Pre-op class #17, weekly weigh-in and a fire

I had a weight loss of three pounds this week, bringing my grand total to 80 pounds down from my highest weight.  Score!  That felt really good.  During class this week, we had a guest speaker from Bariatric Advantage.  They have products such as bariatric vitamins, protein supplements and more so we spent most of the time on that.  We talked about what our vitamin needs would be after surgery and taste-tested products.  I think I'll be ordering my products through them because we get a discount through Kaiser and the shipping is free.  Besides, they have a selection of lactose-free protein drinks and that is definitely what I need.  They will even send us samples to try first.  If I go with the gastric bypass surgery, then I will just need two multi-vitamin chewables and three calcium chewables.

Forgive my dry hand!  On the left is a chocolate sugar-free calcium chewable
and on the right is an advancted multi-vitamin chewable.

They were pretty tasty and definitely something that made the surgery seem less scary.  Don't get me wrong, it's still major surgery, but I guess it brought it down to a level that seemed very doable for me.  I have been spending some time doing more research into my options with the sleeve versus the bypass.  While it looks like I will probably have the bypass at this point, I'm not ruling anything out.  I'm definitely keeping a very open mind and being willing to explore every possible advantage and disadvantage of both the bypass and sleeve.  I just have to remember to be very honest with myself through this entire process.  I'm seeing my therapist tomorrow so I know we'll be talking this out as well.

Today at work we had an unexpected turn of events when a pretty big fire hit our local area.  Our high school became an evacuation center for one of our elementary schools.  Imagine the scared faces of little ones walking onto a big high school campus waiting for their parents to come pick them up.  I helped direct the kids to our gymnasium and then answered parent questions.  I also was all over campus, delivering off-campus passes to kids with parents picking them up because their home was being evacuated.  Then, because the fire was heading towards our campus, we had to move all the elementary kids to another high school and then prepare for the early release of our own high school kids.  What drove me nuts was that our kids were just hanging around campus afterwards and I had to get a little mean and tell them to leave campus now!  They just sort of looked dumbfounded at me, as if I was an alien from outer space speaking a foreign language.  I received this message from a friend on Facebook while everything was going on:

"I tried to take a photo of you off our TV. Twice there was a close up on Ch8 of the high school letting out & I saw you w/2 other adults in front of school. Just as I'd get my camera focused, the camera panned on to another scene.  I like your purple top. Very pretty.  Get home safely."

About the time that we were all catching our breath and trying to get cool from the heat outdoors (it was in the 90's after all), the fire started coming over the mountain towards our high school.

It actually was much worse than this picture shows.  When it started inching more towards us, I finally decided to get out of there.  I wasn't wearing shoes that were conducive for a lot of walking, so I felt blisters on my heels and I was sunburned all over, even on top of my feet.  Of course you do what you need to do, especially when you're protecting children.  The thing with that is that this body is not made for being on my feet for a long period of time or running across campus multiple times.  I get reminded over and over again every single day that I'm doing the right thing by pursuing bariatric surgery.  I need to be in a healthier place.  Sure, there's a tiny bit of vanity involved but, really, it's all about health.  I can't begin to describe the pain my body is in every day.  Just trust me when I tell you that a 125 pound body is much different than a 340 pound body, that's for sure.  I'm working on it every day, but I really can't wait until it's time to go in for the surgery.