Happy Anniversary to Me!

One year ago I was waking up in my hospital bed with a giant incision held together with giant staples.

I woke up in the morning one year ago in a hotel room, suffering from the after affects of a laxative meant to clear out my digestive system after a wonderful liquid diet regimen. Then I rolled into the hospital around five, was pushed into the operating room around eight. Many hours later I was waking up in recovery and forgetting how to breath.

I stayed up most of the night just bleeding. Bleeding and bleeding. Not much fun. But I did learn that the food network kept replaying the same few cake-backing episodes, which was good because I'd watch five minutes, doze off, and wake up an hour later right around the time the episode was repeated right near the point where I dozed off. That was pretty surreal after it happens four or five times.

When I finally decided to get serious about pre-op dieting, I weighed 458 pounds, and that was taken in January. The day I went in for surgery I weighed 376 pounds.

This morning after a lazy long vacation for the "Easter break" at my in-laws, I weighed 276.5 pounds.

If I am doing my math correctly, that means that I've lost nearly 100 pounds since my surgery and nearly 180 pounds overall.

Further estimates would say that I've lost 40% of my weight overall and about 26% since my surgery.

Depending on the weight charts you use I think I've lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 66% of my excess weight. I haven't talked to my doctor about it yet because my one-year followup is scheduled for next week (yipes!) and supposedly you're aiming to lose 75% of your excess bodyweight post-bariatric surgery. If I'm right and I've only lost about 60-some percent, then I'm either still off or there's more weight to lose down the road.

I don't know if I should expect to be chastised next week or congratulated. To be honest I'm nervous about hearing the doctor's assessment. I can picture him telling me that he's disappointed in my lack of progress or that I'm not doing something right.

It has certainly been quite the interesting trip. It's getting rather late here because to celebrate my anniversary my wife took me to my favorite restaurant since my surgery: Panera Bread. My wife, son and I had a lovely evening out shopping at Barnes and Noble, Target, Walmart, and Panera; my daughter decided she'd rather spend her time doing something else, but my four year old son told me to have a happy anniversary, so it wasn't so bad. Right now he's in love with a new Bakugan that Daddy helped pay for him as a treat.

Maybe tomorrow or in the near future I'll sit down and go over some thoughts about how things have changed and what has happened since and because of the surgery. So many things have changed, many other things have stayed the same. It's weird to look back on the journal and the blog to see how things have altered through the months following the surgery.

I was determined to put something up on the anniversary of my alterations. I got up the numbers. And later on I'll try posting something about the feelings from the surgery and further thoughts on the enormity of the changes that have occurred. No pun intended.

One year ago I was waking up soaking in my own blood. Today I'm reminded of that every time my skin wobbles and flaps, or I look down at the horrible rigid scar tissue. My branding for life to act as a reminder why I cannot and should not ever eat cake again, or what too much McDonald's can do to you, or what our fast food nation and culture of pre-packaged convenience foods have encouraged the population to indulge in.

Today I'm waking up in an alien body that doesn't quite fit anymore, and feeling more than a little weird when I can walk more than three hundred paces and not feel like I can't get enough air into my lungs. Our "local" Panera Bread is at one end of a strip mall anchored on the other side by a Target. My wife drove the car from Panera to Target while my son and I walked; we were about halfway there when my son spotted Mommy driving by in the car.

"Oh no!" he shouted. "Mommy is going to beat us!"

He took off in a fast trot down the sidewalk. I started jogging alongside him. Soon we were running, a still overweight thirty-something and his four year old son running down the sidewalk to get to the store entrance before Mommy did. We got there with time to spare; Mommy had just parked the car and was opening the door when we stopped at the front entrance. My son was beaming a huge smile, declaring to Mommy as she walked up that we had beaten her to the door. I was silently smiling because I could still breathe without gasping like a fish.

That was my night, one year after my surgery.