Steve's Journey

 

For the first 3 months I had great difficulty eating anything, I was 'regurgitating' up to 5 times a day, I always felt sick, I was a little scared and completely fed up with trying to eat at all. Nothing I tried seemed to work, what I could eat yesterday I could not eat today, I was repeatedly told I was eating too fast despite taking up to 2 hours to eat a meal (e.g. half a cup of soup).

By crikey the weight loss was fast.

I will now gloss over the first year not because I want to minimalise how bad it was but I don't want to dwell over it too much you have the general idea and if you wanted to discuss it further then I am happy to do that offline.

As it usually does my eating slowly improved over the next year (many are back to 'normal' eating after 3 months) a few never return to a normal diet.

It is now 16 months since the operation and I have pretty much stopped loosing weight though if I am sick or work a little to hard (which usually means I skip meals as well) then I will drop another kilo or so. I am now 85kg with a BMI of 24 and I am deliriously happy with the outcome. Despite the difficult times from very early on I believed that I had done the right thing and even if I knew how hard it was going to be I would still have done it. The only thing that I was really disappointed with was the lack of information on what can happen when you don't have a specific medical problem (complication) following the surgery but 'do it hard' as I did. The surgeons cannot provide you with this as they can only do the medical stuff and the ones that I had dealt with had not had the surgery so they could give you the facts but not the feelings. Only others that had had the surgery and had a hard time could.

This was compounded at the time with the information on the support group site. During this time it was almost like there was a conspiracy by certain members to promote WLS at all costs and anyone whom had anything other than a dream recovery was discouraged to contribute and often even derided if they tried to tell their story. Fortunately this changed over the 9 months or so this group was a very solid emotional crutch for me, please note though I have not been active on this group for some time so I am no longer up to date with the current content. The disappointment was that I wanted to make an informed decision and I would have liked to prepare for the outcome that I had rather than the fear believing something was seriously wrong. Trust me The Emergency ward is not a pleasant place to spend a night, for starters there are no beds!

I didn't need to be protected from knowing this was a possible outcome. II still would have elected to have the surgery if I knew this could happen but at least I would have been prepared for it.

Anyway, at the time of writing (December 2005) I am 16 months post op I feel great, though I still have bad days my knee is the best it has been for 11 years or so. My sleep apnoea has disappeared, triglycerides, cholesterol and fatty acids are all low normal or even slightly below normal. Insulin levels are extremely low and combined with quitting smoking I now have a fighting chance at a decent innings. I have another boy to run around after and I should now be able to do that for quite some time to come. Life is good! Eating is still a challenge at times, steak (and in fact anything very high protein\fat\sugar) is not my friend. However if I take it very slow and don't get too ambitious I can eat and enjoy small amounts of most things. But most exciting is that for the first time that I can remember food is on my terms. I tend to only eat when I am hungry and if I am not I just don't eat, sounds trite but is an ability I never used to have. I also can eat until I am satisfied and stop at that stage, previously I had never known that state. Traditionally I have always only had two states: hungry and uncomfortably full, no middle ground. It was very exciting the first time I was trying to decide what feeling I was having when I was neither hungry nor full but did not feel like eating any more. After some time I realised this was the feeling of satisfaction and this is what 'normal' people are born with! 

Anyway that is my lot, as stated a couple of times throughout this dissertation I am happy to go into specifics offline, but that is enough for a  public web site. Now on to the progress pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                    

 

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