Drove to Seattle today for my pre-op screening.

 

Passed it with flying colors .

 

30 Days…

So, now the countdown begins…

 

As soon as I got home, Lisa and I drove to Orting to do our “bike thing”– 15 miles round trip on our bikes. We do our best to ride three days a week (weather permitting) up there.  So far, it has worked out pretty well, because if it rains on a day we usually go, we wait ’til the next decent day and hit the trail then.  Lisa has already lost three pounds, and she doesn’t have as much to lose as I do, so the loss really shows.

 

Today was a perfect day for a bike ride.  The sun was out, but it was a wee bit breezy — cool breezy.  I wore just a t-shirt on top (leggings on the bottom) and was glad I did; anything more would have heated me up too much.

 

When we got back to my place, it was 3:15 or so, so Lisa headed home and I took an hour-and-10-minute walk around the neighborhood.

 

I’m determined to lose another five pounds before June 9th (my surgery date) because then I will weigh in at around 190 following the panniculectomy (I’m guessing).  A doctor told me years ago that I had about 14 pounds of hanging skin on my abdomen and tummy, so that’s what I’m going by: they’ll take out some fat, too, I reckon, to be able to stitch me back up again more easily. I’m going to have the medical team weight what they remove so I can get a sense of what I’ll weigh after the swelling goes down and full healing happens.

 

I know I’ll look better than I have since I was 26 years old and experienced enormous weight loss as a result of intestinal bypass surgery. It was an experimental surgery back then, but it did wonders for me. Jackie had it done, too, with similar happy results. (Most of the people on my dad’s side of the family were morbidly obese; we got those genes and that metabolism handed down to us… lucky us!)  I’m looking forward to looking and feeling better.

 

But before that happens, I have to feel crappy for a few days post-surgery.  Alas and alack.  But it will be SO worth it.  (That’s what a friend told me who had it done.  I’m hanging on to that prophecy with everything fiber of my being.)

 

I’ve been pretty much like a cat or dog going through surgery.  They rarely look or act much the worse for wear after surgery.  Of course, they can walk around on four legs afterward, and I can’t, so there is that. (Well, I suppose I could walk around on my hands and knees, but… yeah, that would be too weird!)

 

They say I will be walking bent over for probably a week.  That’s to make sure the incisions heal and don’t get pulled apart. The surgical site goes from hip to hip at the bikini line, and then everything that’s going to be removed is removed and the skin is pulled tight across there and sutured (or glued, or both) and taped up.  So, standing upright is going to be frowned upon for a while.  (I expect the incision site will remind me, in no uncertain terms, if I try to straighten up too soon!)

 

But between now and then, whenever I’m not looking for writing work or writing, I’m going to be walking or biking or playing pickleball or doing something physical to take off a few more pounds.  The less they have to take out, the better I’ll feel post-op, I reckon…

 

Between now and then I will focus predominantly on other things. I am not one who dwells on upcoming surgical scenarios all that much, other than the preparations and post-op care, for which I have pages of information to more or less memorize before the big day arrives.  But I’m pretty familiar with the info already, since I just had chest masculinization surgery last August and my gallbladder removed a few years before that, both of which required Jackson-Pratt drain tubes.

 

The difference this time is that I will be able to shower on the third day unless I get some kind of fancy thingamajig across my abdominal incision that will prevent me from doing so. They say I can shower on day 3 and every day thereafter (and should!) even though I’ll still have three drains in me carrying away excess fluids.

 

I couldn’t shower after my chest surgery until the drains were out (one and two weeks later) and the holes they came out of healed up (which didn’t take long at all). This time I will be able to shower unless Doctor G-L puts that optional something or other across my abdominal incision for some reason.  I can’t remember the terminology for it.)

 

After my chest masculinization surgery I was able to wash carefully, but I wasn’t allowed to get my chest wet, I suppose because of the nipple grafts. (TMI, I know… but I wanted a male-looking chest, so Dr. G-L placed them where they go on a guy’s chest, which is slightly more lateral than on a female.  My chest looks like a guy’s now so no one can arrest me if I ever go shirtless somewhere.  I told her that was my bottom line: “I want to be able to go shirtless without being arrested.” She assured me she would make that happen — and she did! I LOVE my new chest.

 

I won’t be able to ride bikes for at least four weeks, and probably not for six weeks, so I hope to find someone else locally who will ride with Lisa a few days a week so she can keep it up. I will be walking right after surgery (hunched over but walking) and several days to a week afterward I should be able to walk  around the neighborhood again.  That’s my plan, anyway.  I’ll let my body dictate how much, and how often.

 

I can only lift five pounds for four weeks. (One gal said ten pounds; the paperwork says five.) So I will need to buy small cartons of milk and other things that I usually buy in larger sizes to save money.  I’m going to cook up a week’s worth of crockpot soup and freeze it in small containers so Jackie or Lisa can get them out of the freezer for me every day and I’ll be able to get them out of the fridge.

 

I can get my bridge therapy in my hip so that’s good.