Friday, August 30th 2013 - 11 days Post-Op

Well, I had my Lap-Band surgery on Monday, August 19th. Heather, my sister, was able to take me to the hospital and Mary Ellen, my mother-in-law, took care of the kids. I was pretty nervous about being under General Anesthesia because I never have before, but it wasn't bad at all. I went back to surgery around 1:00 and was out before they even put me on the surgery table. All of my nurses were male nurses, which was a first for me, but they all were pretty nice. When I woke up from anesthesia, I wasn't aware that I had had surgery and my eyes were closed and I had oxygen on  my face and felt a stabbing pain in my shoulder and abdomen, so in my mind someone was attacking me in my sleep, so I woke up swinging. I tried my hardest to punch all three nurses in the face and they told me to behave. The doctor then came and told me that he found a Haital Hernia in my abdomen that had to be fixed before he could perform the Lap Band Surgery. He speculated that the hernia had been caused by my pregnancy with my twins because of my short torso and lack of space that I had for 2 full-term babies, so my abs split and a hernia (part of my intestine) was pushed up into my diaphragm. As I was coming out of anesthesia, I guess I did some pretty silly things, like calling all of my nurses "Dude", asking Heather what to do with my bra, and telling Heather that her fingers were fat because she didn't practice the piano enough. I also kept trying to leave the hospital because I thought that if I left the pain would go away. I couldn't really feel my surgery in my stomach, although it looked liked I had been kicked in the stomach by a horse, but the pain in my shoulder caused by the C02 that they put in my system to help perform my surgery was INTENSE!!! The pain remained INTENSE, like a 7 or 8 out of 10, for an entire week. Now, 11 days post-op my pain remains around a 3, but if I go too hard it shoots back up to about a 6. The diet really hasn't been hard for me, the hardest thing is trying to get enough water (120 oz) and eat dry meals. Every now and then I have cravings, like when I saw Tacos on the Café Rio commercial or Chicken Pot Pie on the Marie Calendar's commercial, one of these days though, I will get to eat real food. I believe, I am weighing in now at 245 - five pounds down from my surgery day. I think I will start to shed more weight as I increase my activity level and the swelling from my operation goes down.