Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

I got back in the car today after my Toastmasters meeting and looked in my rear view mirror. I had pinned up part of the sides of my hair because all the rain and humidity turn my once reasonably complaint, straight hair into a mass of fly aways and bad flips. My hair looks like Farah Faucett in her hey day, but without actually giving enough of a crap to go for the full out look.

Then I looked closer into the mirror. I remembered seeing a picture of myself in Seattle last week when I was in high school. The photo had the same straight, brown hair, but there was so much more of it. Then I realized I've lost most of my hair and almost started crying.

For the uninitiated, let me just say this as a disclaimer: hair is a fickle beast. There are many things that cause hair loss, including a radical change in diet, rapid weight loss, vitamin deficiencies, hormonal changes, and straight-up "I'm going bald". Unfortunately, gastric patients often experience hair loss for one, or many, of the reasons listed above. I just didn't feel like I fit that category. I knew that I was losing a lot of hair in the shower and wrapped around my volumizing brush, but I always kind of shrugged and knew deep down, "There is more where that came from".

Then one day I woke up and I can hold up all my hair with two small clips. I have a short, bob-length cut and now I realized that even when I wear all of my hair down, you can see my neck and chin when looking at my sideways. You know. Through my hair. Because there is nothing there but the strands that have decided to stick it out with me.

I have been in denial about this for a while I think. I feel like the 40 year-old man that goes to the store to buy Rogaine because one day he woke up and his forehead had tripled in size. Last time he remembered, he was swooping his hair sideways to stay out of his eyes. Only his hair loss was infinitesimally slower than mine. His took 15 years and mine has taken just 1, but I swear I sympathize so much more now. This whole year I've been fighting a losing battle to grow my hair out. It would get to a certain length and no matter how hard I tried to pretend that it was ok, it just looked horrible and I would cut it. Let's be honest, thin hair responds to a layered bob because all the layers add volume, particularly when blow-dried and moussed and tousled.

I called my doctor's nurse today and I'm hoping she returns my call tomorrow. I'm not sure how I'm going to put in words, "I've been losing hair for the past 12 months, but now my hair is all gone and do you think you can help me?" but I'm going to give it the ol' college try. After all, my follicles deserve another chance, right? If this doesn't work, I'll be reduced to a nightly chant to my scalp, shouting, "I think I can! I think I can!" to my scalp and no one really wants that.

Six cc's and full of vigor

After the drama of the last post, I have very little dramatic news to announce. Six cc's is...shockingly normal. Not "I can eat a bacon double cheeseburger with a large french fry" normal (and all of you with a stomach that can hold a full 6 cups of food, spend a little time tonight thanking the sweet Lord that you can enjoy not one, but TWO cheeseburgers simultaneously). I'm more like, "I just ate some sweet and sour soup and a couple of beef kabobs and I don't feel like I'm going to die". THAT kind of normal.

In other, perhaps more exciting news beyond my gastrointestinal track, I finally had my red dress photo shoot. I'm waiting on confirmation from my wonderful photographer to see if I can use her name here. Until then, if you are anywhere in the Houston area, I would highly recommend her. Just e-mail me or send me a message on Facebook and I'll send over her info. At the photo shoot, I ran out of steam before she did AND she brought a duffel bag full of props. I held things. I hid behind things. She had towels at the ready for when I had to sit down on slightly damp grass next to a river. The woman thought of everything. Then there's the part where she kept saying, "You look like a model" and murmuring to herself, "Beautiful". There's that part. There is also the part where she made Zac kiss me approximately 20 times while exclaiming, "That's so great! Keep doing that Zac!" so he did and we both giggled.

I'll write more about the experience when I get the photos in a couple of weeks.

Until then, I'm neck-deep in GLBT volunteering and I'm not sure I can see the white light at the end of the tunnel. Delegate you say? Why, I would if I knew where to start. Delegating might be new favorite word. Delegate. Delegate. Delegate. Yes, it does feel good.

Not quite as good as that egg roll I just ate, but you can't have everything.

Those are the brakes you feel

I love the Internet. If you want to avoid something at all costs, the worst thing you can do is post about it for all your friends and family to see. In my last post, I was so confident that I would lose the weight. Downright cocky when I said, "I don't know. Do you think 120lb is too skinny? What about 140?" Blah, blah, blah..I'm going to be a skinny bitch...blah, blah, blah. I'm a freaking idiot and I should know better than to tempt Internet fate.

While I was being so Polly Anna, I neglected to report some of the more negative parts of having a lap band. I was filled on February 10th and almost immediately I knew something was different. I went from puking every other day or so to regularly puking twice a day. Then there was the heart burn and upset stomach. Last time I felt like that, I was in my third trimester with Zac. I felt awful, every single night. In the morning though, I'd feel better and get up and go to work. Unfortunately, with all the stomach pain and reflux, I stopped drinking liquids. God that sounds stupid. Let's see? I was puking regularly and restricting fluids.

Want to guess where I went on Tuesday?

If you guessed the ER, you would be correct. I woke up Tuesday morning with a massive, intense headache, cramps in my calves, and a very upset stomach. I tried eating. I puked. I laid on the couch and called my surgeon. Then I waited....and waited...no one called me back. My friend, Mr. Grinch, told me that I could go to University General (yes, that is the real name of the hospital, even if it sounds like a soap opera) instead of Methodist. I didn't know what to do. My surgeon is at Methodist, but I wasn't sure if their ER could help me. So I went to University General, which has the smallest ER in Houston, hands down.

I only waited 5 minutes to go back to a room. I was moderately-severely dehydrated. A doctor came in and removed 7.8 cc's from my band (which is all but .2cc's of what was in there). I asked if they could only take out part of the fluid, but they took out almost everything. Then they gave me a full IV bag of saline with a side car of anti-nausea medication. I felt so much better.

The next day, it was like I was on vacation from my stomach. I had Mexican food for lunch and Chinese food (Chinese food! Do you know how long it's been since I've had that without puking? I couldn't even Chinese food in CHINA without puking). I can't even publicly admit what I had for lunch today. I texted Mr. Grinch and asked him how jealous he was. I told him it was like food porn. If you can't eat it yourself, you might as well listen to someone else eat it. That was my theory at least. I don't think the Grinch appreciated it very much.

I went to my surgeon's office today and the doc was furious, both at UGH for taking what a year of fluid in my band ("They were covering their own asses. They didn't have your best interest in mind") and his own staff for not calling me back. He put in 6cc's of fluid, which for your reference, is about six times as much as he's ever put in at once. I could feel the band inflate. Literally. I could feel an object bisect my stomach. My stomach hurts so much now that my back is hurting. In other good news, my bp was so low that I was deemed still dehydrated. Awesome.

This would be the not-so-pleasant side of bariatric surgery.

50/50

This Sunday was supposed to be my Red Dress photo shoot, but my photographer asked to reschedule because of the rain and flooding the night before and a death in her family. I had been consciously dieting to make sure I hit the 50lb mark with my weight loss. Right now, I'm 8lbs away from my pre-baby weight, which is spectacular in my opinion. I'm starting to see definition in my legs and calves and really just now starting to feel differently about my body. I was so tuned out of it that it's taken me losing 50lbs to even feel like myself again.

 I asked my gastric surgeon what my ideal weight should be. He asked how tall I was and I dutifully told him I'm 5'4 (and a half, don't forget the half, it's important). He thought for a nanosecond and then said authoritatively: 120lbs. I would have laughed out loud, but he was digging around for the port under my skin with needle, so I tried not to move too much. Let me just put this into perspective. The last time I was that weight I'm pretty sure I was in the 8th grade. When I graduated high school, after dancing and doing gymnastics almost year-round, I was 160lbs. Even after bicycling for nine months all throughout Oxford and only eating food that I could carry home from the grocery store on my back and my handlebars, I weighed 155lbs. I wish I could find the photo of myself from that time. I looked skinny.

Now the doc wants me to weigh 120lbs?!? I asked him if we could think about the 140-145lb range and he said that might work. That would mean that I'm only halfway through my weight loss journey. It's taken me a year to get here, but I feel like my weight loss is accelerating. While the doc was poking around under my skin, he put another cc of saline into my band. That puts me up to 8cc's of fill. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, bands can hold up to 12cc's of fluid. I think at that point, your upper stomach is either so stretched out that you can eat whatever you want or you are putting all your food into a blender and drinking it through a straw. A very small straw.

I know that I'll adjust to my current restriction, but wow, it's intense. I'm actually afraid to eat in front of anyone in a social situation because of how little I can actually eat. The best surprise came when I sat down when my new friend (I'll call him Mr. Grinch, which I mean as a compliment). I told him that I had lap band surgery and he said he did as well. Then we proceeded to take two hours to finish lunch! It was fantastic. I had never shared a meal with someone that had the same level of restriction that I had. I can't say enough how great it was! I knew exactly what was going on when he stopped talking, stopped eating, and just sat there. I was like, "Oh yeah. You're trying not to puke! Wait...do you need me to slide out of the booth? Are you sure? For real, I'll move."

So...the question is, for anyone that knows me or maybe jumps on a scale themselves from time to time, does 140 seem like a good goal for me? Too skinny or not skinny enough?

Critics

I politely call them "Haters" on facebook, but I've had more than a couple people impolitely suggest that I'm going about losing weight all wrong. The main source of the criticism comes from the amount of time that I've gone between fills. To be a "good" post-lap-band patient, I should show up at my doctor's office once every 30 days and get a fill of saline solution put in my band.

Life has a way of interrupting that process.

My first fill on April 6th of 5cc's of fluid. That is the single largest fill that a lap-band patient will receive throughout their treatment. Just imagine taking your already smaller upper stomach and basically cutting that in half. That was what my first fill was like. I had to go on liquids and pureed food for a week because it was so extreme. I had to reschedule my appointment in May because of work, you know, since I live and work about 50 minutes away from the Giant Medical Center where I got my band.

Then I went to Shanghai from May 7th - May 15th with my MBA class. Want to guess what almost every meal in China had? Rice. Want to guess what I struggle to eat? Rice. I tried to eat as much protein as possible while I was over there, but I ended up eating a lot of processed food to keep myself full without getting sick. I'm not proud. I encountered the first of several critics of my progress in China. Well, I more just heard about their thoughts regarding my weight. They never said anything to me directly or anything. Perhaps it was in response to me complaining about how I look in the photos from Shanghai.. Here's a good example:

That is my good friend, Leo, using chopsticks for the first time and eating pork leg, a local delicacy in Zhouzhang. In this picture I'm: 1) Hot; 2) Trying not to puke up rice; 3) Very pink looking; 4) Almost 1 2/3 the size of Leo.

Here's another one from the same day trip to the water city, also known as Venice of the East:

Now, it's very possible that I'm hanging out with five of the skinniest people in my program. Clicker would also like to point out that Michael and I are the only two people that are squared away to the camera and that makes us look bigger in comparison to everyone else. I would have to officially categorize these photos as me - still fat during Post-Op Week 10.

But photography is all about angles and light, no? Evidence A:

Here are two of the photos that Allen Crosby took of me during our photo shoot on March 20th, less than four weeks after surgery:

Nevertheless, my critics said that I hadn't lost enough weight. I don't know. In their mind, I suppose that it was just supposed to melt off me.

I've lost 22 pounds on my doctor's scale and I got my second fill on May 20th. The doc was worried about my last reaction to the fill and decided to only put in 1.5 cc's so I didn't start puking everything up and risk band slippage. I said that was fair, so I now have a total of 7 cc's around my stomach and it's an adjustment. For the past two days, I've been complaining that I now have two stomachs: my upper and lower. My upper stomach gets full so fast that my lower stomach is still hungry. Then I wait a bit and the food passes into my lower stomach, which usually doesn't agree that I've eaten enough and the cycle continues.

My critics can pipe down now. I'm going to go eat some soup.

Post-Op: 6 Weeks

It's been roughly six weeks since my surgery and I'm down 18 pounds. Clearly, I'm not setting any land speed records for weight loss, since that averages out to 3 lbs a week, but I'm happy. I am back to the weight I was when I was going through nutritional counseling with my hardcore nutrtionist. All of my suits fit again (pretty much) and I'm almost back into the skirts that I bought when I started work in October.

I had my first band fill a week ago. If I thought there was some restriction in my diet before the fill, it's nothing like it is now. My surgeon put in 5.5 ccs in the band - the largest fill. All subsequent fills will be 2 ccs or so. I've gone from eating almost everything to feeling almost scared to eat. I look at food and think, "Now how exactly is this going to go down?" When I find something that both tastes good and feels good in my body, I can't help but to thoroughly enjoy it and usually get seconds. Unfortunately, most of those items are junk food, which is the oddest thing. Oreos, doritos, and wheat thins taste the best to me and don't cause any nasuea or constriction after I eat.

Although I have a picture of pasta with this post, I have to be careful about the about of pasta, rice, and bread I eat. I took a pair of prospects out to dinner and had beef terrayki with white rice. I was fine immediately after dinner, but about an hour later, I kept getting fuller and fuller and more sick. I went to bed feeling sick and woke up feeling sick. It was kind of like still being drunk the day after a bender. I couldn't work and couldn't really move. I was sick as a dog from white rice. Sweet Jesus help me - WHITE RICE!

In a similar vein, I most consistently struggle with any food that combines bread and meat. Hamburgers, sandwiches, and fajitas are all fairly rough. For some reason, I keep trying to eat these kinds of food because I'm surrounded by them. They show up in my office or at school. I'm also a slow learner, so there is that.

On the upside, while I have to avoid cheeseburgers for a bit, I do enjoy that I'm rarely hungry. I don't have the constant, "Where's my next meal going to come from? Am I going to be hungry later?" worries. The food cravings are still intense, when I find myself thinking about food or listening to other people talk about food.

My next fill is in early May. Until then, I'll keep you posted on my progress.

12

I stepped on the scale this morning and was down 12lbs. Since I had my surgery on February 24th, that is roughly 3w1d. I'm starting to see some change in my clothes, but not a whole lot, which makes me think that the first 8-9lbs was actually water weight.

BUT, it's so nice to get on the scale now and see progress.

The Eyes Have It

Hmm...I’m not even sure what happens when I step away from the computer that long. I swear it feels like I just updated, but then I check and see that it’s been two weeks. I’ve learned some important lessons during that time:

 

• I have to always chew my food completely before I swallow. This sounds self-evident, but once you realize how much food you swallow only partially chewed, you’ll see why this was such a big lesson to learn. My little, un-filled band opening can only tolerate so much food before food backs up directly in my esophagus, somewhere in my chest. It does feel a little like what I imagine a heart attack might feel like, only there is also queasiness involved. Also, there is a lot of grabbing of my chest and gulping down air feeling like I’m being quickly suffocated under the pressure of my food

• Passing a Group 1 life, accident, and health exam does not mean that a person suddenly has a license to sell insurance or variable annuities. It means that I passed the exam. The license is applied for separately.

• I’m really slow when it comes to cold-calling businesses and individuals. Even when I try to be fast, I only get about 35 calls made before I start to wonder if I should be calling at a different time. Like Saturday. Maybe I should quit school with one module left and just cold call all-day Saturday and not go into the office on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays. Just a thought.

• I think I’ve lost 10lbs of water weight since there is no super noticeable difference in the way my clothes fit. 

• I can’t stress how important it is to get a regular eye exam, especially if you are overweight. See below for more details.

 

Those are the primary lessons that I’ve learned. In reference to #4, I went to my optometrist after a blurry spot developed in my vision in class on March 5th. I had been having horrible, horrible headaches with pain radiating from my eyes and had talked to Aunt Jen about headaches related to hypertension. She said basically that they would be the worst headaches of my life and most likely I’d stroke out before I had time to complain about how bad my head was hurting. She’s comforting, that one. Her vast knowledge of medical conditions and symptoms just makes her a little bit of downer sometimes.

 

So, I was at the optometrist and she says that my eyes are dry, but even more concerning to her, she sees visible damage to my optic nerves. Then she told me to not go back to work for the day and go immediately to the optomologist she was recommending for me. I went and had a battery of eye tests done, including dilation and vision field. The doc came in and discussed my results. There was a circle of occlusion around my left eye and large swaths of blindness in my right eye, around the periphery, where I couldn’t correctly see the small, blinking white light. Then he showed me the optomap picture of my inner eye. It turns out that optic discs are supposed to look clear, relatively flat, with well-defined margins. My optic discs look….freakish. Just imagine holding onto a balloon in the middle. Then squeeze your hand. See how the top of the balloon puffs out from the air pressure? Now imagine that happening in the back of your eyes.

 

He explained that the lack of blood into my optic nerve and blood vessels around my optic disc hemorrhaging were causing my headaches and blurry vision. The medical profession has come up with a great term to describe this phenomenon. It’s “pseudotumor cerebri” . Pseudotumors have symptoms like a tumor, without actually having a tumor. These symptoms include: headaches (check), blurred vision (check),and increased intracranial pressure (check and check). But then he said he had to rule out an actual tumor and he continued the doctor shuffle to a neurologist.

 

The next day, the neurologist confirmed the previous two doctors’ findings and ordered a MRI and MRV. He also put me on acetazolamide to reduce the pressure in my spinal fluid by getting rid of excess water. Side effects include: increased urination (check), bad taste to carbonated beverages (check – I’ve finally had to reduce and occasionally eliminate Diet Coke and beer), and tingling in outer extremities, like hands and feet (check). He said, and the U.S. National Library of Medicine concurs, that the condition occurs most often in obese, premenopausal women. My acne medication - minocycline - also has increased intracranial pressure as a possible side effect. I've stopped the medication, but haven't seen any improvement in my vision. Sometimes there is no known cause and the only treatment is to lose weight.

 

MRI and MRV were normal. My spinal tap to check for infection in my spinal fluid and to monitor my spinal pressure is being scheduled now. Cross your fingers for the best.

 

I Ate a Meatball and Almost Died

That title could be a post all by itself, but since I’m a blogger, you get the full story. I went back to work on Monday and made it basically through the day. There was the part where I had to go home and lie down for a long lunch hour, but that can happen even on my non-surgical recovery days. I blame Vicadin really. Now that the pain is more on the outside of my stomach and my abdominal muscles, as opposed to literally feeling the band tightening my stomach on the inside, Vicadin does me little good. Right now, I’m still sore from Sunday when I decided that I needed to actually take my recycling to the recycling center for the first time in months and months and months. That really wasn’t my brightest idea. Lots of bending down caused a searing pain to shoot through my right side. It’s calmed down and now only aches when I stand up and walk. It’s basically where I imagine my appendix might be, if my appendix went on a field trip to a random spot on my right side, between my ribs and belly button. Right there. That’s where it hurts.


In addition to overdoing it physically, I have to confess that I’ve been testing my gastric limitations. I was on a full liquid diet for two days after my surgery, then started sneaking in solids. Mostly there were in the form of scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese. (because soft is almost a liquid, right?), chili with no beans, and chopped tuna and chicken (because being pre-chewed is totally three steps closer to liquid than a solid in my mind). I kept drinking broth and throwing away the rest of the soup, which is fairly unsatisfying. Then on Sunday I demanded that Clicker take me to the sacred house of pancakes and let me eat one. He tried very hard and very valiantly to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Pancakes are very soft! Sometimes they even fall apart when you try to pick them up with a fork. I ate two of them very slowly with some scrambled egg substitute. Then I wasn’t hungry for the remainder of the day.

I’m at work today and the office orders Potbelly sandwiches for lunch during our wholesaler meeting. I’m hungry. I ate/drank my soup around 10:30am and I don’t have any other food. Then I see a meatball sandwich on wheat bread and I think, “I can do this. The meat is ground together and the bread is wheat instead of white. It shouldn’t get stuck. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp”

Then immediately I knew that I had made a very large mistake.

Three bites into the sandwich, I get a searing pain in my chest and I have to rush out of the meeting. I started walking around the office, much like a pregnant lady with contractions. I sat down at my desk and a wave of nausea rolled over me. I got out my trash can and willed the food not to come up and upset my sore appendix site and delicate stomach. Then my breathing got a little harder and it felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, which caused me to try to breathe even harder in a panic. Fortunately, a I’ve been training for the past couple in the art of mastering anxiety attacks and I’m now a Jedi master – er- scratch that. I’m now at least able to appear normal in public. I walked around some more and felt a hard lump right at the edge of my diaphragm. I have to assume that it was part of the meatball because I don’t like to think about my tumors growing heads and talking back to me.

It took about two hours for me to feel somewhat normal again. I’m now firmly back on liquids until Friday because I’d rather drink my meals than have an aneurism and die at work from a renegade meat and some whole wheat bread. No sandwich is worth a trip to the ER. I just wish that Jello tasted better.

Blink

I'm not really sure what just happened there. I was going to write all this great build up to my surgery, including another post with my unreasonable expectations and then, I dunno, I blinked. I went to school two days after work to work on a take home final. Then suddenly it was the day of my surgery, on Thursday, February 24th.

I woke up at the normal time and started to get Zac ready. My Mom came over to take Zac to school and my Dad came over to drive Clicker and I to the hospital. Of course, we were 30 minutes early to the hospital, but the nurses managed to get me into a temporary room within 15 minutes of arrival. Then this happened:

Even with bed in a banana boat position, I promptly fell asleep for close to two hours with Clicker and my Dad in the room. Apparently, my nerves weren't enough to prevent me from enjoying a good solid nap at 9:30am. When I went to sleep, both Clicker and my Dad were on their iPhones for what I assume was the entire time since they were both playing with them when I woke up. Eventually, a nurse came to get me and move me to pre-op. I said good bye to my family and boyfriend and they wheeled me away. I wasn't even nervous then, just anxious to be in the recovery stage.

Pre-op seemed to take forever, although my nurse was incredibly nice. She started my IV and then a lovely woman came to "give me something to relax," which I was told was something along the lines of medical grade Valium. It worked. I was veeeerrrrryyyyy relaxed.

Then I went into the surgery room and the nurses were all talking to each other and basically ignoring me and one of them must have slipped over and gave me more sedation because the next thing I remember is waking up. My actual memories from waking up aren't particularly memorable so I'll just skip to the next step. I got wheeled into a "Transportation" waiting area. Then I started getting angsty. I wanted to see Clicker and my Dad and pretty much knew that my Dad would be nervous until he saw me again. I tried to dose a bit during the transportation waiting phase, but I couldn't fall back asleep. They finally rolled me into the Recovery Room and I saw both of them for five minutes and then a nurse escorted them out. Then I went back into the Transportation area and waited for a doctor to monitor my upper GI x-ray.



Like before in my pre-op appointment, I had to swallow barium while the doctor watched on the monitor. Unlike before, I was in a decent amount of pain and didn't really want to be swallowing anything, even if I had gone without water or food for close to 15 hours. The worst part was when they laid me back and made me roll on my side to get a picture of the back of my stomach (note: it looks just like the front, but with more ribs involved). Then I waited some more for another person from Transportation to wheel me into a hospital room where I saw Clicker and my Dad again. My Dad kept saying that I looked better than he expected and, of course, he wasn't surprised when my campaign for water kicked into high gear. I was tired and very thirsty. It was close to 3:30 - 4pm by then and I hadn't had anything to drink since midnight the night before.

Once in the room, I was told all the tasks I had to do before I could be discharged home. I was glad that the nurse gave me a good 45 minute notice before she expected me to pee. That gave me enough time to get all the saline that I had received through IV out of me. Once my pee was measured, I got some water, ice chips, and Vicadin, in that order. Codeine on an empty stomach really doesn't work for me. I almost got sick, but managed to walk up and down the hall four times with Clicker (who I must say is really quite a task master).

I got to go home around 6:30pm and struggled though the manual transmission of my Dad's car in Houston traffic. Again, my memories go a bit fuzzy. I just remember getting into bed and waking up every 1 - 2 hours or so every time Clicker came into room, opened the door, breathed in my direction, or I woke myself up. He gave me codeine every four hours and we finally got to sleep around 2am.

I took off the pads and tape on my five incisions in the shower, with the firm instructions that I wasn't supposed to remove the steri strips below. I joked on facebook that it look liked I had been in a prison brawl with a sharpened toothbrush - and lost. Here is what my stomach looked like after multiple showers and a couple of days of healing:

I'm guessing the longer of the incisions on my right is where they went through to put in the band. There was a steri strip in the middle of my belly button, but it fell off this morning. As of this morning, I'm down 4lbs from soup, jello, and applesauce. So much soup. More soup and broth then I had after my C-section, although my Mom swears that I'm walking better now than I did after Zac was born.

Tomorrow I'm back to work. Here I go.

Conflicted

I've been hiding out a bit...

On Friday, Clicker came down to my part of town and, after a rough start, we drove to Galveston, Texas for the weekend. We ended up having a pretty fantastic time and on Sunday I urged Clicker to earn his name and go into full-out photographer mode.

Here are some shots from the trip. It was beauitful and a sunny 65-68 degrees and we spent some time just looking at the water, even though we didn't go in:

 This was the view of the pool from the room, even though it was too chilly to go in.

 I woke Clicker up, accidentally, at 6:45am on Saturday and he took this picture of the sunrise at the coast.

 The view of the hotel from a breaker in the water.

Clicker and I (this time with permission to post - and yes, I realize that we both have our eyes partially closed. It was very, very bright.)

I could never get this kind of shot on my own. This shot definitely comes from dating a former photographer who could tell me what to do and where to look. I like the final product.

Now I come to the conflicted part of my life right now. Here's the condundrum: I haven't been this happy in a long time AND I've never been bigger. I got weighed today at my final pre-op appointment and I'm now officially heavier than I was when I was pregnant. I was so big that I actually felt shame at the number. It was the kind of deep-seated shame that I can't even write about very openly. It's the kind that starts out with, "How can anyone love me? How did I let myself get to this point?" and it spirals down from there. Trust me when I say those are the kind thoughts that I'm thinking when I go into the dark place. I have to remind myself that my friends, family, and boyfriend love me for who am I, not what I look like. I need a little bug on my shoulder to remind me that it's ok that I'm uncomfortable in all of work clothes and can't imagine meeting clients they way I look now, that doesn't make me a less qualified Financial Advisor.

On the flip side, I'm very, very happy right now. I like my job and the days pass quickly. I'm excited to start my own business and learning more about the financial services industry. Things have been hard with Clicker recently, but we are trying to work through it and when he holds me in his arms, the world quiets down and I feel calm. I especially love my time with Zac. Five years-old is a great age. He's so smart, funny, and kind. I can honestly say that I look forward to getting off work because I know that I get to spend the evening with him. We just hang out most nights. Sometimes we are both on our laptops and I laugh to think that I'm raising the yuppiest kid ever, but damn, he's just so cool. He knows more about space than I do and likes to make up songs about multiplication. How cool is that?

That's my guy. I know that I need to be around for him. I just wish that my outside matched my inside.

Series 66

No, I have no idea why it's called that either. All I know is that when I got hired onto my company in late October 2010, I knew that I would have 90 days to pass the Series 7 and the Series 66 examinations. Series 7 is a 250-question, five hour test with an hour break in the middle. It's over federal law and the test designers seem fixated on options and municipal bonds. I was told point-blank by one of my coworkers in the office that if a client ever asks about the underwriting of a municipal bond, that I should fire them as a client. No joke. Basically, once you pass the tests, you aren't really required to retain the information, especially since most of the public will have no idea what you are talking about if you start mentioning bear straddles or naked puts. It kind of sounds like both of those should be done in private, no?

The Series 66 tests your knowledge of state laws, without actually being specific to any one state. The State Administrator, who is a shadowy figure at best in the study materials, can require that an investment advisor representative (aka: me, known as a broker or financial advisor in most circles) take the test before they can trade securities in any state. You can see why taking just the Series 7 would be problematic then. I suppose I could sell securities in Puerto Rico or Guam, but since I'm not planning on leaving one of the 50 states anytime soon, I also had to take the Series 66. I like living in a state. States are good.

The actual test is 100 questions long and they give you two-and-a-half hours to complete it. I found that I either know the answer to the question or don't. 99% of the questions on the Series 66 don't involve math so it's basic problem solving and memory recall. Does the State Administrator have this power? What about this one? If we blindfolded the State Administrator and put him in a room with three issuers of corporate securities, a rabbi, and two investment advisors, what do you think would happen? That sort of thing.

There was a couple hard questions that I'm kicking myself for not knowing, mostly because I feel like after 18 months in a MBA program I should have known them. I had to completely guess on how to find the alpha of a stock when given the stock's beta and the expected return. Uhh...6.8? Yeah, that's what I went with too. Then there was a question about the minimum value of an investment needed to fund a monthly stipend of $1,000 in perpetuity with an expected 3% rate of return. There wasn't enough information to do present value calculations since I didn't have the risk free rate so I just started doing some math long-hand with my calculator. It was only after I submitted my test that I realized I had assumed a 3% MONTHLY rate (or 12% annually,  which is huge if you imagine getting that rate of return forever) instead of a 3% ANNUAL return (or .03/12 monthly, which is much more reasonable). I think I've actually had this question in one of my finance courses and I'm pretty sure I got it wrong then too. Fortunately, most people think about college tuition or retirement in terms of an annual amount of money. I'll leave the calculations on monthly cash flow streams to annuity providers. They have charts and everything.

Today also coincides with Day 1 of my liquid diet. I had some eggs this morning because I didn't want to feel sleepy during my test. I had a protein shake for lunch and I'm about ready to go have another. The commercial that got me today while I was watching tv was for an Italian restaurant, but I managed to stay out of the kitchen, although I'm back to feeling hungry and a little stabby right now.

13 more days of this. Really?!?

Curse this Blog

I have a bit of a blog curse with this blog. As soon as I write about how excited I am about someone or how much I like them, a gray cloud immediately hovers over the relationship. Sometimes I'm blinded by the lightening flashes, wondering "where in the hell did that come from" and other times its just a steady downpour of rain.

This weekend I was profoundly hurt by a series of bad decisions. It was one of those situations where I should have known far enough in advance that it was going to hurt, like when you avoid putting your hand directly over a hot stove because you know you are going to get burned. But I went and put my hand over it anyway because I thought that was what was expected of me. I try to be all bad ass on this blog and say, "fuck the expectations. I'm going to do it MY WAY" but really, I'm one giant pushover away from being a loud-mouth, passive aggressive woman that can't deal with other people's disappointment. So, I suppressed everything and tried to pretend that I wasn't really experiencing what I felt. At least I'm cognizant enough to know that never really works. Now, I'm left with a sea of questions and doubts.

I thought for sure that I had outsmarted the blog curse. I waited nine months to blog about someone that I was dating and he doesn't even read this blog! Surely, this was enough to allow me a little bit of space in my little sliver of the Internet. Guess I was wrong.

I consoled myself tonight with a blender. I actually bought one that wasn't the absolute cheapest on the market, which is a new experience for me. This baby has 450 watts of power and can crush ice in under three seconds. I've decided that I'll taper my meals down to the liquid diet, which starts on Friday. Instead of doing anything vaguely healthy with the blender, I decided to show Zac what a homemade milkshake tastes like.

Nothing like soothing myself with food. Just for the record, they were pretty damn good milkshakes. I have manged to learn everything and nothing, simultaneously.

EDITED: I was in the shower trying to wash the at-home hair dye out of my hair and realized that I had kind of threw Clicker under the bus. He's a generally good guy and I didn't acknowledge my responsibilities for some of the bad decisions that were made. So, to use a grossly drawn-out vague metaphor, I present (ta-da!) a trainwreck.

At any point, I could have stopped the train from colliding with another train, but I didn't. I could have stopped the engineer from getting into the engine and tooting the train's horn, but I didn't because I thought it would be fun to hear the engineer toot the train's whistle and I like the way the engineer wore his hat a little to the left at the thought of making a really loud noise. Then the train started rolling. I could have picked which track it went on, but I let someone else decide. Even when I saw the other train approaching, I could have said, "No! Wait! Put on the brakes. There is a train approaching!" but I didn't want to cause a false alarm on the slimmest of possibilities that we would avoid the collision. The engineer even turned to me and asked my opinion about the on-coming train and I shrugged my shoulders and thought it was going to be ok. Then, it was so not ok. It was a giant trainwreck in the middle of the damn tracks and now I wish I would have taken the bus instead. End of story.

Pre-Op Madness

I'm not sure if the word madness in the blog title refers to how disorganized the hospital was today or how I reacted to the constant waiting and general confusion. Turns out that after years of not being hormonal, I'm suddenly working like clockwork, once a month. It sucks, mostly because I can never remember how much time has elapsed between visits.

Well, it turns out that about four weeks have elapsed since my last hormonal roller coaster. I didn't realize that, of course, while I was waiting in three different waiting rooms at the fancy-schmancy hospital where I'm getting my surgery. Clicker, my boyfriend that I blogged about back in April, went with me, much to his dismay. The day started off with us arriving late to my first appointment to get an echo cardiogram and EKG. The primary reason I asked Clicker to go with me to my appointments was to help me get through the cardio tests. The last time I got an EKG, I started freaking out as soon as I laid on the hard table and the technician placed the sensors on my body. My heart rate was over 100 and I was told that I had tachycardia (Aunt Jen said that they were overreacting since a pulse rate of 100 is borderline). The technician told me to focus on calming down and left the room for a while. I meditated and got my pulse down to 80, right until the technician walked back in and my heart rate shot up to 100.

Today was a bit different, although even with Clicker there, my heart rate was still 94. We both got a great view of my heart during the echo, which was cool in its own right. Went then went one floor up, checked in with another receptionist and then waited for another 30 minutes. I was taken back alone to get an abdominal ultrasound (which involved a lot taking deep breaths and holding it, which gave me hiccups. After more undressing and putting on the world's smallest gowns, I waited in a private lounge for another 30 minutes and had a chest x-ray. Then I went back to the lounge, waited another 15 minutes, and got an upper GI exam complete with barium. The funniest part of that exam was drinking the barium, then being reclined completely on my back and being told to roll over in a complete circle. The doc said he wanted to coat my stomach. The only problem was that the examination machine was hanging just two feet from my body, so turning over and over was a bit difficult.

Almost an hour-and-a-half later, I reunite with Clicker and go up to the 22nd floor for "labs". At least that is what I was told I was getting. I was ushered into a hallway with chairs and told to wait there. I waited another 30 minutes and finally started complaining loud enough that called me back. Apparently, I was in the outpatient, walk-in clinic. Clicker and I went back to a room and waited. Then we waited some more. Finally, a nurse came in and told me that I was getting a pre-surgical evaluation by her. She got my vital signs (again) and told me to pee in a cup. While I was gone, one of her patients fell in the parking garage and had to be escorted to the ER. Clicker and I waited some more. She came back, I signed five consent forms and she said....wait for it....to wait some more. I had been fasting since midnight and had a headache. Apparently, I also had PMS. This is a combination leading to disaster. Add in over five pre-surgical procedures and five hours of wait time and I'm ready to kill someone.

Finally, I convince a woman to take my blood, although she doesn't know why she's doing it or how many vials of blood she needs to take. I get a call from the doctor's coordinator saying that I need to be medically cleared for surgery. I stared at the phone. What the hell had I been doing for the past six hours, if not getting medically cleared for surgery?

I don't understand. I'm confused and frustrated. This hospital is supposed to have a world-renowned bariatric center. All I got today was shuffled around and told they didn't have my orders for the test.

This sucks. It is most definitely, NOT the easy way out.

Conversations with My Unreasonable Expectations: Part 1

Me, sometime this summer: “Why hello there Size 8 pants! Gosh, I don’t think we’ve ever been acquainted. I’ve heard a lot about you, though, and I gotta tell you, I wasn’t sure we would even get to meet after my surgery”


Size 8 pants: “Thanks, thanks. Really, I’m a very humble number in the vast sea of department store sizes. Do you notice that you never see me while shopping? That’s because I’m so rare. I’m really like a unique snowflake when you think about it.”

Me: “Hmm…you are pants, yet you are a snowflake. That’s so deep. Please tell me more.”

Size 8 pants: “I’m brilliant and will make you brilliant by proximity to my greatness. My cousins and I can make your ass look fantastic in a pair of jeans”

Me: “Wait. I thought you were humble. I was really shooting for a size that I wouldn’t automatically make women hate me. I really only picked you because you are half of a size 16 and designers don’t make a size 9 for women”

Size 8 pants: “Well, you would know more about me if you hadn’t just skipped over me in puberty and went straight into a size 12”

Me: “*gasping* Who told you that? I think I was maybe a size 8 for a month in the 8th grade. That was a very formidable month in my development. “

Size 8 pants: “Was that before or after you got your stretch marks?”

Me: “Bitch!”

Size 8 pants: “Hate the game, not the playa:”

Me: “What does that even mean? You’re a pair of pants! The only thing you are playing with is a wedgie. You know, some people think big asses are hot. I’m told that I have meat on my bones. Size 10 complimented me just last month on it.”

Size 8 pants: “Girrrrrl, there is always a size 10 around when you need them. They are mutton chop while I am a prime rib. You have to specially request me.”

Me: “That doesn’t give you the right to insult me”

Size 8 pants: “Yes it does. Just ask all the other size 8 women. Most of them are wearing pants that are too tight because the size 8s won’t come off.”

Me: “Why did I want to do this again? *shaking my head*”

*********
Yes, in my mind, a pair of size 8s would totally talk trash about larger sizes, including her generously proportioned size 16 and 18 counterparts. I suppose that I could imagine that I would actually be more loving and kind to my smaller self, but I’m having surgery, not a complete personality dissection.

In my mind, size 8 pants would always be bitchy. My favorite part about this unreasonable expectation is that underwear are called pants in England, which gives the conversation a whole other twist. Wedgie indeed

Fat Shoes

I haven't been shy about admitting that I reached my heaviest weight while going through the process of qualifying for surgery. What I never could have imagined was that my fat knows no boundaries. When I was pregnant and my ankels swelled up to the size of my knees, I thought it was some freak pregnancy-related mishap caused by all the hormones in my body. Turns out that I'm an idiot:

It's being fat that causes fat ankles.

On the end of my fat ankles are sausage-like feet. I had wide feet before the massive weight gain, but now I have something else entirely. I'm not even sure they make shoes for feet like mine, unless they are custom-made by short, festive little men in Italy (note to self: look into custom-made shoes). So, I'm in a bit of pickle when it comes to footwear. At my new job, all the women wear high-heels. The other female broker in the office only comes to work in heels higher than 3". I'm much more of a flats kind of gal, but I'm trying to embrace the power suit. No power suit is suitably impressive with a pair of sensible flats on a woman. It kind of looks like your legs got cut off at the shin, which is rather disturbing because I've never worn heels every day.

I have one pair of official, work-endorsed pair of  black high heel shoes. They're size 9 and still don't fit. I can actually feel my toes going numb in them. Then the pain starts. By the end of the day, I'm hobbling along in my shiny black shoes. Sure, my feet might look respectable, but the nasty thoughts that I'm thinking in my head at these blasted pair of shoes are anything but.

Now I'm torn. I know that my feet will decrease in size (maybe) when I lose weight. I also know that I'm getting my surgery in a month and it's realistic to think that my feet won't immediately get smaller. I'm not even sure that I'll get immediately smaller, let alone the potential consequences to my feet. I just don't want to spend money on good shoes that won't fit me for very long. But then I remember that I can't even wear uncomfortable shoes for a full day, let alone an entire month.

I think I just talked myself into some quality shoe shopping time. I'm glad we had this talk.   

Food Cravings

As the prospect of the two-week liquid diet comes closer and closer and my surgery date is around the corner, I feel like I'm in my third trimester. For the first two trimesters, you know that labor is coming, but you can't imagine what it will be like. You know, at least theoretically, you are going to have a baby soon, but actually holding the baby in your arms seems fanciful and unrealistic. Suddenly, you are two weeks from your due date and holding newborn clothing and freaking out, occasionally stopping to stare at babies in the mall. That's where I am right now. I'm overly conscious of every piece of food that I stare at, every aroma, every texture, and beautiful, beautiful piece of food.

Take last night for instance. I guess I should clarify for one moment before moving forward. Just because I'm conscious of what I'm eating, doesn't mean that I'm eating healthy. In fact, the opposite is true. It's a well-understood fact in the gastric bypass community that almost everyone gains weight while waiting for their surgery. How could you not knowing that you face almost six weeks of liquids? The first protein shake is D-Day. To cram as many metaphors as I can into one, small blog post, I'm T-13 days to drinking only liquids. You better damn believe that I'm eating all the food that I can possibly imagine.

That is all just a long way of trying to explain why I got home last night and ordered a Papa John's Hawaiian pizza. Then sat on my couch and talked to Zac, who was drawing pictures. I flipped on the tv and found myself watching every food commercial with intense interest. A Sargento cheese commercial came on, the one where some invisible hand is slicing through huge blocks of cheese and I knew, right then and there, I had to have some cheese. This is the sick part - I had already ordered the pizza. That commercial broke me. I went to the fridge and found my own large block of cheese and shared it with Zac....while waiting for pizza.

"Hello, my name is B, and I'm a food addict."

Less of Me

If we are friends on Facebook (and if we’re not, why aren’t we friends yet?) then you know that I’ve been alluding to a “surgery” that I’m having. Not many people are stoked when insurance companies approve them for surgery, but I had been waiting for a year to receive the phone call that I got on Monday with the good news. I’m having lap band surgery on February 24th to lose weight, lower my cholesterol (total cholesterol: 317!!), and high blood pressure (regularly 140/100). I’ve decided to chronicle my process through the surgery to let my friends and family know: 1) I haven’t completely lost my mind and 2) maybe encourage some people along the way to take measures to take care of their health.

First, let me start with the naysayers. Yeah, you over there. And you. And the person that I’m related to that I will not name in this blog. You all have expressed concern that I’m “taking the easy way out” and even before I’ve started the process, have tried to convince me that I’m going to fail. The conversation that I have with them goes something along these lines:

Naysayer: “Have you even TRIED to lose weight?” (like the thought hadn’t occurred to me yet)

Me: “I’ve tried everything I can think of. In order to medically qualify for gastric surgery on insurance you have to demonstrate obesity for over two years. Some insurance companies require a weight history going back five years."

Naysayer: “I get that you haven’t been successful at losing weight, but why give up now? Losing weight is hard! Think of how much pride you’ll have in yourself when you lose weight through diet and exercise”

Me: “...I plan to lose weight through diet and exercise”

Naysayer: “No, you plan to have an invasive surgery that has potentially long-term side effects that haven’t been fully studied so you can fit into society’s image of ‘thin’”

Me: “The surgery is an out-patient procedure done laproscopically. Lap bands can be removed at any time, for any reason. I don’t want to be skinny. I just want to fit into the medical profession’s idea of “healthy” and it’s pretty obvious that I can’t change your mind about surgery, so I’m just going to step out of this conversation now. M’kay?”

If I don’t end the conversation, it can go on for hours. I never really realized what a red-hot issue bariatric surgery was before I started down the path. For those of you that might think that surgery is the “easy” way to become skinny, let’s just review what I had to do to get my insurance company to approve the surgery, shall we? I started in December 2009, with a visit to my PCP. She referred me to a bariatric surgeon because of my weight and persistent co-morbidities. After that, I:

1) Attend eda three-hour educational seminar about the impacts of gastric bypass surgery and the pre-and-post surgery requirements

2) Talked to my shrink and therapist about what impacts, both positive and negative, the surgery could have on me.

3) Met with the bariatric surgeon for the first time to discuss the kind of surgery that would be most appropriate for me (lap band).

4) Went through a two-hour psychological test of endurance that included a 350-question personality test and hour long interview with a psychologist to assess suitability of the surgery for me. Was told that I have to get a note from previously mentioned shrink and therapist.

5) Went back to shrink and therapist. Asked them for letter of approval from. Felt like I was in the sixth grade. Called them three weeks later and asked, “No really. I’m serious this time. Can you pleeeease write the letter?”

6) Went to six months of nutritional counseling where my nutrition guru convinced me that if I didn’t lose SOME weight that I wouldn’t be approved for surgery because I couldn’t demonstrate the ability for short-term behavioral change. Considered finding a new nutritionist. Kept a food journal for six months and try to follow the American Diabetic Association diet which involves limiting carbs, fats, and meat. Contemplated just giving up food all together. Lost four pounds, then gained nine. Then gained some more when I found a new job.

7) Was informed that my surgeon switched hospitals. Went through a painful process of getting my records, individually, transferred one-by-one to the new hospital. Hit my head on my desk several times a day each time the new hospital either didn’t receive my record or lost it

8) Made an appointment with a new PCP to get a formal letter of medical necessity. Had my cholesterol and blood pressure checked to confirm co-morbidities. Found out that my cholesterol could take now a small ox.

9) Called the new hospital almost every day for a month, trying to get all my records in one place for submission to my insurance company.

10) Waited for two weeks for my insurance company to approve the surgery

AND…I finally got the good news on January 24, 2011. I’m tired from just writing about it. For anyone who says to me, “Couldn’t you just have spent all the energy losing weight?” I’d like to point to #6 on the list and tell you to suck it.

On deck for tomorrow, more procedures, tests, and protein shakes…