Last week I went to a consult with a bariatric surgeon. This is one of those things I've been thinking about for years (gastric bypass/gastric sleeve/lap band). I know a couple of people that have either gone through the process or are going through the process and it's worked out well for them. There's 6 months between starting everything to appease the insurance gods and the actual surgery, so I decided to start the process - I've still got 6 months to make a decision.
The first thing they did at my consultation was weigh me. The last time I saw my weight outside of my scales at home was when I was in the hospital for my pilonidal cyst surgery (428lbs according to their scale). The bariatric surgeon has fancy scales that tell you not just your weight, but measures your actual body fat via bioelectrical impedance. That's where the little receipt above comes in.
Last Thursday I got weighed and the scales printed a receipt. I've since been on the web on learned how to read the receipt. This is what I learned:
At the end is listed my desirable fat mass of 26.2-40.4 pounds, which if you add it to my base fat free weight (180.61) would put me in the 206-221 pound range, which is where I was at some point in high school. I weight 238 at graduation, and that's the lowest weight I remember.
That step is out of the way - the shock and horror of how freaking big I am. The next step is squaring away the requirements to get insurance to pay along with visiting my regular doctor to start documenting a medically supervised diet.
439.2. Damn.
Yet another update to my surgical recovery that will never end. This update is not for the squeamish or anyone about to eat. Really, it gets nasty.
Sunday, July 1st I wrote that I was suffering from a fever and was planning on going to my regular doctor if I was still running a fever come Monday. I actually wrote that at 4:00AM. After writing that, I went back to bed.
5 hours later I awoke to find myself in the throes of a post surgical infection. When I went to bed I had a small spot on my right butt cheek that had been draining a little fluid. When I woke up, the left leg of the shorts I was wearing were soaked, as well as the sheet I was wrapped up in. I hopped up to take a shower to try and tell what was really going on, and the left side of my surgical incision was oozing. Not thick enough to really be pus, but something. In fact, after my shower I was oozing enough fluid it was dripping off of me. I was leaving a trail wherever I went.
I called Gina to come look and take care of me. We called the Dr office and got a call back within 5 minutes. The on-call Dr phoned in an antibiotic prescription and told us to show up at the office first thing Monday morning. I had asked about going to the ER, but Gina was against it, thinking it would be more likely I would pick up something else and they would just try flushing my wound out. The rest of the day we spent changing bandages and taking cool showers.
Monday morning at the Dr office he confirmed I did indeed have an infection. He pulled out a suction sucker from the wall and proceeded to suck out some fluid from me. A lot of fluid. And I mean a lot. When I looked at the sucker afterward, it was mounted to the wall about 4 feet high, and the tube went from the wall, looped fown to the floor, then to the actual sucker that was resting on the counter top (so, another 3 feet high). In that 7 feet of tube you could see the red pus/fluid/ooze he sucked out, and that's just what didn't make it all the way into wherever the wall takes it. Nasty.
He ended up cutting 2 holes in my butt. That's all I really know as I haven't seen it. Gina, on the other hand, got to see it, and has seen it twice per day since as she's come to change out dressings and just take care of me.
By Wednesday my fever finally went back to normal. By Wednesday Gina was able to change bandages without audibly gagging. For the whole week I stayed in bed except to go to the bathroom, fix/eat a meal, or sneak onto the computer a couple of times.
This morning we went back to the Dr and he said I was progressing nicely (I think I've heard that before). He wants me to stay home from work for another week. My right side needs more healing than the left (which didn't seem the case 2 days ago), so Gina has to keep changing out bandages and take care of me.
I feel sorry for Gina. She's seen a whole lot of my ass over the last 5 weeks. It's not a sexy ass. It's a post surgical scarred up ass. I'm going to have to start treating her better.
As a follow up to last week I did hear back from the doctor concerning my question as to if I need another round of antibiotics since I had started to run a fever.
"No."
While that was a fine, succinct answer, I'm starting to have issues with it. I'm now on Day 5 of running a fever which is usually in the 99.1-100.7 range. Each night I go through a phase where I sweat through the sheets. My incision, for now, has finally slowed down on the high volume of pus (clear/light pink, so that wasn't a big cause for alarm). In fact, that's been within the last 24 hours so I hope that has been part of the origin for my fever.
Still, I'm not used to having a fever for that long. I can usually take an aspirin and my fever will subside after an hour or two. Not now. So, with that in mind if (when) I'm still running a fever Monday I'm going to head into Dr Mayer's office and get a second opinion from my regular doctor. If he too says I don't need an antibiotic and I'm healing like I'm supposed to, then I'll quietly keep on sweating.
Hope everyone appreciates the lack of pictures associated with this :)
This Tuesday I started back to work for the first time in a month. I stayed at work about 2 hours before the combination of sitting discomfort and the fatigue I saw creeping up convinced me to head home and take a nap. Today I repeated, but stayed at work an extra hour. Something has felt off today - I just haven't felt right. I was chalking it up to a combination of being back at work and the doctor cutting off a little more dead tissue on my office visit Monday.
I left work and headed to the chiropractor (part of my normal Wednesday routine). I asked him to poke around on my pressure points to give me a little more energy, as I've been feeling more tired than I think I should. Sure, I'm steal healing and recuperating, but I believe in the power of pressure points! He pressure pointed me, which hurt in a good way, and I was off on my way. In this case, across the street to Sonic because I had that slightly queasy feeling that says "you should eat something." I ate, came home, and took a nap.
Yesterday I napped for barely an hour and felt quite refreshed afterward. Today I napped for a little over 2 hours and felt like crap when I woke up. I ached. Everywhere. Paranoid me notices this as the first step in having the flu. I took my temperature and instead of my normal 97-98, instead had 99.1. Low grade, but normally step #2 in my flue symptoms.
I don't really think I have the flu. I haven't been around anyone enough in the proper time frame for symptoms to be showing up now. After my doctor visit, my incision is requiring a little more maintenance, so I'm more of the mind the fever is to send little antibodies to fight something going on there. The doctor is in the office Monday and Thursday, so if I'm still running a fever in the morning I'll call and see if he thinks I need another round of antibiotics.
Now I think it's time to go take another nap.
As always, correct spelling is optional in any blog entry. Keep in mind that any links more than a year old may not be active, especially the ones pointing back to Russellmania (I like to move things around!).
Tags have been added to posts back to 2005. There may be an occasional old blog that gets added to the tag list, but in reality what could be noteworthy from that far back?
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