry? There is just NOTHING like sun-dried laundry, nothing on earth.

I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing shorts around the house, which is something I would never ever have done when we lived in Madison. For one, the Madison house was kept way too cold for me to wear shorts (though the cold never bothered Fred!), and for another, I would have just been too self-conscious to wear them, even if there was no one around to see me wearing them except for the cats. These days I wear shorts almost exclusively when we’re at home, but if I have to go out into public, I tend to put long pants on; I’m still too self-conscious about my legs.

Every evening, Fred and I like to take a walk around the back forty, survey our property, talk about our day, what needs to be done (and he likes to harass me about getting goats - something I suspect he doesn’t really want, but he likes to needle me about it, because I have no desire for goats. A dozen chickens is enough for me, thanks.). I’d been wearing a pair of slip-on garden clogs I bought online, but the problem with those is that I tend to kick dirt and various stuff up into my clogs, and having to stop and clean them out. Last night, I wore a pair of boots I bought online.

I was quite stylin’.

1. Fred told me to smile like a big dork, so I did.
2. Yes, the shirt’s too big for me. Um, shaddup.
3. Yes, the shorts are way too big for me. Again, shaddup.
4. The boots came from here, and these are the clogs I have.

Let’s see… what else? We have a huge vegetable garden, and the vegetables have really started coming in. We’ve eaten our weight in summer squash, zucchini, okra, green beans, and cherry tomatoes. (Those, by the way, are not the carbs I need to cut back on. Cheerios would be the carbs I need to cut back on. I’m a Cheerios addict.) Compared to this time last year, when I’d eat a salad and have to run to the bathroom two minutes later, I’m doing a lot better. The vegetables don’t go right through me anymore, and I can enjoy a salad and whatever vegetables (especially good: raw green beans) I want, without worry.

So.. that’s the state of me. Doing well, keeping active, still occasionally having a lazy day (on Father’s Day I decided to take it easy all day, and ended up washing all the floors throughout the first floor of the house, on my hands and knees. Lazy days aren’t what they used to be!).

I’ll try to update more often, but I’ve said that before, so we’ll see. Are there questions you’d like to have answered? Feel free to ask them in the comments, and I’ll address them in my next entry - which will hopefully be less than two months away!

(Comments removed due to spammers)

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the calendar yesterday and realized that it was the 15th and I hadn’t updated OFB!

I stepped on the scale to find that I’d lost half a pound since my last official weigh-in (which means I weigh 153.5, and am 3.5 pounds from my goal weight). Since I haven’t been exercising at all and have been on a carb rampage (thank you, hormones!), I’m going to take that half pound gone with serious gratitude. I’m inching slowly toward my goal weight, with the honest belief that I’ll get there one of these days. Hey, at least the scale’s still going in the right direction.

(I can’t update the weight chart for the time being, because I’m using my laptop to get online and don’t have Dreamweaver installed on it)

Here’s the thing – I just don’t feel like updating this site. Life right now is a bit crazy, but even in the calmest and best of times, this site has always taken a back seat to my other site, which I update regularly no matter how crazy life is.

What I’m going to do here on out is update on the 1st of every month with a quick weigh-in, maybe a picture or two, and a few paragraphs on how life is going. This isn’t how I meant this site to be – I wanted to do a step-by-step detailed journal of what life after surgery is like, not only for myself but also for those of you out there who are about to have surgery or thinking about it, or just curious about what life after surgery is like for those who’ve had it. I failed miserably in that regard, but the web being what it is, I’m not the only one who has had the surgery and not the only one who’s doing well afterward. Google around a little, and I know you can find someone inspirational, interesting, someone whose journey you want to follow.

I’ll be around from time to time, but I’m giving myself permission to let this site fall short of what I’d intended – sorry if that disappoints you, but I suspect that many of you understand that the longer I spend away from this site, the less I want to try to go back to updating regularly.

I’m not shutting down the site, and I’m not going anywhere – I just won’t be particularly visible on this site, though I will definitely check in from time to time.

Feel free to drop an email if you have any questions – though be warned I’m horrible when it comes to responding to email, as the people who are still waiting for responses from January can tell you – and until next time, y’all take care.

(Comments closed due to spammers)

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. :)

No, I’m not dead - I’ve moved to the Smallville house, moved there two weeks ago, and ever since I’ve been concentrating on getting that house in running order, spending time with Fred and the spud in Madison (most nights I hang out in Madison and watch TV with Fred ’til 8:30 or 9:00, then drive home to Smallville), and getting the Madison house ready to be put on the market.

Today, I’m hanging out in Madison while the carpet guys install new carpet in most of the house, and tomorrow the house officially goes on the market.

I haven’t set foot on the scale since I moved (I was going to take it with me to Smallville, but Fred’s nighttime routine involves weighing himself before bed), so skipped the weigh-in on the 15th. I’ll try to weigh in on the 30th (Friday), but if I don’t get a chance to, it’ll be the 15th of April before I get around to doing an official weigh-in.

Life is getting in the way of my OFB blogging, obviously. I don’t have internet in Smallville (which means I’ve been doing a LOT of reading!), which makes it hard to blog.

I’ll try to get back into a regular schedule one day soon. Until then, I’ll be running around like a chicken with its head cut off!

Sorry, I forgot I was supposed to weigh in yesterday! I mean, I weigh myself every day, but I forgot I was supposed to do an official weigh-in type of thing.

So I weighed in yesterday, and found that I weighed 154. In other words, no loss, no gain. Weight loss chart is here.

We’re hitting the crunch time of the new house renovating, and that’s the part where you run around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to get every piddly little thing done, until you throw up your hands and say “Okay. That’s gotta be good enough!” In a week and a half, we’ll begin the initial move to Smallville.

Suffice it to say, I’ll be scarce around here for the next few weeks, but I’ll definitely update at least on (or around!) the 15th!

So last Friday I had to spend a good part of the morning running from T-M0bile to the Apple store to T-M0bile and then home, and then BACK to the T-M0bile store. I won’t go into why I had to do all that running to T-M0bile (long story short: couldn’t get my phone to send pictures, bought a new Razr that played MP3s, decided I didn’t like it, returned it for a regular Razr), but I can tell you this: A year ago, I never ever would have even considered walking into a store and saying “I want to exchange this phone for that one, please make it happen.” I would have just dealt with the phone I didn’t like, because going into a store and stating what I wanted would have meant that the salesperson would have had to look at me, and the very thought was horrifying to someone who always wanted to remain invisible.

As invisible as a 300 pound woman can be, that is.

I think I still tend toward invisibility, but being seen doesn’t scare me, because if someone’s looking at me with disdain, it’s not because of my weight. It might be due to a bad hair day or because I remind them of their bitchy Aunt Edna or whatever. But if they look at me with disdain, I know that whatever their problem is, it’s exactly that - their problem. Not mine.

It was always their problem, their issue; I understand that now. It’s an easier conclusion to come to now that I’m 159.5 pounds lighter, though.

I spent the majority of the three-day weekend perched five feet up on a ladder, scraping the remains of some kind of paper (I don’t know that it was wallpaper, but I don’t honestly know WHAT it was) off the wall of my closet at the new house.

There’s no way on earth my body would have withstood that kind of torture 159.5 pounds ago, I guarantee it.

I expected to wake up and feel sore after the first day of standing on the ladder (oftentimes most of my weight on one foot); in fact, I expected to feel extremely sore.

I didn’t feel sore at all, and I had no problems doing it again the second and third days.

That it took me the better part of three days to get my closet in a condition I could live with (and I still have a little painting left to do) is another issue altogether.

(Comments closed due to spam)