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In my second week post-op, I've been focused on two things. First, I'm trying to listen close to my new tummy and figure out what it needs. Second, I'm trying NOT to listen to the crazies in my head and give into what they need. Along the way, I've made three noteworthy mistakes. I'm sure if I was really keeping count there were more than three, but here are three I hope not to repeat.

Mistake #1 - Wearing Pants!! What was I thinking? I have three incisions along my waistline. I've been wearing loose fitting PJ pants slung low around my hips at home. Today, I made the choice to put on a pair of jeans since I was going out to see a movie with my mom. I thought I would be ok since they had elastic in the waist. Yeh, not so much. If I was better at listening to my new tummy, I would have heard it tell me that we currently have a 30 minute pants rule. But, I missed it. Luckily, I was wearing a pretty long shirt so I could fold the top of my pants down and get through my day. Needless to say, I wasn't feeling very pretty (or comfortable) today. The lesson learned here is I need to plan my "goin out" outfits more carefully and make sure I am don't choose clothes my tummy won't approve of when I return to work in less than a week.

Mistake #2 - I snarfed a mozzerella stick nearly a week ahead of schedule. Now, I followed all the rules. I planned to eat this glorious cheese. I didn't drink anything 30 minutes before I went for it. And then when I ate the stick of salty dairy heaven, I was careful to take pencil sized bites, chew them each 30 times, and pause 15 seconds between bites. My hubbie looked at me all kinds of cross-ways when I set to this endeavor, but I rationalized pulling ahead soft (ok, semi-solid) food by a week on account of I was doing so well...no nausea, no trouble real trouble downtown, etc. And I was good for about 1 hour. Then as I listened to my tummy, I heard her say in her pained, bloated voice, "WTF?" That's when my cheese party was over and I realized I now had to digest the Rock of Gibraltar. Not much sleeping for me that night. There was no getting comfortable. It was a good 24 hours before I started to feel decent again. It didn't kill me, but I don't think it made me stronger either. Certainly, I am placing a lot more stock in the phased diet approach now.

Mistake #3 - I took a giant bite of pepperoni pizza, chewed it up really good, and spit it out...okay, I did this twice. No question, there is no good reason to do this except to satisfy the crazies in my brain. Since this is true confession time, I'll admit I even researched chewing and spitting before I did it. I know this is a slippery slope and probably like a gateway drug to much worse things. Those two bites of pizza were really wonderful after 3 weeks of no real food, but the shame that goes with them....well, not so much. This is the kind of mistep is scary...and so soon...it makes me worry that I won't have what it takes to make this journey successfully. I really want to be posting one of those amazing "after" photos a couple years from now. I really need to not sabotage this amazing opportunity I fought so hard to get.

After 9 months of preparing for RNY surgery, I wasn't really expecting any suprises. I even knew my surgery date and time 2 weeks in advance!

Here are 5 things that suprised me and might help you be more prepared.

1. Just because they put in an IV doesn't mean you won't also get SHOTS! Yep, you read that right - SHOTS! Being the pain adverse kind of gal I am, I had made peace with the idea that I would be getting an IV and figured that would be the worst of it. In the two hours leading up to surgery, I got two shots after they placed my IV. One shot was for the relaxing medicine, so naturally I couldn't refuse. They put that one in my hinder. What a funny feeling to have your hinder be the first part of you to relax! I never thought of my hinder being very tense. The other shot was for some kind of medicine to prevent blood clots. They put that one in my tummy. God bless the diabetics who do that everyday. I got another one of those belly shots post surgery. Really not a high point. Much worse after surgery.
2. I should have gotten a flu shot well BEFORE surgery. Yes, shots are a theme here. The worst shot I had to get, the dreaded flu shot, I brought on myself. Full disclaimer: getting this shot was optional. Being the bad girl that I am, I ducked out of the flu shot jamboree at work this year. Then in the hours after surgery, when my nurse asked me if I had my flu shot yet....well, "No" didn't seem like a good answer. I couldn't imagine the thought of having the flu in my post-op condition. So I got it. It wasn't overly painful at the time. 5 days later and that shot site still ached as much as my incision sites. This made a particular problem for me when trying to get comfortable in bed.
3. Measure everything because even Jello can kill you. It's true, Jello can bring you to your knees. Silly me, didn't consider that the food on my tray as prepared by the hospital would not be in the desired quantities for a post op. Trust me, when the Jello shows up, you'll be glad to see it. It looks so much more appetizing than broth. So, that was the first thing I went for. I thought I was eating slowly. My hubbie even backs me up on this point. Who knows...maybe if I had eaten it slower and before I made it to the bottom of the bowl the nurse would have popped in and cut me off. But I ate every delicious bite. 15 minutes later I was ringing the nurse for more pain medicine. That whole event came close to keeping me in the hospital another night! This whole deal is the only thing that made me cry at the hospital.
4. One side effect of Dilaudid is wanting to scratch your face off! Now, I'm not sure how I would have ever known this about myself in advance. No doubt, this is information I will never forget going forward. Here's the thing, the was the only heavy duty pain med charted for me before I could swollow stuff. So when it became clear I could not take it, I was only offered Toradol which if you don't know is just another name for ibuprophen. This helped, but I'm very sure I could have had a lot more help with pain if I had discussed having multiple pain meds ready to go on my chart. If it isn't in you chart, your nurse has to call your doctor. That takes time and in my case, my nurse didn't even make this offer. Instead, I was advised to hang on until I could take the other heavy duty pain med by mouth.
5. One word - catheter. I'm sure someone told me about this and I blocked it out. Who wouldn't? I think it is a perfectly natural response. The good news is I was drinking 128 oz of water in the two days prior to surgery so when the catheter came out it took me no time to use the pot on my own.

Food party officially over. Time to get down to business. 1 week until surgery and it is time for a full liquid, high protien diet. My NUT gave me an option to include 1 ketogenix bar in place of 1 of 5 protien shakes required.

I have terrible diet anxiety and doing this 1 week before Xmas wasn't easy. My hope was if I didn't get too bored with it, I would do okay. In order to protect the public, I took vacation from work for this time.

To prepare for this, I have 5 protien options available:

• Premier Protien Ready to Drink (RTD) Shakes - Chocolate & Strawberry
• Bariatric Advantage - Iced Chocolate Latte & Vanilla
• Isopure - Unflavored

Not to mention, I built an arsenal of mix-in options:

• Skinny Syrups: Almond, Vanilla, Vanilla-Almond, Red Velvet Cake (hands down favorite)
• Fat Free, Sugar Free Puddings: Butterscotch, Pistachio (love this for the holidays), Banana
• Sugar Free Jello: Orange, Peach, Raspberry, Lime (Walmart Grocery has best selection and offers a generic)
• Homemade chicken stock
• Cool Whip Free (great for parfaits)

I ate ALOT of chicken stock mixed with unflavored protien. The unflavored protien is weird stuff. 1 - it foams up like beer when you mix it up. 2 - it makes slimey clumps when it gets hot. I didn't completely fix either issue, but I found by mixing the protien up seperately with cold stock and then adding that mixture to heated stock I had a pretty decent broth.

I brought my own pudding parfaits to a holiday party, which helped me make it through desert. Not quite a plate full of Xmas cookies, but I didn't have to run and hide either.

For me, it was absolutely UNTRUE that hunger would be gone by day 2. I was hungry up to day 5 and I think what did the trick there was I had increase my water intake to 128 oz a day to prepare for surgery. I was too busy peeing to be hungry.

I planned a number of distractions for myself during this time:

• Comedy night with the girls
• Holiday party (brought my own food, ok liquids...whee!)
• Walks (thankfully, the weather was great)
• Musical with the family
• Pulled ahead Christmas Eve present opening with the kids

Here's how I would sum this week up:

• Good: I didn't kill a single person, pet or loved one. Actually, I never once even came close. I lost 12 pounds - so the week of liver shrinking was a success!
• Bad: I dumped a 24 oz bottle of crystal light in my favorite Coach purse and drowned my wallet and key fob!
• Ugly: I was hungry for 5 days!!!