Thursday, October 2, 2008

I'm baaacckkk

Is anyone still there???

So we had our big trip and I'm back at work. Poo-ey. The trip was fantastic. Well it started a bit dodgily. As you may have read I was horrendously sick before we left. Barely eating for 2 weeks. When I did start to eat I was PBing everything. Got to Scotland and could barely keep 2 mouthfuls of soup down. Not good at all. I was drained and exhausted. After a few days GB phoned Watson's rooms and they started to try to track down a doctor who could remove fill in Scotland. I hopped on the net and found a forum and got a few names. GB called a few of them (he can understand that crazy accent) but kept getting stuffed around, they were on leave apparently. We decided to go to a hospital and just force them to do something. He wanted to go to a private hospital but I thought the public hospital would be the best bet. So when we got back to Glasgow (We'd been travelling through the highlands and everywhere) we lobbed up at the Royal Infirmary emergency room. I explained the probs to the reception chick and the triage nurse and neither seemed too phased by it. I started feeling relief. Went through to the emergency rooms and was seen by a doctor. She got me to pee into a cup (pregnancy test as I found out later - negative thank god!) and her sidekick learner doctor butchered my arm to get blood out for tests. I explained that I was sure I just needed fill removed. She admitted she wasn't familiar with the surgery and so decided to get the on-call surgeon to come down. At this stage I told GB if it looked like they were going to cut me open I was outta there. The on-call dude came down and had a blank face when I explained the issue and the solution and then the whole gastric banding procedure to him. Jeepers. He then went off to a computer where I'm sure he was googling it to see if I was making it up. Finally he came back to say he had found a bariatric surgeon and she was going to go search the hospital for the correct needle and come and see me. Thank god! A while later she came down and I went through the problem again and she totally got what I was saying!! YAY!! She was concerned though that from all the vomitting the band may have slipped. We decided to take out 2mls - better safe than sorry. I felt immediate relief. She gave me her pager number and told me to call her on the Monday (it was a Friday when this happened) if there were still issues and she'd do an xray etc. But no probs at all. In fact I could eat just about anything. Even bread (gives a cheer). Which was good and bad. Hell I was on holidays.

GB had 1ml removed before we left as he was struggling too, so although he still couldn't eat bread he could eat most other things.

So we lived the PHAT life through Europe. Eating drinking and just having the time of our lives. GB was sure he'd put on 10kgs and I thought about 5kgs. When we got home we weighed in. I'm not sure what I got down to after 1 week in Scotland, but based on my last official weigh in at home, I'd put on 3kg and GB put on 2.8kg. Not bad considering. We were doing a heap of walking though so I think that helped. In the last two weeks since we got home though I put on another 900g and GB another 2kgs! Still eating but no walking. Oh dear.

We saw Watson last week, GB had 0.3mls in and I had 1ml in. I don't think its enough. It's restricting some food types and helped my hunger but I think my portions are still too big and I'm still hungry in the mornings (although I'm ignoring it!). But I'll give it a go for a month and see how I go. After this week we'll get back into the gym and that will help no end I'm sure. I gotta get back into drinking water instead of wine for a start!

Anyway, that's enough of me, how's everyone else doing?

4 comments:

  1. Chicken! My absolute worst nightmare is that something happens when I'm overseas and I can't find a bariatric surgeon who knows what the hell is going on. I'm so glad you are OK. I had fill taken out too!! *snap* as my band was very very swollen - 3.5ml can you believe it? I've still got some restriction - still can't do bread, but my portions are definitely bigger and I get hungrier in between meals faster... so I know how you feel.

    Welcome back !! :)

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  2. Tell me about it! I forgot to mention that the surgeon who finally un-filled me said she was the only bariatric surgeon in Scotland who wasn't away on holidays! How lucky is that!

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  3. Hey, welcome back. Sounds like you had a real adventure.

    Cat

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  4. Welcome home - OK, I know it is super delayed, but still ....

    What a nightmare trying to find someone to take fill out overseas - I was dreading something like that, but luckily didn't need it.

    Oh, and to answer your questions - I set my blog and iPhone up so that I can just email my blog posts - it is much easier than faffing around in the browser - what I tend to do is just write them whenever and send them when I had wifi connection - much cheaper too :) Texting does get easier too - I promise - it nearly killed me at the start

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