Holy Cow I am bad writing on here. LOL

Well its been over a year since my last post. I have now lost a total of 230lbs since my surgery in December 2009, I am currently weighing 170lbs, and very proud of myself. I have health issues that are still a problem. since my last post in march of 2011. I had to emergency surgery to repair a perforated bowel and a hole in my new stomach. Which apparently if I hadn't gone into the hospital when I did I would have died in 4 hours from the time I got to the hospital, so that is scary. Then it was scary to hear the resident and interns at the hospital explaining the surgery to me and all the complications and the at the end when I asked what my chances were of coming out of the surgery alive were, having them tell me they didn't think I would live through the surgery. That scared the crap out of me. So there I was in an emergency room bed, alone thinking I wasn't going to ever see my husband or my parents or family again. I called my husband and left a goodbye I love you message on his voicemail and then called my parents to tell them I was about to have surgery and to ask that if I died could they please make sure they kept an eye on my husband and helped him through it. But thankfully I didn't die and I just spent a week in the hospital recovering, where I met a truly amazing woman who showed me that I was truly blessed. Her name was Michelle and she was suffering from stage 4 stomach cancer. I was pretty sure she was going to die, but her family was pretty sure she was going to beat it. I really hoped she did because she was a sweet, kind woman who had 3 kids and a truly wonderful family who she loved and who loved her. But what amazed me about her strength and her faith, was that no matter how poorly the nurses she got treated her, she always had a smile for everyone that walked in the room. I tried to help her as much as I could considering I was recovering myself after pretty major surgery, but I at least for some weird un-explained reason got the really nice, sweet, kind nurses and they would help me when i pushed my button, where as her's would leave her pushing her button for hours at at a time and when they did come to see what she wanted would be rude to her and it was just sad and angering to watch. But what I took from my week with Michelle and from my whole experience with that was that life truly is precious and short and it to difficult to hold grudges and be rude and bitchy and mean. I now try to be very nice and helpful and sweet and kind to everyone, i try and treat everyone the way that I really want to be treated. It doesn't always workout that well as I find most people are mostly into themselves and don't care about anyone else. Some of the other things that have occured since the last posting are that I have continued to have a fainting problem and they still haven't been able to figure out what is causing it. I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder, I now get extreme abdominal pain almost on a daily basis and they can't figure that out either. I have to go to hemotologist to have them examine my blood, so that maybe they can figure out why my body can't absorb the essential vitamins I need. I am on three medications and multiple vitamins daily now. I can't workout at all, I have a abdominal aorta that has a very thin wall and is at some point in my life most likely going to have an aneurysm form off of it. My fingers and my feet get ice cold and recently my feet started turning blue if i stand and walk around to long.

But all though all of this is going on, I don't regret ever doing the gastric by-pass and I am so super proud of myself for losing all the weight and for all the hard work it takes to maintain the weight loss. Because what I think most people going into something like this don't realize is that you can fail at this. You can gain all the weight back if your not careful, if you don't really work at it and watch what you eat and how you eat and why you eat certain things. One of the things we found out while I have gone through this is I have Celiac disease and that my body can't tolerate wheat or dairy products and so I have gone pretty much vegan and it really has helped me feel better. There are so many things that one doesn't think about when they are going into this, and if they don't really do the research and the soul searching, i really don't think they will make it. I have also noticed that there are people who have the surgery because their doctor tells them to, or their spouse tells them to, and those people unless they truly make the life style change and the health change and they truly want to being doing it, those people wont succeed either. 

I am very blessed to have the on going support of my parents and my husband who has been by my side through every step and through everything that has happened. He worries and he cares and gets mad when the doctors can't figure out my health. Its funny I started with 1 family doctor who didn't want me to do this surgery because he doesn't believe in it and well because he doesn't really want me as a patient. I now have 4 specialists and dietitian's here in Toronto that I see on a regular basis. And the funny part is my specialists care more about me then my own family doctor. They make me feel like they really care about my health and want me to be healthy. They are kind and caring, even if I might wait in their office for over an hour past my schedule appointment time, it doesn't make me mad or upset me because I know that when I do get my time with them, it will be quality time and they will listen to me and my concerns and they will requests tests if needed. They will search out the answers, if they can. Most of my specialists have over 3000 patients each, and I always find it funny when I am sitting there and patients will be waiting and they will be getting irate and angry because their appointment time has come and gone. I just look at it as he is a specialist affiliated with a hospital, his office is in a hospital, he gets called away on emergencies regularly. Its bound to make him run late. There is no point in getting mad, or angry all that does is make your blood pressure go up and really doesn't get you anywhere, because there are still going to be people in front of you. No matter how much you yell or get pissy there will always be others that were before you, who you can't just butt in front of because you feel like your time is more valuable then theirs.

Well I guess I have rambled on long enough and I will try to post more regularly then once a year...lol maybe I can aim for once a week or once a month. As now that I am maintaining my weight loss there isn't as much to say as there was in the beginning.