Countdown Begins....

So yesterday was my pre-op testing day and post-op class to go over the pre-surgery and post-surgery checklist regarding food stages (clear, supplementing with protein shakes, pureed and transitioning to solids).  The class was a good review.  About an hour into it, it hit me, I was starting this whole process ALL OVER AGAIN.  I remembered sitting there back in June of 2010 before my Lap-Band.  I can't believe that I got to where I was and BOOM, in a flash, back again.  I really thought that it never would happen.  I had had wonderful success. 2+ years of it. The old me was dead, buried, never to return.  I took a deep breath and let it go.......  It is what it is.  No one could predict that this would happen.  It just slipped.  I can't go back and change anything.  Just glad that the last 10 months are over.   Truthfully, I am glad that for a few things:

1) I had not told many people that I even had the Lap-Band. (Not even my boyfriend, yes, you heard that right, not even him. Imagine that conversation, "Rob, uh, I need you to take me back to the hospital honey, I have to have emergency surgery....")  I decided to come clean with a whole bunch of people, it became too hard to remember who knew what. That has been a surprisingly freeing feeling.

2) If I ever thought that I was the one who had this whole "fat" thing now under control, I was proven very, very wrong.  The band was my tool.  The band was my friend.  The band gave me the assistance that I needed to do what I had never been able to do before to control my weight.  Without the band I was the same old me who had no "off" switch regarding food intake.  The Revision VSG is going to be my new tool.

3) I had to take a really good look at myself.  Where I had been, where I got to when I was so much more healthy and fit and how quickly I returned to so many negative and toxic feelings when I gained the weight. I grieved for losing the "new me" the "improved me".  I wallowed in self pity and all of those very dangerous and negative feelings felt like they were swallowing me up.  I couldn't believe that those feelings could ever come back, wasn't that supposed to have been cured?  I still had to work on myself. I still had to realize that that fragile, broken me was still inside.  I have had to work to be caring and loving to myself.

The rest of the pre-op was the normal poking and prodding and peeing in a cup, followed by EKG and X-Ray and a the usual 1000 vials of blood.  Long day.  I have to look forward to the scope on Monday morning at 6AM.  Hoping that is uneventful as well.

Well, just looked at the clock and should be tucked in bed by now.

- Ames