Thank you again to everyone for all the sweet visitor messages you posted. It really does make a girl feel great knowing so many people care!

So, here is my surgery experience. Much easier to type it out on a laptop than on my phone or Kindle.

I was told to be at the hospital at 6am for my 9am surgery. My mom decided this was ridiculous, lol, so we got there around 6:40am. I then went to registration just to pay since they had the incorrect amount of money due when I did my pre-op. Shortly thereafter I went to Ambulatory care to give my urine sample to prove I wasn't preggers and then they took me to the surgery waiting room. Nobody weighed me which I think was odd, so I'm glad I weighed myself before leaving my house. I lost 9 lbs doing my pre-op for 3 days!

I got changed into my gown and my blood pressure and temperature were taken and then I was hooked up to the IV. At some point, the bariatric coordinator came by to say HI and my surgeon came by to say HI and then eventually I was wheeled into the OR. I remember putting myself onto the surgical table and then that's all I remember until I woke up in recovery.

Turns out my blood pressure went sky high while I was in surgery, so they had to give me meds for that and my doctor also did need to repair a medium hiatal hernia.

I was in recovery for quite a while. They told my mom everything went well, but I had told them I was in pain, so they gave me meds which put me to sleep and they don't take patients out of recovery until they are awake.

My mom was already in my room when I got wheeled into it and from there on out, I was pretty boring as I just kept drifting in and out of sleep. I got up to walk a lap at some point and then later I did two laps and then three and then another 3 and eventually 4. Needless to say, I really just kind of napped the night away as opposed to sleeping. I was able to lay on my side at some point, so that was nice.

I liked my first nurse the best - she was so sweet and caring. The second nurse was pretty cool, too, but I didn't care for my third nurse.

Throughout the night, about every 4 hours, someone came in to take my vitals and someone else came in to give me a breathing treatment. My blood pressure would go up after I walked and did the breathing treatment, so we often had to be strategic when we would do the vitals testing.

I was taken down to imaging around 9am on Tuesday for my leak test. I had to drink two different liquids. The first one, I was told, would not cause any damage to my abdominal cavity if there was a leak. They had me sip that until it was gone while they watched the movement of it through my system on the xray. The second liquid was the barium -chalky, minty like substance and I did not need to finish that. I passed both and was sent back to my room.

Silly me thought that meant I would get some liquids delivered right away, but in all actuality I had to wait another 2 hours for them to get the official reading. This was frustrating to me because I really wanted a drink of something...anything. Finally they brought me a cup of ice, a water bottle, a bowl of chicken broth, and a jello along with little 1 oz cups. I started with a few ice chips, then hit the broth, then the jello, and then the broth again.

At some point I got visits from the lab to do blood work, from the hospital's dietitian, and from my case manager.

I must have taken too much jello and/or broth in too fast because all of the sudden I felt like I needed to throw up. I got up out of bed as fast as possible and was headed to the bathroom when my doctor and the bariatric coordinator came in and talked me through breathing exercised to avoid vomiting since that would be very hard on my new sleeve. They were able to do this and then I laid back down in bed, dozing off here and there an going for walks here and there. About 2:30pm, my mom came back to visit with me and wait for me to be discharged and then we kept getting the run-around which was very frustrating. Finally at 5:30, my nurse came in to give me my prescriptions and discharge instructions. Then is when I found out I as going to have to give myself blood thinning injections everyday for 14 days. There was no mention of this from my surgeon or the bariatric coordinator, so I thought it was a bit concerning. My nurse said it was an add-on, so I'm wondering if something came back in my blood work indicating I needed this.

I asked the nurse if she had ordered me a wheelchair and she said it was up to me whether I wanted one or wanted to walk out. Weird. Since she hadn't ordered it, I just walked out to get home quicker.

My mom and I dropped off my scripts and then I came home to take a nap.

About an hour later, I had some chicken broth and then went with my mom to pick up my meds. I then came home, took my pain medication (liquid form - gross) and had a sugar free popsicle and started sip, sip, sipping some grape Isopure (pretty nasty, lol).

I went to bed around 9:30pm and only slept until 1:30 am....walked around a bit, had another popsicle, and now I'm back to finishing my grape Isopure so I can take my pain meds and go back to bed.

Soooo, that's it for now.