I can eat and drive now

I had a visit with my doctor yesterday for the one week follow-up appointment after surgery.  The first thing he asked me was how I was doing and I said, "I'm hungry!  Can I pleeeease have some food now?"  He kind of chuckled at that.  After surgery, you have to stay on full liquids for about a week to ensure your body can handle more.  Even at that, I was limited to one protein shake a day in addition to liquids.  That's only 30g of protein.  When I wasn't getting in any other sources of real protein, I felt light-headed and hungry.  I know they say that I'm not supposed to be hungry and that it might be head-hunger, but I can testify that it was real, bonafide hunger.

During the visit, he said that I could add in soft foods.  Those are things like scrambled eggs, egg salad, yogurt, refried beans, other types of beans, baby shrimp, cream soups, that sort of thing.  The foods should be fat-free as much as possible and strained if it's soup.  I should now increase my protein to at least 60g of protein and continue having the one protein shake a day in addition to the new foods so that I can get there with no problem.  I also got the release to drive again, as long as I'm not feeling light-headed.  At that moment, I was a little light-headed, so my mother drove us back to my house.  I then had some of a protein drink and, as soon as I was feeling better, I got my butt in my car and drove to the grocery store.

When I got to the store, it felt a little scary for me.  Of course I was going to have to read labels thoroughly.  I needed to look for high-protein items, as well as low-sugar contents.  I just didn't want to mess up because my body could very easily go into dumping syndrome.  I didn't want that, of course, so I spent probably 20 minutes in the soup aisle alone.  For my first meal, I settled on fat-free refried beans and tomato bisque soup on this saucer.

Now, I know this doesn't look like the most fabulous first meal, but it was good to me and my new little pouch.  The doctor said to eat no more than three ounces in the first few days when I have my meals.  So I measured two ounces of the refried beans and one ounce of the soup.  I ate all of my beans but could only have half of the soup.  I was full after that.  How weird is that?  I remember times in the past where I would spoon a whole can of refried beans into a bowl with cheese and salsa, heat it in the microwave and eat the whole thing in one sitting.  Now I couldn't possibly imagine doing that now.

This morning I made egg salad for breakfast with one egg, one tablespoon of light mayo and seasoning.  I pulsed it in my food processor and oh my goodness did it taste amazing.  It's funny how the little things make such a difference, isn't it?  I've also been doing better on getting more fluids in.  When I came home from the hospital, I could barely get in the minimum of 30 ounces of liquids the doctor required.  Now I'm drinking four and a half cups now.  I'm sure as the days go, I will be able to get even more in.

Things are going well so far.  I am limited to how much exercise I can do.  I overdid it yesterday morning and was really hurting on my left side near one of my incisions.  I was walking very slow, slower than I've ever walked, but it was just too much on my healing body.  I do think I need to start weighing myself less now, though.  I'm not necessarily obsessed with getting on the scale, which is good, but I do find myself getting on it every morning.  If anything, I need to limit it to one day a week.  The doctor recommends weighing once a month, but that seems too far for me personally.  Once a week will allow me to have my weekly weigh-ins again and leave it alone for the rest of the week.  The surgery was on August 22nd and I'm already down 26 pounds just twelve days later.  That's fantastic, of course, but I think I'll go back to Monday weigh-ins again.  I need to focus on my new eating habits and new lifestyle in general.  It's exciting to see the numbers dropping so fast, but I don't want to focus on that.  My life has changed and I have had a rebirth.  Adjusting to these changes will take time, but I'll get there.