Part 8 - One Month Post - Op

Weight: 302.5 Weight Loss: 57.5 pounds

After they let me out of the hospital, they want me to stay in town for about a week. We stay at the Homestead Suites Hotel, about five miles inland from the hospital on Commercial Drive. Commercial is just what it's name suggests, a dreary sun-drenched street of small and medium sized businesses, office parks, and services. People must live somewhere nearby, but they are not much in evidence. Our room has two beds, a smallish easy chair, a kitchenette with a counter where I can place my computer, and a bathroom. Outside, the motel is surrounded by parking lot. I'm supposed to rest, walk, eat, and drink. We watch TV, take three or four walks around the parking lot a day, and veg out. I find that I'm very uncomfortable due to what seems to be a bruise on my coccyx. I can't seem to find a comfortable place to sit for more than a few minutes at a time, yet there's not much else to do besides sit and watch TV. I don't really feel up to reading yet.

Irene prepares meals for me three times a day. For the first two weeks after the surgery, I'm supposed to eat three tablespoons of pureed protein three times a day. I try scrambled eggs, cottage cheese, frizzled chicken thighs. I manage to get them down all right, but have no enthusiasm for food at all. One day we try scallops, but they make me feel ill as soon as Irene presents them. I can't eat them at all. I sip, sip, sip all day long. It's not too hard to get 64 ounces of water down, but I have to work at it.

On Saturday I ask Irene to take me for a drive. Actually, I bully her into doing it and she reluctantly gives in. We drive down Commercial to where it joins US A1A, the coast highway, and turn north. We drive slowly, in heavy traffic along the highway between the Intercostals Waterway on our left and the beach on our right. We only catch glimpses of each as we are hemmed in on both sides by high rise condominiums and hotels. We stop as a drawbridge is raised and watch boats head out to sea on this beautiful winter day. We continue north, seeing large boats on the Waterway while a few mammoth private houses sit hidden behind luxurious foliage to our right. They soon give way again to high rises and I give in. Irene was right all along. We turn left at one of the main streets and ride out to I-95 which takes us back to Commercial in about ten minutes. It hasn't been much of an outing.

On Tuesday we return to the hospital for an upper GI series and then to the doctor's office for an examination. I weigh in and I've lost 41 pounds in two weeks. It seems miraculous, but no one seems too surprised. A nurse pulls the G-tube from my "old" stomach. This hurts a good deal for a minute or so and then it's over. The surgeon comes in and takes out about half my staples. The seroma that bled last week is still taking its time healing, so he leaves in some staples and tells me to come back next week. As we walk out the door of the doctor's office, Irene says, "I think I can be out by eleven." She drives back to the hotel and in whirlwind fashion empties the hotel room and packs the truck. I carry a little bit, but really can't manage much. In half an hour she manages to get it all done, packs the cats, and get going. Both elated and a little sore, I sit in the truck as Irene heads across Alligator Alley for Port Charlotte. Three hours later, we're home and glad of it.

We settle back into a routine, but it's the routine of home rather than a strange and not very friendly place. I have increased the amount of food to about three ounces a meal, but it's still all protein as it will be for months to come. I can't try to start adding other foods until I've lost 75% of my excess weight. In my case, about 150 pounds. We walk once or twice a day and soon I'm up to a mile at least once a day plus another walk that some days is close to a mile, others not. We shop a little, take a trip to Tampa to get a new computer and take our satellite receiver in for repair, and go to the beach for a brief visit with a friend. We even go to the movies to see "Harry Potter." We go out to dinner at a local seafood restaurant. I have blackened grouper, and it goes down easily. It's a novelty for me to not worry whether I'm going to get enough. The four ounce portion is too much and there's no sides for me.

My incision is sore because of the remaining staples and the seroma. A seroma is, apparently, a small pocket that can form underneath an incision. Blood and other bodily fluids collect in it. Eventually it heals by itself, but it seems to be taking its time. I need to cover it with a bandage each day to keep the seeping from staining my clothes.

My weight loss has slowed down considerably. I make the mistake of getting into the habit of weighing daily. It's such a novelty to be able to get an accurate weight on our little electronic scale and it's gratifying to watch the numbers come down. Unfortunately, they don't come down every day and they're much slower than the huge weight loss of the first two weeks. My job is to stick with the diet restrictions, get the required exercise, and heal. Part one is pretty easy. Food is of little interest to me. Sometimes I face a meal as a required event. I'm almost never really hungry. For much of the day I feel a kind of mild nausea. I experiment with different foods and begin to extend the variety. One day I broil chicken breasts. They are dry and tough and difficult to swallow. Even when I chop them and turn them into chicken salad they're tough to eat. No wonder they told me to stick to dark meat.

On the 29th we drive back to Fort Lauderdale to have the rest of the staples taken out. I weigh in again and have now lost 51 lbs. on their electronic scale. The doctor pulls the rest of the staples, probes the seroma, tells me to keep covering it and to try to express the fluid from it, and sends me home. My next appointment is in March. We attend a post-op nutritional seminar, which really isn't much use and head home. We take a shortcut that's been recommended to us on the way back. While it takes us past some interesting central Florida agricultural areas and through a couple of dreary towns, it really isn't shorter and Irene is tired of driving. These 360 mile round trips wear her down. Thank goodness we don't have to go back for a few months.

We visit the local Primary Care Provider we've established with here in Port Charlotte a week later. He walks into the room and breaks into a huge grin when he sees me. He has shown an interest in my surgery since we first went to him, but this is the first time he's seen the actual results. I've been feeling lightheaded each time I stand up or straighten up. Also, my blood sugars have been steadily in the normal range. He gives me permission to stop taking the high blood pressure pill and the diabetes pill I'm still taking provided I keep an eye on both my blood pressure and blood sugar. The only pill I'm still taking that I was on when we arrived in Florida is allegra, an allergy pill. I've given up all the others. Of course Dr. Marema's office has substituted a whole bunch of others, almost all nutritional supplements to make up for what I'm not eating or can no longer digest because of the reduced size of my stomach and loss of a couple of feet of intestine.

All in all, the first month has proven itself to be a tremendous success. The pain and discomfort in the hospital has continued to fade away in memory. Clothes that I haven't worn in several years or that never fit are beginning to fall off me. Soon Irene will have to begin taking clothes in. This ought to work for another 50 pounds. The only problems are the slow healing seroma and my sore coccyx, which no donut seems to help very much. I want to keep losing weight at the rate of this first month, but I know it isn't good for me and that slower is better. My approach to food and my attitudes seem to have changed. While sweets look and smell good to me, I have no real interest in trying them. My urge for garlic bread has faded. Spring training begins in a week and we're both looking forward to going to the Charlotte County Stadium where the Texas Rangers train. The Phillies play here on March 15th. We'll be there.