Epic Fail

It didn't get any easier today. I thought maybe crying myself to sleep last night would have emptied me out. Turns out you can cry buckets and then still cry some more.

Had my doctors appointment this morning to discuss "the plan". "The plan". I hate that. But, I hate everything right now, so, whatever.

He said that because the wedding was coming up in about four weeks it was ok to wait until afterwards for surgery to remove the band. He said this wasn't a life threatening situation. Especially because the only symptom I am having is the drainage.

It's so weird to me. According to Thinner Times, essentially, Lap-Band erosion is migration of the band through the stomach wall into the stomach. When the band erodes into the stomach, bacteria from the stomach enter into the capsule that mutually forms around the band. The infection then travels along the tubing into the pocket around the subcutaneous port. Thus many patients who develop erosion first notice pain, redness, and swelling in the vicinity of the access port. Another way that band migration presents is with loss of the band's restrictive effect. When the band erodes well into the stomach, food can bypass around the band. The patient can eat much more than before.

None of this fits me. No swelling. No problem with restriction. Had I not had the drainage, I probably wouldn't have even known this was happening.

Part of me wants to just get this all over with. Having to think about this and deal with this until the surgery on November 21st is probably not healthy for someone who has as many crazy tendencies and obsessive thoughts as I do. The problem is, they said they don't really know what is going on in there till they get inside. It may take a lot more healing than we are expecting and I certainly don't want anything to mess with the wedding I've been planning for a year and a half.

Also, the crazy in me says "perfect. a little over a month before they remove the band gives you more time to lose more weight". Never mind there is a hole growing in my stomach, right?

This is how you know you are crazy. You don't care you're leaking from your belly button. You don't care that you're basically getting an ulcer (for all intensive purposes). All you care about is that the band is getting removed and JESUS CHRIST WHAT IF YOU GAIN?

My mom said to me, my best friend said to me, the dietician said to me, the doctor said to me "GIVE YOURSELF SOME CREDIT. You've lost 86 lbs since December and I can introduce you to 5 lapband patients that have had it for a year and have lost only 10 lbs. THE BAND DIDN'T DO THIS. YOU DID. You, Nicole, made good choices. You, Nicole, changed your eating habits and completed a half marathon. NOT THE BAND."

I can't accept that right now. I simply, just can't.

What the hell just happened?

This might be hard for some to understand, but I'm kind of weirded out right now. (Side note: spell check doesn't recognize "weirded" as a word. Random fact of the day). I have to go to the fancy GE Healthcare Institute tomorrow. (Second side note: although if you work for GE, you would naturally think that would be a place with a padded room where we all go brush each others hair and talk about what the bananas say to us, sadly, it's not).

So. I knew I needed a new suit jacket, so I killed some time at Macy's today while my cat Christopher was getting shaved. Yes I said shaved. He gets a lion cut. RAWR. So I looked around and tried on some. I ended up purchasing a size 16. Let's rewind for a second here. I started this journey at almost a size 24 pants. I just bought a SIXTEEEEEN. I can't even remember the last time I saw that number. And I'm just about in a size 18 pants. This means that I am 3 short sizes away from being a size 12. A FREAKING 12. I never thought that would be possible again.....

........here's where it gets all Crazy Town. (Remember? I'm the President. Also, I plan on ruining next Tuesday night's TV for you with my State of the Union address, just wanted you to know).
I get the fact that I'm down sizes. I sort of can comprehend that. I can SEE that I'm buying smaller clothes. But when I look in the mirror, I don't see it. I see my fat ass and my gut. And the same size I saw in the mirror when I started this, I still see. So it's kind of weird thing to know in your head that you really are smaller, but then to have that total body dysmorphia going on.

Excuse me while I go talk to the bananas.

Change of heart

Ever since surgery I've been growing increasingly more fond of one of the nurses at my Dr's office. I was not a fan before. I wouldn't say I disliked her, say, as much as the Vikings, but you know.
She seemed really abrasive to me, but she's growing on me. She has some good things to say to talk me off my ledge. Which, as President and CEO of Crazy Town is needed quite often.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been having these pains in my stomach. I can actually feel the port which is kind of weird for me. And I know the pain is surrounding the port. Of course, the first thing I thought was that I was dyeing. The port probably exploded and was cutting me from the inside out and I only had moments to live. (OBVIOUSLY, because that's rational.)

When I called today, I said it was kind of odd to me that I was in almost perfect shape the first two weeks of the surgery and now all of a sudden I'm having these pains and episodes I expected to have immediately after the surgery.
She said that the first two weeks after surgery I was probably in a honeymoon phase. Which actually made sense to me. She said I was SO anxious about the surgery that I was just so happy to be alive I wasn't thinking about anything else.
The other thing she said was "Oh hey there Nic...you have a foreign body in your body in case you forgot. Your body is healing and probably trying to fight it a little, so yeah, I would expect you to be sore there."

Also known as "Turn the lightbulb on so you can see you dummy".