New things coming...

I am making some changes in my life and am applying to different schools to see which direction God wants me to take my life.  His will shall be done - I might as well go ahead and get glad about it ahead of time :)
Looking forward to it~

Finding My "True North"

As many of you who already know, my life has changed drastically over the last 18 months, and even more so in the past 6 weeks. November 7, 2011, my mother was brought by ambulance to the hospital where I work and spent 7 days here and then went home on hospice and passed the next night.  She passed away just after midnight on Tuesday night making it November 16th, 2011. Her funeral was Friday, November 18, 2011. Thank you to everyone who came and who supported my family and I during this difficult time.  I knew many people loved my mom but was unaware of what a difference she had made in other people's lives. She dedicated herself professionally and personally to many causes and devoted her life to serving others; her legacy will live on through the people she touched.  I told my sister that I feel like my mom left a piece of herself with everyone and in a strange way, a piece of her lives on in each person that surrounds us. I know it must sound crazy, but I feel like I have to snatch up every piece of my mom that I can and surround myself with people who she loved and who loved her. For me, the best thing I can do to honor my mother is to embrace this extended family that she created and try to keep it together.

Since losing my mom, I feel like the needle for my compass is off and I can't find my true north. I find myself mentally, emotionally, and physically going in circles and unable to find my way. I have made some strides personally, to put the pieces back together.  I know at this point, it's just gonna take time.

Four-Letter Words

Four-Letter Words are usually associated with swear words, things that are offensive, or the "filthy" words that are bleeped out of sitcoms, talk shows, and daytime television.  Have you ever stopped to think about the other four-letter words that could be a positive influence on you and change your life?  




Here are a few that crossed my I either found in my research or that crossed my mind:

• Best - I want to be my best - the highest quality of me I can be.
  
  
• Burn - Burn the calories and burn the old self image of someone who is not there anymore.
• Care - Make any decisions to make any changes in your life from a place of love, sincerity, and good intentions.
• Core - The very center of my being and existence. The place where my morals are permanently engraved and where my deepest secrets hide. 
• Dare - I am a creature of habit and I had to dare to change. I had to embrace it and not be scared of the unknown, which if you know anything about me, you know that is very difficult for me. 
• Deep - The place where the want/need for change came from for me. I had to really make a solid decision to make a difference for myself.  I toyed with the idea of having the surgery for a long time, but once I made a sincere decision to make the change, it was a done deal. 
• Drop - Drop your weight and your bad attitude.  Make a conscious effort to not drop any of the people who supported when you were heavy and your true friends in the process. Don't get "too big for your britches" as my grandmother would say, which is ironic that I'm adding that in here because my britches are getting smaller every day. The change draws a lot of attention, especially from maybe people to whom you were invisible before. Don't forget to nurture the relationships with the people who saw who you were the whole time.
• Fear - What scares you? What scares me?  Going backwards
• Free - Free to make your own choices.
• Gift - The incredible gift of life.
• Girl - Just a girl trying to fit in and to find myself.
• Give - I am finding out how generous and giving the people are around me. Don't forget to return the gift and forward the kindness to someone else who needs it.
• Glad - Glad that I have the opportunities that I have been given
• Goal - Where do I want to be in the future? Hopefully happy and healthy.
• Good - There is a saying that "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels," but I have changed it, "Nothing tastes so good as being healthy feels"
• Grin - Its all over me!
• Grow - Learning more about me and what my purpose in life is.
• Heal - My heart heals a little each day and it starts from within.
• Help - Get help, give help. Remember that hands extend both ways, they give and they take.
• Home - Anywhere my family is.
• Hope - I have a new found hope in my new life.
• Hurt - I was in constant pain before surgery. I still hurt, but nothing like before.
• Joys - I am finding new joy that I have never experienced before. Things I once dreaded, I now look forward to. 
• Jump - Easier now
• Kids - Still up in the air
• Kind - I strive to be the kind of person I'd like to be. Its an effort each day.
• Know - I know I made the best choice for myself.
• Lady - My mom. 
• Life - Teaching me a lot
• Live - Living is a day at a time.
• Lost - Still trying to feel my way out of this dark place.
• Luck - Need more than luck to get me through. 
• More - Always wanting to learn something new.
• Move - Move more to feel the freedom in your soul
• Nice - If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all. - Thumper
• Pain - Being without the person you love.
• Pest - Sampson Houston Butler (aka Sammie)
• Play - Whenever possible
• Pray - Make an effort daily to reach out and touch your maker and feed your soul daily.
• Pure - Purest intentions, purest heart, purest love
• Rain - Nature's Tears (Healing).
• Real - Truths. Many truths.
• Safe - A secure place to be, both emotionally and physically. 
• Sale - I'm a sucker for clearance. Even crap I'll never use and don't need. I am learning more about myself everyday. 
• Sand - Something I'd love to feel between my toes someday soon. I told my husband when I was 200 lb down, that I wanted to be taken to the beach.  I'm at 194, so he better start packing!
• Save - Saved myself
• Sore - Daily battle :-)
• Tear - Tear - as in rip, hurts like hell. Tear as in crying, is nature's way of healing.
• Thin - Not as important as being healthy
• Tool - RNY LGB is just a tool. Success is determined by the lifestyle changes you make.
• True - More obvious to me now than ever
• Walk - Easier now that my body is changing
• Want - Different from need
• Warm - Have been freezing my chi chi's off since weight has started to drop! Anyone else have that problem?
• Wise - Something I hope to be one day. I thinking making this decision to change my life was a wise choice.

Lactose Intolerance...

Regular cow's milk is tearing my system up.  I have switched to soy and its better.  Cheese doesn't bother me - thank goodness, because cheese is a big contender in my protein intake.  

Update on Vitamin Help post

***UPDATE***

I recently found out that my B12 has to be sublinqual; being an RNY patient, we only have 1/8 of a normal stomach. B12 is absorbed in the stomach and since it being in the pouch for 30 minutes or less, doesn't leave a lot of time for absorption.  It is required that we dissolve them directly under the tongue (sublingual) so it'll go straight into our blood stream.

Also, my bariatric surgeon looked at my multivitamins that I found and he didn't particularly care for them as they don't contain very many minerals.  I have since switched to the following:

• Sublingual B12 - Cherry flavored
• One Source Prenatal vitamins (the size of a regular Tylenol tablet - 2 at a time, twice a day).

I may take prenatal vitamins in the morning and a regular multivitamin with no iron at night (the one with no minerals) because too much iron can throw me into another impaction and I don't particularly want to go there.

Another bariatic patient found some B12 that contained other stuff like folic acid, but I figure if I'm taking the prenatal with folic acid anyway, then it would probably be okay just taking the good ole' regular B12.  

Skipping stones

Have you ever skipped a stone across the water?  Have you ever noticed that a single rock causes multiple disturbances in the water and for each time the rock hits the water, it causes multiple ripples? Making an important decision for your life is like tossing the stone into the water and hoping for the best.  Once you take the initial plunge and make a "big decision", the consequences of those choices begin to affect things in your life and that change changes something else and its a domino effect. 

My decision was to have weight loss surgery (i.e. the stone thrown into the water).. The consequences of that choice.. my ripples (if you will) thus far are:

• I am losing weight - which I knew would happen, but its still the first ripple
• Less stress on my joints
• Seat belts fit me in almost every vehicle I am in
• My feet don't hurt as bad. At the end of the day, they would just throb.
• My clothes are hanging on me now and I am getting to the point where I will need a new wardrobe; always a positive thing!
• Tight places (walking between things) are now not as tight, even though I still instinctively turn sideways to go through narrow openings even though I can go through them head-on now.
• My stamina/endurance walking and doing other things (cooking, cleaning, etc) has multiplied. 
• When I stop to have a conversation with someone, I can do it standing and am not struggling to find a chair to sit down to take the pressure off my back. I am still having back trouble, but I think its because I slept funny on an air mattress. 
• My opportunities have broadened
• Options I didn't think were options have now become choices (i.e. having kids, going to medical school, taking jobs in other departments that wouldn't require me to be as sedimentary, etc).

I had an epiphany - the realization that my ripples have only begun.  The rest of my life will forever be little ripples and positive consequences of this one decision that I made.. and my life may be longer because of it.

Have a big decision to make?  Do you ever think about when your ripples will begin? They already have.. Your ripples can be the consequences of an important choice that you have or have not yet made. Think about that the next time you skip a stone across the water.  Your possibilities are endless.

Turds, Crap, Excrement, Poo... Whatever you call it, its a Sh!tty Subject

Like it or not, sh!t happens.  For bariatric patients, sometimes it happens less often than for most people. Seriously, as a bariatric patient, in my own experience, I am much less "regular" than I was before surgery.  I first thought it was simply because of the reduced intake of an RNY patient, but as it turns out, I had an impaction/large bowel obstruction.  I think what caused it was I was eating a lot of cheese because it's high protein and I had switched to a multivitamin with iron, even though my iron levels were within normal limits. I hadn't gone for almost 2 weeks and I passed a couple of squeaks of air but that was it.  It was to the point that I couldn't eat or drink hardly at all other than a few sips of water throughout the day because my system was full from one end to the other.  I was miserable.  I was trying to work and it was to the point that I couldn't sit upright because it felt like I was sitting on a ball bat - not that I know what that feels like.

I called my Bariatric surgeon and because I did pass a couple of squeaks of air, he was confident that my large bowel wasn't totally obstructed since air was able to get through.  He told me what to try first to get it resolved; he told me to add fiber to my diet, stool softeners, laxatives, and to try Miralax (which I think was named that because its a Miracle-Laxative), but still -- nothing.  I called him again and told him there was no progress and he told me my last two options were laculose and an enema.  I opted for the laculose (gladly).  He called in the prescription and I went to another pharmacy (one that they didn't know me) and got a 6-pack of enemas. I figured it'd be a long night.  
 





I took one teaspoon of laculose (which it called for 15 ml (1 tablespoon) but all I could get down at that time was 1 tsp.  I'm not sure why, but thick syrupy consistency liquids make me go into spasms.  Another bariatric patient that has become a good friend of mine has the same problem, or she did right after surgery; not sure if its still an issue with her or not, but it certainly is for me. 


It took several hours, but it finally passed.  I have been impacted 2-3 more times since and am having a hard time finding a balance.  It seems to be either feast or famine.  I have had trouble with my bowels my whole life and had IBS before the gastric bypass.  Bad news, I still have IBS AFTER gastric bypass too.  :-(  This will probably be a life-long struggle for me.  Did you know that they have a chart for your poo?  Yeah -- they do. I added it below for you to see.  

I'm not sure if any of you have been to a colorectal surgeon or a gastroenterologist (GI doctor) but I have had the "pleasure".. I guess you could say... of going to both.  They show you this chart and make you tell them extensively about your poo.. the color, the texture, the shape, the volume, etc etc etc.  I've never met anyone else who talked so seriously about sh!t.  I understand more now than ever though, how important expelling your waste is from your body.  I learned that from my cat having mega colon. My husband and I watched her suffer for 4 of her 6 years we had her.  It ended up killing her in the end and she died in my arms.

So after going through that experience with our first pet, I am neurotically emphatic on making sure my babies (my dogs) go potty and that they are 'productive'.  I never dreamed that I would actually have to track it though for myself.  My IBS that I had before surgery always leaned toward diarrhea, so not going was never an issue.  Normally the complications with RNY are more geared toward dumping syndrome instead of constipation, but honestly its a mixture of both.  Some things that are supposed to give me dumping syndrome don't and the things that aren't supposed to make me dump, do.  Right after surgery, I dumped for 2 weeks solid; it didn't matter what I ate or even drank it made me incredibly ill.  I'm not sure what changed but one day it just went away..