Hey all! It's April
It is 1am on a Sunday (well now I guess Monday) and am unable to sleep, so I thought since it is just past one year since my gastric sleeve surgery, that I would write about it and give you all an honest look into what it was like.
So before I start talking about the actual experience, I am going to start with where I was.
In high school, around 15 or so, I was 5'10 and around 150lbs. I was teeny tiny, but I did not feel like I was. I was self conscious about my body since the women in my life had been telling me that my thighs were big, that I had a stomach, and that I could stand to lose some pounds. I had never ever felt "skinny" in my life because of all these outside thoughts on what I SHOULD be.
When I graduated high school I was around 180ish, give or take. I started to feel more and more depressed (was not yet diagnosed with my mental health issues, which I can go more into in the future) and had a bad break up in my first year of college, and had slowly been putting on weight as time goes on.
By the time 2015 reared its head, I was already just shy of 280lbs! I was even more depressed and anxious about my appearance and had not been taking care of myself. After getting engaged to my now hubby, 
But what made me even THINK about trying this out? Well one day at a Christmas party my mother was hosting, I noticed she looked FANTASTIC. She was confident, glowing, and it also didn't hurt that she looked very fit. I had to ask what she was doing. Well she confided in me that in fact she had gotten Gastric Sleeve Surgery that September. After asking her questions about her experience with it, as well as doing mounds of research, I decided to talk about it with Ryan and that it was for me.
I scheduled my appointment with my doctor. The week before surgery, I was required to not eat anything solid or cloudy liquids (like shakes, ect.). That was hard! I love food!!!! But I got past it.
The day came when it was time to have my surgery! I was excited, nervous, sleepy, and also hungry :P
I don't remember anything besides lying down and going to sleep. I woke up what felt like minutes later feeling NAUSEOUS! There was no pain, so thats fantastic, but felt like my stomach was jumping around in my body. I felt so bad because I for some reason couldn't get across that I was nauseous and instead said pain, another patient had heard me and I am worried I scared the poor girl! Oh dear! Not my intention haha.
About an hour after surgery I was in the hospital bed just resting. I could not sleep for the life of me longer than an hour at a time. So I would sleep for an hour, wake up and go walk around the floor to help get the gas in my stomach moving around and out of the body.
Tip 1: If you're getting this surgery, definitely walk around if your doctor permits you. It helps!
Honestly, the worst thing about this point is how I could only sleep for an hour at a time. No pain, but still had some nausea towards the end of my meds in my body. But still nothing to bad, I was surprised and very happy!
Oh another thing that was pretty bad (not physically at least) is that some of the other people who were having the same surgery were having a bad time. One gal kept dry heaving due to the nausea and sounded painful. She ended up ok of course!
The first thing I remember having after my surgery is a cup of ice. Not even water, but ice. I remember thinking, THATS IT?! WHAT! I had lots of cold sensitivity with my teeth, but my god if that wasn't the greatest thing in the world. It felt so good to 'eat' this ice. Wow. 10/10 would recommend.
Another thing is that after surgery you have this very very sexy draining tube hanging out of your abdomen. It made it so hard to sleep with because I was paranoid of having it leak. YUCK. One person I knew had that happen and I just almost cried for them! When it came out, it wasn't painful, just a lot of pressure, but OMG IF IT DIDNT FEEL GREAT TO GET IT OUT. I was finally able to sleep! Hazzah!
For the first month, I mostly ate broth. Broth was my go to, and I didn't even eat a lot of it. I recall having Ryan having to tell me to eat because I would forget, I just was not hungry at all. When I started eating solids, I remember eating just a tiny bit and then vomiting because it was just too much for my little stomach. It didn't hurt at all, I was just adjusting to my new stomach size.
I began dropping weight like CRAZY. My official starting weight was 278.4lbs and by April I was down 25lbs. The next month I was down a total of 45ish. It was insane!!! I had started feeling better about myself and finally felt like I had wanted to, even without being at my goal weight.
And now here I am, 1 year later, sitting at 110lbs lost in total! I am now at my goal and I went from a size 26 to now a size 10. I feel so much better, I have more stamina, and when I worked as a pharm tech, I was able to do my job faster and better. I also noticed that my period pain that I had was much more controllable. Before I would have terrible back pain where I would cry and be unable to move for the first day or two of my cycle.
I still find myself grabbing too much food and being unable to eat it all but that leads to the next best thing:
LEFT OVERS!!!!!!
Its fantastic to not have to cook and getting 2-3 meals from a restaurant meal. I am so beyond happy that I have done this, I would have never thought of myself doing something like this. Before I would've thought it was cheating, like I should be able to lose the weight by myself. But no. I no longer think of this as cheating. I did something so I could live longer, so I can be happier, so I can not hate myself when I look at photos of myself at my wedding. I saved my life by doing this.
Now is this for everyone? No! If you are happy with yourself being whatever size, shape, weight, then I am so happy for you. I am so jealous of people who just can be happy and live. This is not me fat shaming myself or anyone. I am just wanting to share my experience and open a dialog in case someone is thinking about this and might want to talk with someone to help them do their research.
If you or anyone you know has questions about this or about myself, feel free to leave a comment and I will answer. I am an open book and am just so happy to be able to share my experience.
Thanks for reading, sorry about the wall of text!
April
