Well a lot has happened since the last post.
Had the pre-op on Sep 9, both at Dr G's office and at the hospital. Dr G's was basically just getting all the meal replacement shakes purchased, as well as talking with the clinical director (jamie carr) to see if we had any last minute questions. And paying surg fees. No seeing the Dr, no weighing.
At the hospital it was much more involved. Didn't have to pay them, they offered to let me pay on the day of surgery, which I took. Still filled out all the preadmit forms, so that the formalities would be very limited on the day of surgery (which they were). Then they called me for to the pre admit clinic area, and drew blood, checked weight (367, likely to be my highest ever recorded weight), had me pee in a cup, reviewed a ton of presurgery instructions, and gave me a chest xray. We got there at 230 and were done by 5, they were very professional and efficient.
Then we went and ate at Yia Yia Mary, the Pappas brothers Greek restaurant in Houston. It was quite good. Continued to eat the rest of the weekend, culminating in a tex mex fiesta with the family at El Potrillo on Sunday noon. Then I left for Chicago.
Flying to Chicago (this is now on Sept 11'th, yay for flying on the 10th anniverary of that evil day, although it was surprisingly normal in the airport) I made the decision to start dieting early. The pre Op diet is supposed to be 2 weeks (so I would start on Tue Sep 13th) but instead I decided to start ultra low carbing on the plane, which I did. I continued this the rest of the chicago trip, which was really tough as we were offered awesome breakfast / lunch / snacks at the UOP office, as well as going to fine restaurants each night. I only did a few shakes that week, mostly I ate super low carb. I didn't cheat once -- worst thing I ate the whole week was 5 grapes on the plane flight back on Friday 16 sep.
Once home I got more into the shakes, as Valerie also started doing them with me. However, I didn't go to the full 5 shakes/day routine until about 3 days before surgery. All along I was losing weight. My weight the morning of the day of surgery was 342, so officially 25 lb lost in 2.5 weeks preop.
The day before surgery, valerie and i stayed in the westin hotel located at the memorial hermann memorial city campus, thereby we could just walk to my 6 am surgery appointment. It was nice enough but we had a snafu -- the room they gave us didnt have a bathtub, which V wanted, therefore we had to call down and switch. After that we walked over to the Mem city mall through the sky bridge, had some japanese food (i had miso soup, as I was on clear liquids for the last day before surg). Then we went and saw the Brad Pitt movie Moneyball, it was excellent. Walked back to hotel and did the pre-surgery scrub thing they told me to do. Turned out part of my skin under my "stomach fold" had a bad reaction, so I took a 2nd shower and washed it off. Turned out not to be much of an issue but it was annoying.
Anyway, woke up at 540, got dressed etc, and walked over/checked in for surgery. I will describe that part in the next post.
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