Checking in!

Okay, so I am two weeks past my last fill and I feel nothing. NOTHING. I can eat anything (everything). I eat larger portions than I should, I can eat bread like nothing, nothing in phasing me. Now, having said all that, I have gone ABOVE and BEYOND to stay eating healthy foods so that even though I'm eating bigger portions than what's ideal, I'm eating smart calories/protein.

Yesterday it hit me that my next fill appointment was a month from that day. I was SO discouraged that, here I've just paid close to $10,000 out of pocket for WLS, and I'm not feeling ANY effects of it. I decided to call and see if maybe there wasn't a cancellation and I could get squeezed in. I am pretty sure someone was looking out for me, or maybe the receptionist picked up on my discouragement and she got me in for the next day (which is today).

So, this morning I go in before work and I go fill out my little papers about how I'm still hungry and the basics of what I'm eating for meals and whatnot. I get called back and weigh in and found out I was down 3 pounds, which I am pleased with! So I give the NP a heads up that the last lady poked around a LOT and barely was able to get in the port and that she had mentioned needing a bigger needle. Today's NP said that the bigger needle is a lot bigger and that she would rather try with the normal one first. I trusted her instinct and to be honest a bigger needle didn't seem appealing!

I make it a point to only stare at the ceiling while they do these fills because seeing needles in my body make me faint. She numbed me and and poked around for a while and after a bit I hear, "Oh....umm. Okay. Ohhhhhhh, oh my, um, okay. Okay. Okay." By this time, I am freaking out a little. I'm trying to look at her to read her face while avoiding the needle sticking out of my stomach and I see her bring the needle up and it full of blood. Now, seeing the needle with blood wasn't even a red flag to me because it seems like a normal thing but she was freaked out by it, which made me start worrying. She starts talking about how she hit a pocket of blood and she pulled out 3ccs of it and now it was gone but to be safe, she wanted me to do a barium swallow. So about a minute later, her and, I'm guessing, her boss came in and took me to the imaging room. I did the swallow (which tasted and looked like chalky water) but it is only one gulp so not too bad. She let me watch it after and it was really cool to watch it come down and pass through the band and into the stomach. She also checked my port site, which was also good. They took me back to the exam room but now I was worried that I was going to turned away from a fill and was feeling sad. But the NP and her boss came in, said she would still give me a .5cc fill and wanted to check for more blood pockets. She checked and found another one and pulled out another 2ccs of blood and the boss didn't seem surprised by it at all. She said it's common in hiatal hernia patients but she was surprised when I told her I didn't have one... Haha! Anyway, she said everyone's body is different and it was nothing to worry about. Honestly though, I wasn't until I thought it was going to prevent a fill.

I am officially at 6ccs in my band now. The NP said the average person is in the green zone anywhere from 5-7ccs so since I'm right in the middle, I hope I'm there! :)

On Friday I'm flying to Kansas for 10 days so I'm not sure how much I'll be updating here, just an FYI.