My blog moved temporarily

An online friend of mine and I have teamed up for the Biggest Loser's Million Pound Match Up. I've been blogging on our site here: http://helenkelley.spaces.live.com So at least till that challenge period is up, you can catch my newest blogs there, if you're interested.
Thanks :)

Back on track

Back on track


I had a really good day being on track with my eating and journaling. I didn't get a workout in, but it was a really busy day full of lots of errands and a meeting in the evening. I plan on working out at home in the morning tomorrow and then going to Curves to work out in the evening, so tomorrow should be a more productive day as far as workouts go.

I'm down a pound and have 40 to go to have my hernia/panni surgery now. I had 41 to lose to have it done, so that's one pound down towards it.

Earlier this evening at my Women's Bible study group, several ladies approached me and remarked about my weight loss and wanted to know how I was doing it and had many nice things to say. It's great that I can be an inspiration to others who have a lot of weight to lose. That's one of my goals.

But today, I journaled everything I ate and ate what I'd pre-planned to have, so I didn't have to think about food much, just eat what I'd already planned out and then forget about it (or try lol). That seems to work a lot better for me than eating as I go. So I'm off to a good start so far :)

Dr. Appointment today...huge news!

Since my last post here, I'm down another 9 pounds. I haven't been posting on my blog like I should, but that'll be changing after today's news.
This will probably be a little long, so get comfy if you read this. It's huge huge news for me though, and need to vent about it

Anyway…

I had my first appointment today with my new bariatric surgeon in Akron.

A little background: I haven't followed up with the surgeon who did my gastric bypass surgery in 2001 since I found out I was pregnant in 2002 (actually I did go to see them once in 2005 and since I'd had a gain the male doctor of the male and female surgeon team blew me off and only spent about 5 minutes with me after me driving all the way to Dayton for the appointment..about a 3 ½ hour drive so I stopped going then). I saw a nutritionist in Akron in August and she recommended this bariatric surgeon she works with at the hospital in Akron and said I should make an appointment and followed up at least once a year to monitor my pouch and nutritional deficiencies regularly.

Ok…up to date now: So…I had my first appointment with this new doctor today and found out big…huge news.

He started out by asking me questions in general about my health and weight history, nutrient deficiencies and complications since the surgery (in my case, multiple kidney stone surgeries). Then he gave me an order for an Upper GI (I'm scheduled for that next week) to see what's going on with my pouch and intestines, etc. He ordered some lab work to check out my thyroid function and nutrient levels and general blood work. Then he had me lay back on my back and unzip my pants so he could examine my incision and the stomach tissue around the incision and that's where the big news comes in.

I've known I've had a small hernia that developed after my surgery, but my regular doctor didn't think it was problematic enough to worry about. Today, this doctor had me cough and push out my stomach and when I did, there's a large rounded-cone-shaped area that pushes out from my stomach about three inches above my belly button. The hernia is now quite large. He wants to do surgery to repair it and wants me to lose another 40 pounds before that surgery.

He said if I put it off much longer it could create serious problems and if they had to do an emergency surgery there would be a lot more complications and they wouldn't be able to put this mesh in to make sure it didn't reoccur and if we did it soon, before it became bad enough to have emergency surgery, they could do the proper job and ensure it would not come back and be a problem in the future, so he wants me to get down another 40 pounds and have it done as soon as I can.

What makes it huge news is that he thinks my insurance company will be able to cover a panni culectomy and do it all at the same time.
He said the rationale is that the excess abdominal fat could create problems with the healing after the repair of a hernia that large. He's having me see a plastic surgeon that he works alongside who will do the surgery with him and is going to send the plastic surgeon a letter explaining it all to get the ball rolling with the insurance company while I get started losing another 40 pounds. He said there's also signs of a mild infection under the abdominal apron that will give another reason for the insurance company to approve the procedure.

So…in the meantime…I have to get on track big time with my weight loss and get another 40 pounds off. He wants me to lose at least 2 pounds a week (he said more is even safe) and I see him again on December 4th when he wants me to be down at least 8 pounds. Then I'll keep seeing him once a month till I'm down the 40 pounds and then he'll schedule the surgery. I'll be going to his support group once a month as well.

This is blowing my mind. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever have any kind of plastic surgery. I gave up on the idea of ever being at a "normal" weight a long time ago and have been pushing just to get smaller in weight to be healthier, but not to be a real normal weight. Now the possibility is there and I'm nervous… excited, but nervous and hopeful that I can pull off this new 40 pounds off. For someone who started out weighing 166 pounds more than I do now to get down to a small enough weight to and have plastic surgery just blows my mind…

I've seen people on TV have it done, but I never thought I'd ever be doing it myself.

Whew…

Well I'm also going to be seeing the psychologist who works with the bariatric patient s and am scheduled for that sometime this month as well. I also saw the nutritionist again today and we went over ways to avoid grazing (which has been my biggest issue all along).

So, they are SUPER thorough there. I'm impressed with their bariatric unit. This doctor is really young, but it may just be that I'm not as young as I used to be and he seems super young lol. His whole staff keeps telling me how good he is. One thing that impresses me too, is that he comes to the support group every month himself (and doesn't get paid for his time there). My surgeons in Dayton had a kinda sorta support group, but it was headed up by their secretary and they never went to the meetings themselves, and there were only about 10-12 people there (and they were mostly pre-op patients learning about the surgery). This surgeon has one support group for pre-ops and another one following that for us post-ops.

So…wish me luck…

I'm currently re-evaluating the whole Christmas baking and parties thing as I'm going to be "dieting" throughout the holiday season after all.

Whew…like I said…I'm completely blown away…

I'm REALLY going to need extra support big time for this next 40 pounds
________
From: http://www.herniaoptions.com/dtcf/components/faq


What is a ventral hernia?

A ventral hernia usually occurs in the abdominal wall because of a weakening due to a previous surgical incision. The result is a bulge or tear in the abdominal wall that allows a balloon-like sac to form in the weakened area.


What are the symptoms of a hernia?

Some hernias are quite bothersome or painful. Others cause no symptoms. A hernia may cause tenderness and pressure or discomfort when you bend over, cough or strain. You may notice a lump or bulge at the site of the hernia that moves inward when you push on it.

Why is it necessary to have a hernia repaired?

Left untreated, a hernia will not go away. It will frequently get bigger. Without surgery, complications are possible. Tissue that is a part of the intestines may become stuck in the hernia, cutting off the blood supply to that tissue. The result can be very serious, and emergency surgery may be required.


What could happen if a ventral hernia is left untreated?

Like other hernias, a ventral hernia may become worse if left untreated. And ventral hernias can be dangerous, because abdominal structures, like the intestines, can become stuck or twisted in the hernia, leading to a more complex and riskier operation. While the only known treatment is to have the ventral hernia repaired through surgery, it is generally considered to be a low-risk surgical procedure associated with few complications.

One type of surgery performed to help with this condition is Minimally Invasive Procedure (MIP) for ventral hernia repair.

MAJOR MILESTONE REACHED!! YAYYYYY I DID IT!!

YAHOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!
After spending the majority of July on a nasty plateau and then having a bout of water weight gain (8 pounds worth!) that lasted a week...(drum roll please...)
I FINALLY made a MAJOR milestone!! I finally got lower than the lowest after my gastric bypass surgery. I haven't weighed what I do today in 20 years!! It was 1987 the last time I weighed what I do today.
I'm down 63 pounds since January, and giving me a total of 158 pounds off since my highest weight in 2001.
Doing a huge happy dance today!
Singing: "I DIIIIIID it, I DIIIIIIID it..la la la la la..I DIIIIIID it! Go Helen..it's your birthday...go Helen...you can do it LOL"
I got on the scale and it was one tenth of a pound away and I thought "oh no WAY!! LOL" I went to the bathroom and then I took my rings off and got back on the scale and there it was...staring back at me...my lowest weight in 20 years ;)
I was so happy I forgot to hit the button on my scale to save the reading :) I was standing there on the scale staring at the number and squealing for joy when the phone rang and I went to get the phone and forgot to hit the button to save it, but I swear it was there!!! LOL. I was thinking "bad timing! At least let it be Shelley" (one of my best friends who is losing weight too and works out with me once in a while):) It was ;) I answered the phone shouting "oh my God oh my God oh my God!!!!!!! Thank you Jesus!!!" LOL
The first thing she said was "Let me guess...you did it?" and she was laughing.
I've been doing some kind of cardio on and off throughout the day since then so I can definitely see it again (and maybe a little less) tomorrow for weigh in and be able to save the reading on my scale this time lol.
Did I mention I haven't been this weight in 20 years?!! LOL. Now I have to dig around and find a new picture to put on my refrigerator for motivation. I need to find a picture of me somewhere about 30 pounds smaller than I am now to put on my fridge to give me something to aim for now ;)
I'm in brand new territory since my surgery now. And for people who say "weight loss surgery is the easy way out" (which is so not true), I can tell them "I lost a lot of it 6 years AFTER the lowest the surgery got me to.
YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY :)
I can't TELL you what this is doing for my motivation right now LOL I kind of feel like I'm starting over again in new territory :)
I was really starting to think my body was just happy at this weight after having weighed 158 pounds more and it wasn't going to let me drop much farther. Yayyyy :)
Ok..I'll shut up now. Can you tell I'm way way excited? LOL
I'll try to keep up with my blog a little better now, I promise :) I'm going to have my husband take a new picture of me this weekend for my milestone picture. I'll post what one day next week.

Some ramblings - about my dad and growing up as a big kid

So I watched a show tonight on the TLC channel called "The World's Heaviest Man" about a man who weighed over 1200 pounds and at the end of the show he'd gotten down to 840 pounds or so using "The Zone" diet. The creator of the diet visited him a few times and covered his expenses for it all. It was so sad to see what his eating habits has gotten him to. The worst part was these two huge growths of lymphoedema on his legs that kept him from walking once he got to 840. His skin was stretched and black (he was a latin man, so his skin wasn't supposed to be black) and it was seeping and infected and scaly and just nasty. It was basically enormous fat deposits and its a wonder he didn't develop a bigger infection than what he had from it!
My dad died of septic shock after a big growth he had under his stomach that hung between his legs (that was a lot like what the guy on the show had on each of his legs) burst... Infection set in and took over his body and killed him at the age of 64 in 1998, and he wasn't half the size of the man on that show (my dad was a little over 500 at his highest weight).
My dad died without seeing me get married, build our own home and become a mommy to my baby boy. If he'd taken better care of himself and lost enough weight to safely remove that growth (or better yet, never got that big for it to have developed at all), he'd be here with us now to enjoy his youngest child's (me) family and he could have walked me down the aisle when I got married instead of my brother.
I've learned a huge lesson from my dad's mistakes and I'm wanting to be alive for a very long time for my family.
Anyway....the show brought back a lot of memories of what my dad dealt with and showed me even more why I need to stay on track so I don't put my family through what he did his by neglecting himself so badly.
_____________________________________________________

The most cruel name I was called in high school was "moose". This chubby red-headed kid with a ton of freckles named Chuck Metcalf started that lovely nickname...sigh. He'd stand at one end of the hall and in between classes when the halls were full of students, he'd wait till I walked by and when I got to the other end of the hall he'd start yelling "mmmmmmmmMOOSE!!" and a lot of other teenagers would be standing around with him and laughing their heads off...
I told myself that if I ever saw him alone by himself once I already had my diploma that I was going to punch him in the face as hard as I could. Ironically...the day we graduated, I was in the hall going to my locker to get my stuff and the hallway was empty...all but Chuck. I was SO tempted. Then his dad (I assumed it was his dad anyway) came around the corner to get him and they were standing there together at his locker. I wanted so badly to at least go up to his dad and tell him something like "you should be so proud of your son, listen to the living hell he made my high school years" and explain what he'd done to me. But I just stood there for a minute and looked at him and he just looked back at me and didnt' say a word, but had this look of fear on his face like he was nervous that I was going to get him into trouble with his dad. At first I wanted to tell his dad all about it and then punch Chuck in the face as hard as I could and run away in glee, but something (perhaps some One) held me back and I suddenly just felt sorry for him. So I just looked him in the eye and turned and walked away and rejoined my family outside to go home to my little graduation party.
I think I realized that for someone to dedicate themselves so much to making my life a living hell for 3 years, someone who'd never done anything to him and never brought this on myself, he had to have been a very insecure and troubled kid who put me down to try to cover up his own inadeqacies. I think I grew up a lot that day :)
I often wonder if Chuck ever did and hope he stopped putting people through the hell he did me.

Still going strong!

Today I'm only a few pounds over my lowest I'd gotten to from my gastric bypass surgery. I have a huge goal I set for myself back in January that I hoped to reach by my birthday on July 9th. I'm about 7 pounds away from it and have come so far (56 pounds) this year and now I'm down to the wire and starting to sweat it :)
I've been working out like a crazy woman and cut my food back temporarily to try to hit my goal. Right now I have some water retention plaguing me so it's hard to tell what the fat loss is doing under the water weight.
Today when I was working out at Curves, I used the body fat meter to check my progress as far as body fat percentage goes, and it was down nicely, so there's defintely some water retention and possibly some muscle building going on. My fingers are a little puffy today. I tend to retain water a lot on hot days, so that doesn't help.
I've been riding my bike 8 miles a day for the past 4-5 days and my legs are feeling harder so I think there's some muscle building going on that's causing some weight fluctuation. I just hope it lets up and I see a nice drop soon :)
Wish me luck :) Pray that I'll drop 7 pounds by my birthday on July 9th if you will too! :)

Picking back up yet again

Whew...ok..well here it is June 18, 2007. A long time since my last post! A lot has happened since my last post. I was losing weight really well in 2005 and then autumn came and with it several family tragedies. I turned to my old buddy food for comfort and to help me cope with it (big big mistake!) But I'm back on track again now and have all that regain back off again and today I sit here at the very same weight as what I weighed when everything went to pot.
My little boy had a nasty fall in September that resulted in a very very scary ambulance trip to the hospital with a concussion and he'd gone into shock and we thought we lost him for a while there...I don't really like to think about it much even now..anyway..he's just fine now, thank God.
Then a few weeks later, in October, my husband had a heart attack and had to have a heart cath that lead to finding out that he had a 90% blockage and so they wound up putting three stents in. Then his kidney (which was already bad and the other one was destroyed during a fall from a ladder before we met) started to fail. He went into renal failure and is now on dialysis waiting for a donor so he can have a kidney transplant.
If all of that wasn't bad enough, I awoke about three weeks after he got out of the hospital to intense pain in my back and had to go to the ER. Turns out I had a monster kidney stone and since that day I've had 3 surgeries to blast it away and was admitted for a while with a bad UTI from that. My last surgery was in February and I finally passed 3 big chunks of the stone in July.
But in the midst of all the stress, as I said, I really fell off the wagon by turning to food for comfort.
But this year, I got my head together and am losing weight again. I've relost all the regain and today I sit here at the same weight I'd gotten down to in 2005 and I'm still fired up and working hard on getting more off.
I decided to start this blog back up again and try to keep it updated as I tackle my latest journey on the road to better health.
I have got to get healthier to be around for my little boy (who just turned 4 in March) in case (God forbid) anything happens to my husband... and to be here to help my husband as well! My family needs me and I intend to be there for them and not put my health off like my father did his.
Say a prayer for me, won't you? :)

I'll update more later.
God bless,
Helen

I DID it !! First big goal reached ! Also Naproxen Sodium issue

WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!

I DID it I DID it, I DIIIIIIDDDD it !! :) Today I am the EXACT weight as the day I found out I was pregnant with my son in July 2002 and also the weight I was right after I had him on my first doctor's visit after having him.
All the shame from my gastric bypass surgery loss regain is finally GONE !! Thank you GOD ;)
I've been waiting for this day since January !! Please rejoice with me !! LOL
Can you hear me squealing wherever you are?? lol If not , it's a wonder ;)

Another reason this is so extreme to me today is that last Monday I was showing a 10 pound GAIN !!!! All water weight from having taken Naproxen Sodium (Aleve) for a pinched nerve in my arm. My husband started suffering with water weight in his foot that caused him a lot of pain and he did some research online and looked up the medications he'd been taking and found out one of the side affects for Naproxen Sodium is severe water weight gain. So we both stopped taking it and today that 10 pounds is gone plus one more putting me at my first HUGE goal. (His pain is down to almost nothing now too and his foot swelling is gone.)
I'm gonna get this water weight gain issue under control hopefully :) My doctor had put me on a high dose of Triameterene/HCL and I hadn't thought it was working well enough so he called me in a prescription for Lasix. Well I always thought that Lasix was the mother of all water pills, but aparently not for me it wasn't. So I started back on the Triamterene/HCL again and now it's working great. That 10 pound water gain is gone and I'm gonna just keep taking it regularly now. I don't know why the Lasix didnt' work very well, but my husband thinks it's a low dose, so maybe that's why.
Anyway...it was SO awesome to look down at the scale and see that exact same amount as the day I found out I was pregnant in 2002. I've been longing to get back down to that for a long time now.
So now onward to my next big goal. 18 more pounds for this one. When I was pregnant with Evan I lost weight in my first 2 trimesters and was 18 pounds lower than the weight I was when I got pregnant. So now I want to reach for that. That would be the absolute lowest weight I was since my weight loss surgery. Then once I reach that any more weight loss is brand new fresh loss and the lowest since...lets see....probably around 1986 I'd say.
I just had to rejoice :) Thanks for listening ;)
I bought three new workout DVDs the other day. I'd worked out to Walk Away The Pounds 2 mile workout the day before that and it just wasn't enough of a workout for me. I bought Leslie Sansone's Walk Away The Pounds Walk and Jog, Leslie Sansone's "You Can Do Abs with the stability ball" and Carmen Electra's Fit to Strip workouts (it's not really stripping but a great workout I keep hearing LOL).
I needed a change in my workout routine's so I thought I deserved some new workout videos.
I'm still walking for at least 90 minutes on my treadmill three times a week, going to Curves three times a week as well as the Tae Bo twice a week. I sometimes do other exercise videos in the evenings on days I go to Curves, so I'll try my new workouts this week.
I was SO frustrated last week with the water gain I was tempted to just throw in the towel. But I stayed on program and worked through the frustration and boy am I glad I did :) Now I'm psyched again and pumped up to keep going.
Wish me luck and say a few prayers for me if you're so inclined ;)