One goal down!

Good evening everyone! Sorry it's taken me a while to post a new message, but I finally got caught up enough to do it. I started back to work last week, and have been working on applications for nurse anesthesia school. Whew...the deadline was October 1st and I made it with a few days to spare! Now comes the hard part of waiting for an interview!

This past Tuesday marked 3 weeks since I've had surgery. Part of me feels like it was just yesterday, but other parts feel like it was years ago! I feel like the lifestyle I'm leading now is one I've led for a loooong time. It's really starting to become second nature to me. So for the grand total weight lost...31 pounds! I've officially met my first goal: to lost 10% of my starting body weight. I even went over that 10%. I was so excited to get to this point. They say that just losing 10% of your body weight drastically drops your risk of health complications, so I'm happy to get that first 10% gone!

I had a little scare last week. I started back to work on Wednesday, and by 11am had horrible shoulder pain, which I had been dismissing as leftover gas pains from surgery. They were awful!! The next night, I went to my first support group meeting and talked with Amber, who said she would check with Fuzz. She called me Friday morning at work and said Fuzz wanted to see me in the clinic that day. I went, he examined me, and decided to do a CT scan to rule out a perforation or any complications. I kinda freaked out! (not on the outside, of course, just on the inside...I couldn't look like a psycho!) So after all of that, he said I was fine and my lab work looked good. It is possible that it was referred pain from the connecting part of the band to the port laying on my diaphragm. Thank goodnesss!! Since then, the pain has been happening less and less, and I feel sooo much better! He did drop my hours at work to 8 hour days until my follow up appointment next Thursday, so I've picked up an extra day each week. Whew!

Support group was great! First was support group for lap-band patients. In it, everyone asked each other questions and discussed their progress. It felt great to be with people that understood exactly what I was going through! Afterwards, the general meeting began with lap band and bypass patients together. During this meeting, the people from Pacer Bikes came and talked about the benefits of biking. It was very interesting, and really made me want to go out and buy one! Overall, I felt great when I left the meeting...very inspired to continue to work on this.

Hmmm...what else?! OH! EATING! I got to start real foods this past Sunday!! Of course, everything has to either come out of a blender or look like it did. I was a little worried, but so far, so good! Tonight, I'm making ground turkey with marinara sauce, topped with cheese. Yum! I'm trying to introduce new foods everyday to see what I can and can not tolerate. My favorite so far? Wendy's chili! Yep...I've actually eaten beef! For those of you that don't know, I haven't eaten beef since I was 13 years old...it all started with a bet, but when I realized I didn't miss it, I kept it out of my diet. Now, however, I need the protein, so I had to buckle down and try eating it again. YUM YUM YUM!

That's all for now...I promise I'll be better about posting so you're not forced to read 5 page long posts! This week, I'd like to give a special thanks and "lub ya" to Meena for sitting with me and mom before my ct scan, and harrassing the radiology department enough that I didn't have to wait all day!!

Mucho love,
Molly