Fresh Start

Well, They were able to save my band and reposition it.   I have been one month without any fill so that my body could heal and gained 16 lbs.   UGH!  Lucky for me the doctor is slowly building my fill back up so that I have more restriction and will have the help that I need to continue losing.   THe past 9 months have been such a hard roller coaster with all the sickness and pain so I am excited about starting over.   I am going back to basics on calories in and working out.   Let us just say that with the pain I have been in I stopped working out and didn't have to watch what I ate since I was throwing it back up anyways so all my 3 years of training has slipped a bit.    This mentally and physically fat girl went right back into eating even when not hungry and eating crap.   It doesn't help that it was halloween either!   I am hoping to start working out tonight, you guys have no idea how much I hate sweating.   I will keep you better updated not that I am not just trying to survive.

Slipped band hell

I have been sick for the majority of this past year.   I have had acid issues,  soreness and a lot of vomiting.    My band started at 6.5 cc and after finding a stateside doctor the would help me we started figuring out was was wrong.   He had me do a scan and every thing looked perfect I had lost 100 lbs and all seemed well so we just took a little of my fill out thinking that when my gallbladder was removed that my body was producing more acid.    This worked for about a month and then I was back to vomiting and not even able to drink liquid so the doctor removed another cc bring me down to 4.5.   When I went in a month after that with the same issues he removed all fluid and said that the band needed a break.    I wish I could say that I was perfect without the fluid but having only been eating jello and shakes for several months I went a bit buck wild crazy.    Thinking of it as a vacation I wanted to try all the foods that I have missed over the past 2 years.   Bread,  sandwiches,  meat,  cake you name it.   I still kept it in small meals but my body held on to ever Oz I ate and I gain 20 lbs.    Told you the fat girl was still in there.    I was mortified and went to the doctor begging to start testing the band again.   He put in 4 cc and I was fine for a month and then it started back up.   Nighttime vomiting,  feeling like food was constantly  stuck in my esophagus and not being able to eat much of anything.    I quickly lost that 20 lbs but I mentally could not handle the nighttime torture anymore and called the doctor.    He asked if I thought I needed another scan and I said no that it was just reflux so he took out a little of the fluid and I was hopeful  until a week later when not only was I doing all of the above again but I was vomiting dark brown blackish stuff and starting to have pain on my left side.   I went back in and he took more fill out and scheduled a scan for the next week.    He didn't think it would be anything but was trying to see why after 2years my band was no longer healthy for me. 

I went in for the scan Thursday morning and then waited for my appointment in the afternoon to discover what was going on.    It was my worst nightmare.   I have joined the 3 percent to of banded people that have a slipped band.   Sometime between January and Thursday my band slipped and what he saw in the scans made him believe that my band was not save able and that he was going to be cleaning up dead stomach tissue. It broke my heart.    He was so sweet about it and never blamed my other surgeon or me and just said that I needed to remember that bodies don't like foreign objects in it and will sometimes give up and start attaching the band.  The whole time i am just trying to hold myself together until I can get out if the office and sob and wallow in the misery of having a failed band.  I know I am not ready to try and lose weight in my own yet and knew I would be fat again.   I sat in my car crying and texting my sister for almost 2 hours until mike found me and said we were going home.   The prayer requests were sent and I was given a blessing that night.   I was still heartbroken the morning of the surgery knowing I was losing my best weapon in my fight for weight loss.  I started trying to make a plan for how I was going to make up for the band and trying so hard to see any bright side but was not successful.

It has been a rough few days for me emotionally.   Lots of sobbing and moping and dreams of being over 350 again.   I am 70 lbs from my goal weight and was heartbroken to hear that my band was slipped.    At the same time it was great news because I have been sick for almost a year now and we finally started to pray not to be healed but to get an answer about why I am so sick.    I went back for the surgery knowing I was in good hands and trying to be strong but failing.   Next thing I know I am awake in the recovery room and they tell me that the band was repaired and that there was zero damage to my stomach.   I know god had taken care of me and heard mine and the pleas of those I love asking to help me and keep me safe.  I will be empty for at least one month while I heal and then  I will start back up on my war.   I am so close compared to when my scale could not even register my weight and I know I can make it.  I just want to put this out there so if anyone else is having the same signs they know to not wait or push them off as being normal.   If you catch it early enough your band and stomach can be saved but if you go too long your stomach tissue will die and you are in a worse situation.   Keep well everyone and thank you for the prayers.

crazy roller coaster

Well, I was too tight after my gallbladder surgery and after getting 1cc removed from the band in January all seemed well until I started gaining weight.   I gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks so I figured I was too loose at this point.  I went in to the doctor and they put .5cc back in my band and all was well again for about a month.   I started slowly losing what I had gained and I seemed to be in that sweet spot and then bam!  I was once again unable to eat or even drink water.    I thought maybe it was sinus issues again but after a week and using ice chips to keep some water in me I called it quits on trying to wait it out.   I went back into the doctor and they removed the .5 cc.    I decided I will just have to make it work by using my fitness app to track my food intake and by going back to band basics even harder.    I figure that with the first unfill I was just so excited to be able to eat more than juice that I went crazy and that was the gain so I won't let that happen again.   It has been about a month since the unfill and I have even lost 2 more pounds so I guess I am in a great spot right now.      I have no idea why after over a year at 6.5cc my band decided to shut but I guess that is why we have doctors to adjust our fills.

About my fitness pal.......   I have a love hate relationship with that site.   I love how easy it is to track what goes in my mouth but I hate that is shows me just how much snacking I do between meals.     After about a week I realized that most of my food intake is not even meals!    How crazy is that!    I really am hoping that this fill is the sweet spot for now and that I don't have anymore crazy episodes of no food and water.   Wish me luck!

Too Tight

It has been a few weeks and I am sorry to once again slip from my promise to let you join me on my journey.   A lot happened while I was gone.   Well, not a lot so much as one very big thing.   I was too tight.   If you remember in my last post I commented that I was having issues with sinus drainage and not being able to eat.   For about 3 weeks I was hardly able to drink water, no solids or even liquid foods and every night I knew that I was going to wake up aspirating and puking.   It was torture and I will never let it go that long again now that I know what was going on.   I finally got accepted by a Doctor here locally.  (for other Mexico bandsters you know how hard that is) and he was great.   He had me do a GI scan and they noticed that nothing I was drinking was passing but was waiting until I threw up again.   They took some of my fill out and I have been fine since.   I have yet to PB and have been able to sleep (ah, that was much needed).  The acid reflux is gone too.   I have no idea how an 18 month old fill could all of a sudden be too tight but I am blaming gallbladder surgery.  It must have just moved everything enough to shift the liquid. 

As happy as I am to be able to hold down food I am now going to need to be careful.   I have gained 5 pounds in the 3 weeks since the unfill and I know it is because I am starting to snack and eat more all without working out.  So as usual, it is back to the basics for this fat girl.

1. water
2. Food log
3. workouts
4. blog honestly
5. Eat smart and small bites.

I have a follow up appointment next week and I don't know if I will have an adjustment or not.  I am still tight enough that I can't eat just whatever but I am loose enough that I am eating more than I should.  Or is it that I am being the fat girl that can all of a sudden eat and wigging out.  Let's see how the basics treat me.

The flu, my clothes and mucus cement....

I just kind of feel like the past two weeks has been a reality show called the good the bad and the ugly.   It has been rough and there was a time or two that I wanted to go to the hospital and ask them to remove my band because I didn't think I could take it anymore but, now that my period has started and my drainage is clearing up, I am able to think clearer and more sanely and look back at what has happened. 

Let's start with the good.  My last post was about getting rid of the old clothes and making sure all the clothes in the closet were a correct size and not tents to hide in.  Well, this leads to the good.   I have been approached by so many people at work that have been commenting on how great I look and asking if I had lost weight.   I am amazed to admit that my dear husband was correct in telling me that if I wore good fitting clothes I would look better and my 100lbs loss would be noticeable to more than him.   (cause he sees me naked) It has also made me feel even better on the inside than I thought it would too.  Why did I hold on to those old clothes for so long!?!?!?!?!

The Bad is that we had the flu in our house and it has put a huge kink in the works of my life.  As I explained before I have not really worked out in a year.  Well, I haven't routinely worked out.   My husband and I decided that we would start training for a 5k this year and we would start working out at the first of the year.  Little did I know that our house would be struck down to its knees.   My oldest son was hit the worst since he had not had his shot yet and the others of us just got sick with different symptoms of it.  This was last week and I can only pray that it does not come back to visit for the rest of the year.

The Ugly is mucus cement.   Yeah, it is as gross as it sounds.  I had my gallbladder removed about a month ago and since then I have had a sinus infection, nasal drainage and just anything you can think of that means my nose is runny.  But not the kind of runny that can be blown into a tissue but this sort of constant not noticeable drainage that is killing my pouch.  It got really bad about a week or 2 ago and I couldn't even drink water without purging it back up.   When I would drink anything I could feel it just sit in there and it foam up and then I would start burping and then it would come back out all think and nasty.  (I did warn you)  It was also not allowing me to eat any food but Cheetos puffs because my pouch was clogged.  Fearing a slipped band I got on the Internet and did a search on sinus drainage and lapbands and it turns out it is a common problem in the band world.   The mucus sits in the pouch and becomes like cement and clogs everything up.  It was bad for me because I was choking at night and puking 24 hours a day so after a week of very little sleep, no liquids or food I was ready to call the band and break up with it.   I just didn't think I could make it anymore.  My husband (always the knight) told me to be patient and that we would work together to get through it.  He discovered that warm jello (don't add the cold water) went down and broke up the mucus so I could get both liquids and calories (as much as jello might have) and it helped so much.  I have now graduated to soups and last night I slept the whole night without puking once.   I am so praying that tonight will be the same and that I will graduate to solids soon.   I am just hoping the worst has past because I don't know if I can do that again! 

So that was my good the bad and the ugly story.  I am sure my life will be filled with them but at least they keep it interesting.

Harder than I thought

Well, I did it. I have now rid myself of all clothing that I wore 100 pounds ago. I did keep my largest pair of jeans to be a reminder but my husband took me to the Dillard's sale today and pretty much told me I was no longer allowed to wear the shirts I wore before starting this journey after today. I know it sounds strange but I am a very frugal person and to me it seemed logical that if they were still nice to wear them. My husband does not agree. For the past month he has been making me judge my clothes in a full length mirror and we both had to rate it as keep or go and I started to understand what he was saying. As long as I was wearing the same clothes I still saw myself as 100 pounds heavier and from the way they hung on me it made me still look heavy too. I guess that fat girl in me will always thing that if it is baggy it will hide my fat. Well, it hid more than my fat it hid me. I didn't realize that those clothes were a security blanket. That as long as I had them I didn't have to worry about something feeling a little tight or even mentally moving on as a more confident woman. I am sitting on my bed at this moment surrounded myth old clothes am I am sad packing them up to give away. I remember what memories I had in different ones or how it felt when I was actually able to find a pretty 4x shirt. Now my closet and dresser are full of new clothes and I new to accept that the new me is ready to put them on and continue in my new life. I wonder if anyone else had issues finally putting away clothes or if I am the only crazy sentimental fool out here.

100 Lbs Lost and the past year of my life

I have not posted in almost a year but that does not mean I fell off the band wagon or anything like that.  I have just been in a whirlwind of crazy in the 2011 year and I am hoping that I can get things settled enough to continue the mission of this blog on keeping people updated on my progress and any complications that I might have as well as the blessings of my band.  

As you can see from the title I have passed the 100 pounds lost mark.  This took 2 years and was such a wonderful milestone to hit.   For those of you that have read past posts you know that I hover at certain weights for a couple of months and then will drop 5-10 pounds and then hover some more.   I hovered at the 90-95 pound range for like 3 months and it was getting old.  Then I started getting sick and couldn't keep anything down and started having acid problems.   Well, my mind went straight to a band slippage and I was terrified that I was going to have the band removed.   During this time I kept getting closer and closer to the 100 mark and finally hit it.  I also went to the doctor and was told I had gallstones.   It turns out that a high weight loss can create gallstones and the symptoms feel like a slipped band too.  I am now stone free and 100 pounds lighter.  I added the bit about the gallstones just incase anyone else out there is having this issue and want answers.  It hurt in my chest and right shoulder blade and I had huge reflux issues.  Anything I ate or drank came back up within minutes of ingesting it.   Go to a Doctor and get help if you have these symptoms.  Better safe than sorry.

Now that I have gotten the good news out of the way I will update on the past year.  I am still sucking it up on the fitness side of things.  I was doing the couch to 5k late spring and then quit because of rain and heat.  you know what happens after that....... lose the habit and desire to start back up.   To help with this my husband and I have decided to train for the Color Run in our area next fall and will train all year for it.  We are pretty excited and hopefully working as a couple will help push those cobwebs out and get me moving again.  I am now off of all medications and feel great.   Still being 247 pounds means that I am still obese but I am no longer morbidly obese.  That was a big deal for me.  I am now "just Fat" and not "crap, I am going to die" Fat.  I finally got rid of the last of my pre surgery pants and I am now listening to my husband and replacing any other clothes that I wore 100 pounds ago.   He says I need to accept that I no longer fit them and move on.  It is harder to do that mentally than I thought it would be.  I still worry about if I will fit in a seat or if something will break if I step on it.   I still feel that 100 pounds mentally.  I am getting better and have even started letting people take pics of me instead of hiding or making faces so that it is my humur they laugh at and not my fat. 

I hope that everyone is still working hard on goals and that you forgive me for my silence.  I promise to update more than once a year. 

Fat Girl.