Two Years After Gastric Bypass

Next month I will mark the two-year anniversary of my gastric bypass surgery. 95% of the time, I am glad I did it. The other 5% is when I get sick from over-eating or eating something I'm not supposed to; then I regret it for a few minutes. Overall it has made a very positive change in my health and appearance, and therefore in my overall outlook.
I lost a total of 137 pounds from the surgery. Most of that weight loss occurred within the first six months. I then gained about 5 pounds back, and then lost about 10 more. I have been at the same weight now for about a year. I would like to lose about 10-15 more pounds, but I'm giving my body plenty of time to recover from the major plastic surgery I had back in March before I do anything else.
My blood pressure has greatly improved with the weight loss. My sleep apnea is gone completely. My knees and hips don't hurt as bad as they did before. Unfortunately, the weight loss did not cure my back pain, and that is something I deal with on a daily basis. I have recently also injured my tailbone somehow and I feel like an OLD LADY with all these joint ailments!
One negative health side effect I've had since the gastric bypass involves my eyes. Apparently many gastric bypass patients get dehydrated very easily. I do a TERRIBLE job of drinking water, and mostly drink Diet Coke all day long. I tend to stay very dehydrated, and this has ultimately affected my eyes. I have worn contacts for 30 years, and now I'm back in glasses to let my extremely dry eyes heal. I developed a condition called neovascularization, which means the red blood vessels in the white part of my eyes are growing into my cornea. This is not reversible. They are growing that way in a "search for oxygen" according to my ophthalmologist. In order to let my eyes get oxygen, I can't wear my contacts. To me this is very depressing, as I wore ONLY my contacts for the past 30 years. To me glasses are uncomfortable and inconvenient - but hey, sight is important! Gotta do what I gotta do!
The only other "negative" since the surgery is that I can't pig out anymore. This is also a blessing and one of the reasons I had the surgery in the first place. But sometimes you just want to sit down and eat a LOT of something. Like pizza, or Mexican food, or dessert. I can't do that anymore. I can't really tolerate fried foods very well. I can't eat much bread at all, and french fries cause very painful heartburn. I can barely tolerate sugar, which means no cakes, pies, or desserts without making myself sick. I can't eat ice cream at all, and in fact, I believe I have become practically lactose intolerant since the surgery. Overall, the things I can't eat needed to be eliminated from my diet anyway, but 43 years of eating habits don't change overnight!
As I have discussed ad nauseum, the plastic surgery I had AFTER the weight loss has been the hardest on my body and my spirit. I am still not 100% and in fact, just had some blood work done last week to check on my iron levels and thyroid functions again. I have had to have two series of iron infusions since the gastric bypass. I don't absorb iron very well since then, and I have to take two iron supplements daily. Infusions are not fun at all! My energy level has been at an all-time low lately and I'm hoping there is a fix for that.
Overall, I am very glad that I had the gastric bypass procedure. The follow-up team that Dr. Boyce has in place is amazing and covers all your aftercare needs. For me, and for Artie with his surgery, it has been a very positive experience.

This is me & Mom before my gastric bypass surgery.

My niece, Deann, and me prior to my surgery.

Me & Kristi before the gastric bypass.

This is me experimenting with a darker red hair color after losing about 100 lbs.

This is me & Mom on Mother's Day 2011, pretty much how I look now. Hopefully you can see a big difference between the before surgery pictures & after surgery pictures!

Plastic Surgery: Why I Love It & Why I Won't Do It Again (Part 2)

This is a continuation of a previous post:
WARNING: GRAPHIC PRE- AND POST-OP PHOTOS

Fast-forward about 3 years from my first plastic surgery to my gastric bypass surgery. I will write more about that experience in future posts, and you can scroll back in my archives to read my thoughts as I was recovering from that surgery. I was advised to wait about 18 months after the gastric bypass to have any plastic surgery procedures. This was in order to give my weight loss time to stabilize. So at about 15 months post-op, I went back to Dr. Lucas and said I want to get some of this flabby loose skin taken off from all the weight loss. He was as kind and helpful as ever - except he advised that I actually needed THREE surgeries to whip me into shape. The first procedure he recommends to all his post-gastric bypass patients is the lower body lift with tummy tuck. This procedure would basically cut me all the way around, like a belt, and pull up the lower body skin, pull down the upper body skin and cut out any excess in between. Sounded great to me. Sign me up, I said. It's a 7-8 hour surgery, he said. You'll need 2-3 weeks off work to recover. Well, I've got 10 days, I said, but I'm a trooper, let's do it anyway.
Meanwhile, as I waited for my surgery date to approach I saved my money (none of my plastics procedures were covered by health insurance),
So my big surgery day approached and I couldn't wait. Until about 2 days beforehand, when I started to panic and second-guess my decision. A lady on the surgery message boards that I followed actually DIED after her surgery, and that scared me. The morning of surgery, Mom was in the pre-op room with me and I was crying, saying I wasn't sure. Mom said, "It's not too late to put your clothes back on and walk out of here." But I didn't. I stayed. She was there with me at 5:30 that morning (and so was her boyfriend, Richard). Artie had to drop Logan off at school before he could join us.
I know you want to see pictures, and they are quite embarrassing. I have tried to crop out any private areas and still give you an idea of the procedure and results. These are my pre-op markup photos. The areas with magic marker are his cut marks. The green slashes are where he is removing the area entirely. I cannot believe I am putting these on the internet, BUT when I was researching my surgeries, I wanted to see exactly what I was in for!
Pre-op:

Still here? If you haven't passed out yet or thrown up, the story continues.
So I had my surgery, I survived by the grace of God, and I went home THAT SAME DAY, late in the evening. I had prepared by buying a lift chair at the advice of many of my surgery board friends. They advised I would not be able to get up and down on my own for a couple of weeks. This is a photo of Hannah, one of my nieces, playing in the lift chair.

I had my surgery on a Friday and had the whole next week off from work. I was in a pain medicine haze and thankfully had Artie home with me most of that week. Mom came and stayed with me when Artie had to work. It was an awful week. I was in a lot of pain, and took so much pain medicine that I started to hallucinate. I kept telling Lucy to get off of me when she was actually being boarded at the kennel that week and wasn't even here! I would wake up and not know where I was. This may have been in part because I had to sleep in that chair for 2-3 weeks. When I returned to work 10 days later, I could barely move. I wasn't supposed to be driving at all yet. (I did stop taking any pain meds before driving!) I somehow struggled through that week, but left early most days (against my boss' wishes). I was miserable and very emotional, crying and sad, regretting the surgery. I loved my new flatter stomach and how much weight-loss flabby skin was gone, but it was still a VERY MAJOR operation. I did not take nearly enough time off work, but that is unfortunately the nature of my job running a small law firm. When I am not at work there is no one to fill in for me or do my job. So these photos are about one week post-op and I am still quite swollen, but you can see a partial result.

Just when I thought I might be feeling better, part of my incision started to open up. To make a long story short, it became a large open wound, became infected several times, and still today, 5 months post-op, I have a small wound about the size of a pencil eraser that bleeds some days and drains clear fluid other days. And it is right where my waistband goes for pants, skirts, etc. Very uncomfortable and inconvenient. This is the wound at its largest and most painful:

So even though I now have a flat stomach, although I will never be "skinny" in this lifetime, and am wearing clothes 10-12 sizes smaller than I did before my gastric bypass and lower body lift, I would not do the lower body lift again. It was a major surgery and I couldn't take enough time off work to recover; therefore part of my wound opened up and became infected, and I spent months working and living with an open, infected wound. It drained me physically and emotionally, and in retrospect having a round belly wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

I'm sorry if this post grosses you out, or if you think I have humiliated myself with these photos. I want this blog to be honest and forthcoming, to share my experiences with you as best I can, and this was definitely a major part of the last year of my life. Thank God for bringing me through it and surrounding me with a loving family to see me through it. I love what plastic surgery can do for your body - it can make an amazing change in just a few hours. But I would not do it again. The other two parts of my three-part surgery plan will not be taking place. I still love Dr. Lucas and his staff. I am just done. For me, the plastic surgery ride is over.

Plastic Surgery: Why I Love It & Why I Won't Do It Again (Part 1)

There are two confessions I must make before really digging into this post:
1. I have never been happy with my body; and
2. I watch a lot of reality television involving women to whom appearance is a #1 priority (i.e. Real Housewives; Kardashians)

So in reaction to #1 above, I take a cue from #2 above and think "hmmm. not happy with something about my body? Let's call the plastic surgeon!"

My first experience with plastic surgery was around 4 years ago. I was very overweight at the time, but the part of my body that bothered me the most was my abdomen. Logan was born via C-section. Anyone who has ever had a C-section knows that it requires cutting some of the muscles in your abdomen and they don't exactly "grow back together." Any weight that you fail to lose after pregnancy, or any that you gain thereafter, is going to hang over the C-section scar like a little (or big) kangaroo pouch. It's not an attractive thought or reality. I had this pouch and it grossed me out. I felt like a whale. I went to three different plastic surgeons to discuss any possible surgical remedies. The first one I went to was an older fellow, and he told me he thought he could help me out, but he was actually getting ready to retire and wanted to refer me to one of his partners. I went to another surgeon who treated me like I had the plague because I was overweight. I'll never forget sitting there naked on the exam table and him walking in and saying "Plastic surgery is not a treatment for obesity. You would have to lose a lot of weight before I would even consider seeing you again." He was a real meanie and I cried for days after that. Then I read online somewhere about Dr. Lucas and thought I'd give it one more try. I scheduled an appointment and with much trepidation went in for a consult. He examined me, treated me as if I were the only patient in the world, and said "Sure, I can help you with this!" And he did. He cut off 20 lbs. of fat in my abdomen and took away my kangaroo pouch for good. I loved him and his staff and how they treated me. I thought he hung the moon, and I was THRILLED with my first plastic surgery.
Until I got an infection in one of my drain sites.
Maybe you have had a lot of surgical experience and you know all these yucky little tidbits that they kind of gloss over in the pre-op speech. Like drains, for example. I had 2 drains running out of my lower abdomen for a few weeks after surgery. What that means exactly is that there were 2 plastic tubes running out of me into these little round clear bags. Blood & other bodily fluids drained into these little round bags and had to be emptied regularly. By me. Or Artie. Or whomever was handy. When I returned to work (much too soon), the drains had to be pinned to my clothes. One of the holes where the drain came out became infected. Guess what that means? It had to be cut open and then packed with little tiny shoestring-looking gauze twice a day. And that meant when new gauze was going in, the old gauze had to be pulled out. OWWWWCH! I ran a high fever, I felt horrible, and then it finally got better. My doctor was amazing throughout, even calling me from his vacay somewhere on a tropical island to check on me personally.
So eventually the nasty little memory of a drain site infection faded away and I was just happy with my new pouch-free tummy.

Next, I decided I needed my turkey neck worked on after I lost considerable weight. Since my double chins were down to a single now, I wanted the firm jawline of youth and thinness.

Well, said the doc, we can first try an office procedure, chin liposuction, and if you're not happy with the results, we can schedule a full chin lift later on. Sign me up, I said. I'll come one afternoon and we'll do it in the office and I'll go back to work the next day with a glorious chin.
It was about a 2.5 hour procedure, in the office, and was probably the most painful of any plastic surgeries. My jaws and neck hurt for weeks afterwards.

And the best part was I got to wear a "chin strap" (which is much more disgusting than it sounds-see photo proof!) for WEEKS afterwards. To work!! and to the store! And to bed! My boss was... let's say less than thrilled.

After about 4 weeks, though, I did have a much better jawline and chin. I still have wrinkles on my neck and they bother me, but guess what? They're staying.

My continued plastic surgery saga will be continued in a future post...