Things I am looking forward to with passionate intensity:

• Standing upright
• Lying flat
• Lying on my side
• Having these #$%$ing surgical drains removed.  Four More Days!
• Not having to wear this supporting binder any more
• Finishing up taking all these vitamin supplements

Things I am thankful for (so very, very thankful!)

• Not taking any more pain medicine
• The love and support of my SB
• Niece coming over today and cleaning the kitchen and living room
• Cold paks

<< Previous TT Post

Wow.  I am human again!

Still recovering… but human, at least!

So for those of you who want a long, involved story, stay tuned and click “more” (also for mildly yucky pictures).

If you don’t want an long story, then suffice it to say… I am healing, feeling better, and look forward to more progress on the healing front.

But to the whole story…

Tuesday…  Woke up at the CRACK of dawn… no, wait, it was much earlier than that.  Got all showered up, left the house in time to get to the DR’s office at 7am (which we hit pretty much on the nose).

Got into the office and I barely had time to show the SB how to use my phone in the waiting room when I was called back.  What?  This is the doctor’s office, right?  No long wait?  Well… they don’t take insurance, so I guess they run things on schedule, not trying to fit as many in as possible.

So I go back with a lovely nurse who was very nice to me.  Weighed me on the horrible Dr. scale which, seriously, was 13 pounds more than my home scale.  I will go with “my sweat suit and shoes must weigh 13 pounds” – I don’t know… whatever, it’s just a number, but I always wonder why scales vary so widely.  My regular dr’s scale is only7 pounds different than mine.

ANYWAY…

So next thing I know, I am in a gown, on a table, have an IV in, and the anesthesiologist is in asking me if I have any allergies.  It was so fast!  I guess they want to make sure you don’t have time to chicken out!

I walked into the OR and got up on the table… and then they were “putting something in my IV to make me relax”

Aaaaaaaaannnnnnd, I woke up three hours later groggy, sore, and (if my scale can be trusted, because I didn’t ask the dr) less four pounds of skin.

Tuesday after that was something of a blur.  I know I did some work email on my blackberry.  I watched a ridiculous amount of Man vs. Food on the travel channel.  I napped.  I took pills.

Not much to remark on or remember.  It was hard to move.  I have drains in my abdomen and I had to learn how to deal with them.  The SB had to follow me around when I got up to make sure I didn’t fall down.  It was not, on the whole, the most pleasant of days.  If I were a richy rich girl, or if anyone contemplating a tummy tuck is a richy rich girl – I would recommend spending the first 24 hours at a staffed recovery center with nice things like nurses and hospital beds.  But… It’s not like I didn’t get through it, so there’s that.

Wednesday… I kind of had this expectation of a nice, relaxed recuperation.  I would read, I would blog, I would get up and ambulate every two hours.

In reality, I barely had the energy to keep one eye on the TV.  I got out the laptop to do some work stuff and managed to do a couple of very important things that HAD to be done… then I put that away (well, ok, every time I say “I” did something, you have to imagine the SB? doing the actual work / lifting / toting / putting, because he has been one hard working caretaker.) I didn’t have enough energy to get through more than a couple of pages in a book.   I read a few blogs, but mostly didn’t have an attention span any longer than 140 characters.  I spent a good bit of time napping that day.  But also, I had a headache and felt like complete crap from the Vicodan (which, it appears, does NOT agree with me)  Wednesday was better than Tuesday, but still isn’t going to go on my list of “days I’d like to do again, please!”

Thursday I actually was starting to feel good.  Step 1…  I only took one vicodan that day… in the morning.  I went to the DR for my follow-up (everything was fine) and told him I didn’t like the Vicodan.  He said I could switch to taking a boat-load of ibuprofen instead, if I wanted to, which I did.  (Although, I’m really not taking that much… I am doing three every five or six hours at the moment.)  I was still super tired, but beginning to feel like I was coming out the other side.  I had permission to shower… but while at the Dr. office, I think his tech pulled just a mite to hard on one of the drains as she was emptying it, and there was some bleeding at the site where the tube comes out, so I decided to post-pone the showering until the next day.

Today…  Today I feel like a human!  Albeit a somewhat fragile one who still can’t stand up straight. I am not really in anything that I could truly call “pain”  although I do have some discomfort here and there.  I am mostly taking the ibuprofen as a precaution against paint that I think I ought to be having.

I showered this morning.  Have spent some time with the abdominal binder (read: girdle) off (which is like heaven!  and I can’t wait until the swelling is minimal enough that I can stop using it!) I even went out to my mom and dad’s house and spent some time there to give the SB a break and let him go out to his favorite pub for a burger and some beers.  He really has been doing a ton of fetching, carrying and helping, but, more to the point, he’s been doing far more worrying than any human ought to have to do.   He’s convinced I am going to break open or have an alien come shooting out of me or something (well, maybe not the alien part) and it’s been rough on him to see me out of it like this.  So a nice lunch out was in order and it gave my Mom a little time to help me and make me a sammich and fetch me some water and all those things that moms like to do (occasionally, as long as you, ya know, don’t try to move back in and get that crap all the time!)

I have spent most of the day computing and doing both work and non-work stuff… I am not particularly exhausted, and I feel good (although I think I will still knock out pretty early tonight)

So that’s it… as I read in other places where people blogged their personal tummy tuck experiences… the first three days are the worst.  I am still taking it VERY easy.  My “exercise” today was sitting on the couch and lifting my arms up and down about 20 times and then stretching my legs about 10 times each.  No, not vigorous… that’s the point.  I am SCRUPULOUSLY following the rules.  I want this recovery to go as smoothly as I have any way of making it go, so I will behave, behave, behave.  Because I want these drains out ASAP!  And I want to live without a binder, and I want very much to be able to walk upright again (Dr thinks I should be upright by next week – everything’s super tight and needs time to kinda stretch out and relax.)

Below are some pictures from “up to now”.

I’ll take more as I go along to show how the scar changes.  Right now, everything’s still all lumpy and I can’t stand up right, but after two or three weeks, it should look more like “normal”  Still… even with the tape and drains, and not being upright, the results right now are looking good!

The pictures are below – don’t look iffn you are squeamish!

Before

Barely awake, but remembered to get them to take a picture (That's the binder)

Tummy Tuck Plus 3 Days - Still kinda bent over.

And this is what the incisions look like... and those tubes are from the drains that are coming out from below the incisions

<< Previous TT Post | Next TT Post >>

Thursday?  Already?

OK… so I came through the surgery just fine.  But wow, I am sooo tired.  Brushing my teeth is a herculean effort.  Went to the doc today for my post-op (everything was fine) and it pretty much wiped me out.

I had all manner of plans for my convalescence…  but I can barely read two pages in a book before I fall asleep.

All my plans for the taking of detailed pictures and posting of intricate posts, well, they have fallen victim to the very, very tired.

So there it is.  I am healing fine.  Need to start working on standing up straight.  I have stitches, lots of stitches.  But mostly, I am just tired.

Time, me thinks, for a nap.

<< Previous TT Post |   Next TT Post >>

So tomorrow’s the big day!

I believe I have successfully managed to avoid the flu… I had better not wake up sick tomorrow.

Had a bout last night (we won!) and so I am stiff and sore, and my throat is a little sore from yelling.  Of course I am sitting here thinking… “OMG!  I’m Sick!” – But I know that’s not really the case.  These are familiar symptoms from any derby bout.

I am a little nervous, as one might expect in this situation.  Mostly nervous about things like drains and bandages.

I’m still completely unable to visualize what the end result is going to look like.  I’ve tried and tried to see how things are going to be rearranged, but ultimately, I’ve had this stuff for so long, I just can’t wrap my head around how it’s going to look gone away.  I guess it will be a surprise.

Those of you who are on FB – I’ll post a brief note when I get out… but I don’t think I’ll be up to posting a blog tomorrow.  I guess we’ll see how the pain meds affect my brain.  I’ll try to post an update soon, though.

<< Previous TT Post |   Next TT Post >>

Vitamedica

Those are the vitamins and supplements I have been taking for the last week and will continue to take through two weeks after the surgery.

I guess I get the point… lots of vitamins and minerals in all the right combinations to promote healing, less swelling and bruising, etc.  But wow, it’s a lot of pills to take!  (And I am not that good at taking pills)

My usual vitamin regimen is one Centrum Chewable and one Chewable calcium pill each weekday morning (I keep the bottles at work, because I would never remember to take them at home, so I only take them on days I work)

But now I have 3 “AM” vitamins to be taken with breakfast, and 3 “PM” vitamins to be taken with dinner, and starting 3 days out from the surgery, I have three other pills that are taken BETWEEN meals!  And then one other type of thing starts after the surgery.  It’s a pill-taking festival, I tell you!  (not to mention the pain pills after as well).

Now that I have been taking them for a week, there’s no problem, and I’m even getting better at swallowing the pills, which, I guess is good practice for once I hit 40 and everything starts breaking and I have to have prescriptions…

But the first two days were a little rough… the tummy needing some time to get used to the supplements, I guess  (and they did warn me about that).

Only one week to go!

<< Previous TT Post |   Next TT Post >>

Attention all North Carolina Drivers!

New State law goes into effect tomorrow (12/1/09)…

No texting or reading of texts while driving on streets, highways OR parking lots!

Time to put the phone down!

Watching this episode of What Not To Wear…

They’ve got this woman on there.  She’s lost quite a bit of weight just very recently, and is still losing weight, and they seem all surprised and shocked that she can’t shop because in her head she’s still the size she was and is trying to wear things that are for that old body.

This, to me, is not a surprise.  It took me, seriously, YEARS, before the person in my head started to match the body I was wearing.  It takes time.  Heck – right up until 2008 I still would buy things in XL because that’s “the size I wear”.  That’s not true… this year I finally figured out that in something like a tshirt I wear men’s small.  I should be wearing size medium shirts and sweaters.  My pants are, even now, mostly too big for me.

It’s something that I am finally  pretty much reconciled to… and I think the tummy tuck is the final step in this.  But, seriously… that’s SEVEN YEARS between when I lost the first giant chunk of weight, and FINALLY coming to terms with myself as I am now and pretty much mostly thinking of myself in terms of the body I am carrying around now rather than the one I had my whole life up until age 28.

And on the show, they are all like… “Why can’t you see yourself as you really are?”  Ha!  Takes a little more than a couple of stylists and some new togs.

Or maybe I’m just jealous because I’d like to be on the show myself!!

Thanksgiving day.

I slept late.

Cleaned the kitchen (I mean, CLEAN – like 4 hours of scrubbing, pulled out the stove, washer AND dryer, cleaned stuff that I barely knew existed – CLEAN)

Then “made” Thanksgiving pizza.  Turkey, Bacon, Onion, Black Olive, Extra cheese.

Big honkin salad for me, small honkin salad for the SB.  I had cranberry sauce on the side with mine.  Oh, the yumminess.  Oh, the quiet!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am not a big fan of shopping on “Black Friday”.  It’s crowded, it’s pushy, it’s annoying.  It’s generally not fun.  Not fun at all.

But the Target circular came out today… and they have some games for $10 and $5 that I think my little nephews would really like – Rock ‘em Sock ;em Robots, anyone?

Also, there are some really nice sweaters that I saw last week that I liked but didn’t want to pay $18 for… and they are $9.

So I may be forced out into the crazed post-holiday shopping madness.

On the up side, if I DO decide to go, it certainly won’t have to be at 3am or anything crazy like that.  If I go, and they don’t have the things, I am not going to flip out and die.

OH, all right, fine maybe it doesn’t quite rise to the level of “Food of the Gods” but man oh man, I am loving this stuff…

Lipton Vanilla Caramel Truffle Tea

I used to really like (on occasion) getting a caramel tea latte at Seattle’s Best Coffee… but then they stopped carrying it, and I am WAY too cheap to buy the Tazo liquid latte tea bases.  So I had pretty much resigned myself to not having tasty caramel tea anymore.

But now!  Not only is this stuff yummy and caramelly and wonderful… but it’s just regular tea!  Which means no super calorie filled latte needed!  Only a bit of Splenda and non-dairy creamer… and I can have it EVERY DAY!!!

The wonderful goodness has inspired me to also try the Black Pearl variety the next time I am at the store.  I love tea, and usually I buy Twinings, because I prefer a higher quality tea… but these pyramid thingies are really nice tea, and cheaper than the typical premium teas.

They have a whole line of these, but I am not a “Fruity” tea drinker, and most of the flavors are fruity.  Still…  high quality tasty tea at $2 for 20 tea bags.  Yeah, good job, Lipton company!

Big thank you to Cravey for introducing me to this stuff.

I would like to point out that I have not received anything from the Lipton company for posting this paean to their tea…  but if the person who’s in charge of trolling the interwebs looking for mentions of the word “Lipton” would care to send me something free (like perhaps some more of this awesome caramelly tea?  Or a free sample of the next fabulous flavor?) I would TOTALLY take it, because I love free stuff!