Post-Op Week 102: Acceptance and Moving Forward

It’s been a couple of weeks since I updated anything regarding post-op life, so here is one.

I was out of town last week for the AP reading in Kansas City and so I didn’t really have time for an update, as I was working from 8-5 nearly every day (some days earlier).  While it was a great learning experience, it was not great for the waistline.  Buffet style meals which lacked the things I normally eat, going out for drinks with friends in the evening, along with constant feeding and nearly 8 hours of sitting a day did little good for me.  I did manage to rack up 10,000 steps of walking most days I was away, but it wasn’t consistent enough activity to really make a difference.  By the week’s end, I knew once I got home I would need a detox of sorts to get my system right with itself again.  So today I’m making a pot of homemade chicken soup which I plan to eat all week this week, starting with dinner tonight.  Made completely from scratch–starting with the stock.  I don’t play around when it comes to this stuff.

I haven’t bothered to step on the scale out of sheer fear of what will stare back at me, but I know I need to so that I can take the right steps to inch downward to the weight I think will be a good maintenance weight for me.  I suppose I’ll have my day of reckoning with the scale tomorrow morning after which I will probably beat myself up a bit, then tell myself to suck it up because I know what I need to do, and then get over it and start doing it.  That’s how this usually goes.

I did learn last week after a nasty gallbladder attack which landed me in the emergency room that I will most likely be having surgery soon to remove it.  Not the surgery I was hoping to have (was looking at doing a knee scope to fix torn cartilage), but at this point, the one that must take priority.  I followed up with my primary care doctor once I returned home, and she said, “Yep, it’s time to take it out.”  I’ve had two attacks, about a year apart, and this one was much, much worse than the first.  I knew that rapid weight loss made me a more likely candidate for gallbladder issues–Dr. Nicholson had even told me prior to surgery, and Dr. Carlton (one of the other docs in his practice) had said it as well.  But when you look at all the other risk factors involved (over 40, overweight, Hispanic, female), I fit those categories too.  So I called my bariatric surgeon’s office to ask if any of the docs in the practice did gallbladder removals (they do), and I’ve got an appointment with one of them next month.  I’m hoping that surgery follows not too long afterward, especially since I’ve met my deductible.  And I’m pretty sure that my trip to the ER will ensure that I hit my out of pocket max for the year.  We’ll see, I guess.

I have also come to realize that no matter what I do, this spare tire around my midsection isn’t going to go anywhere.   Not without plastic surgery, which I cannot afford to do and which I do not want to recover from.  So I am just going to do my best to get to what I will call my fighting weight and be happy with that.

There are days I forget where I started, and given the amount of weight I have lost, I have to recognize that I have accomplished something truly awesome.  It is hard because as humans, we always want to compare ourselves to others, and I think it’s time not to do that any more.  It is time to be happy with my own progress, and to be happy with the body that has been left behind by the weight I have lost.  There isn’t time for “what ifs” and “I wish I hads,” only “what next?”