I’ve never been a Monday person. It’s not that it’s the beginning of the week, because for me, I work weekends more than I work weekdays. Monday is the beginning of my workout week though, and maybe that is why it feels like such a rough day most the time.
This Monday was a big harder than normal. First I swam late Sunday night early Monday morning and my brand new MP3 Player that I got for Christmas went tits up. That sucked. But I scheduled a returned with Amazon and have a new one being shipped out right away. Then it was up early this morning to make it to see my Personal Trainer Suzie at 7am. Let me tell you a 7am workout is HARD.
I tried to come home and get some sleep before I headed out to Vancouver, I had a full day out there, but I think the excitement of the day got to me, all I did was toss and turn and couldn’t fall asleep so I finally gave up and got up to do a little early morning shopping trip at Target. I scored on their clearance racks and picked up a pair of size 24 jeans for $8 and two sweaters for $3 each. I have this weird thing going on right now, I refuse to pay more than $10 for any article of clothing because it seems like it won’t fit me the following month. Target, Wal-Mart and Kmart are my haunts and I just keep picking up stuff in either a size I can wear or a size smaller when I find a good deal so that my closet isn’t completely empty.
So after getting ready it was time to head out to Vancouver for my post op appointment with the Surgeon, after that I’d be meeting with my Nutritionist and then after that I’d be hooking up with Steven for coffee.
As usual when I have to go out to Vancouver I over estimated the drive and ended up early. The Surgeon always seems to take me right in though even when I’m 30 minutes early. Today’s appointment went well, the scale came in at 288 – that’s a total of 107lbs lost in just less than 6 months and a total of 46lbs lost since my surgery 11 weeks ago. Not too shabby at all. My Surgeon is really happy with my success so far and she keeps telling me that I’m doing great. She loves that I’m exercising my little – ok not little, but we’re working on that, ass off. Unfortunately I had to ask her about this pain that I’ve got in my chest right under my breast on the left side, and she confirmed that is right where my pouch is. After talking about a few possibilities I finally coughed up to the fact that I’d been smoking again, and after explaining to me why that was so unhealthy and why that could be causing the pain, she put me on a medication called Carafate, which basically is an internal Band-Aid. It is used to treat ulcers and in this case she is pretty sure that I probably had a small ulceration in my pouch that was made worse by the cigarette smoking. Basically the Carafate adheres to the ulcerated area and coats it to protect it so that it can heal. As usual my Surgeon was spot on, I got home this evening, took one dose of the Carafate and I haven’t experienced the pain since. She also told me I had to quit fobbing up on the smoking thing. So I haven’t had another cigarette since Monday night. I’m going to see her again in two weeks to make sure that the pain has been gone and that things are going good.
So after that I was off to meet with the Nutritionist. I have to say this was a fun appointment to go to. I got to see Cathy – my incredible weight loss surgery coordinator, and Anne, my nutritionist. Both Cathy and Anne had both seen me last during that first visit when I had all the consultations and the medical evaluation back in July. I’ve lost 107lbs since then, and the look on their faces when they saw me, was enough to have me smiling for the rest of the day. It’s strange really, seeing someone else’s reaction to me. I see myself in the mirror every day and honestly I don’t see the weight loss, I really don’t I just see how much I still have left to go, seeing other people’s reactions to how far I’ve come already is pretty amazing.
Anne and I spent some time going over my eating patterns, and deciding what I needed to change to help me get a little more energy in there to accommodate how much time I’m spending in the gym. We’re going to start adding back in some complex carbohydrates and some whole grains and I need to remember to try to get some extra protein and carbohydrates in about 30 minutes after I work out. Other than that she was really happy with what I was doing, with my food selections, she thought the amounts I was eating were good and just kept telling me to be really proud of myself and how well I was doing.
Next it was off to the coffee shop to meet up with Steven. I was pretty excited to meet him; this is the first time he’s actually had time to get together with me since we started talking back in October. Steven’s become a pretty big part of my life since after surgery, we text daily and he’s been my Mentor through this whole process even before he realized it. It’s really weird to talk to someone every day for months and never really get to sit face to face with them and see them laugh and smile. So today was exciting for sure. We sat and had coffee and I listened to him recount his last 24 hour nightmare and then in the blink of an eye he had to go and I was headed back home to get my prescription filled, pick up vitamins and find some dinner.
All in all it was a very productive day I got that pain in my chest resolved, I got some pointers on my eating plan, I get to add whole grains again and for some reason I’m REALLY looking forward to making fish tacos! I got to spend time with Steven and I got to nurse a Sugar Free Cinnamon Dolce Latte… that’s a pretty damn good Monday.
Yay Fish Tacos! \o/