Awesome Deal!

So I went to Best Buy with the intent of purchasing a DVI-to-HDMI adaptor for my use with my Dell Studio laptop and my two 22" monitors. The plan was to use one VGA connection for one monitor and the DVI for the other monitor. Anyway, so I get there and I'm strolling around the laptop section and see the returns table of open box computers and I see several Macs and in particular I see a salesperson talking up a Macbook Pro to this other customer. I made my way over to the other side of the table trying to see if there were any other Macbook Pro's around. There were not and when I heard the price, I was immediately filled with regret. Had I been over there 2 minutes earlier, I would have seen the computer and snagged it. Anyway, it didn't take much convincing and the customer was, of course, sold. I was bummed, but I thought "ask the salesperson" so I was like "hey, do you have any more Macbook Pro's?" and he said "Yes!" and I was like "holy crap!" So, he goes back and 5 minutes later, he brings back a Macbook Pro that was recently sold and had to be returned. The price was $1599 and I said "I'll take it." This computer retails for $2000 and it initially was the one I really wanted, but didn't get because it was a little outside of my budget. $1600 is much more like it. I think the price was cut more than normal because Apple is about to release the next version of the Macbook Pro, but that's fine by me. I plan on selling my Studio 15 plus one of the 22" monitors and should get somewhere between $1000-$1200 which would be absolutely perfect! I am a happy girl! My Studio 15 was okay, but it had Vista installed and I'm not a fan of Vista, the operating system is okay, my biggest beef is that some of the software I like to run doesn't run on Vista so I either had to do a lot of remoting onto servers or had to use different computers. With my Mac, now I can run Parallels or VMWare and run Windows XP as well as the Mac OS so it's all good! I will have ever thing I want on one machine. Awesome! It's funny how things work out.

Should be a good one this weekend. Gonna go put my new running shoes through a work out in the morning, then it's Texas v. Oklahoma @ noon. I also gotta run out and buy some computer accessories, I finally have all the major pieces I want assembled together, but need a few cables and such to get the setup right. Woo-hoo! I love nerdy stuff like this. A random comment along the same lines, I ended up using both my 22" monitors, I have them adjusted to the right angles and heights where it works out great. Sunday it's tennis, football and a little excursion with some friends.

The pressure is starting to creep a little at work. We have a few resource deficiencies which means my thoughts of a nice, slow ramp-up to some of the more technically challenging stuff ain't happening and so I have a pretty sharp learning curve over the next 2 months, actually probably through the end of the year. It's a good thing because it keeps my mind occupied. One thing I don't need and don't want is to be bored. I hate being bored.

I sent some pictures of my Dallas trip to my sister in St. Louis, I haven't seen her in about a year. She doesn't think I need to lose anymore weight. I'm getting much more of that nowadays, everytime I talk to my mom she asks me if I've lost any more weight. I keep telling her no or that I'm done even though I am not. I'm trying not to consistently weigh til the end of the month, some mornings I'll hop on pre-poop, just to see and sometimes I'll weigh when I come home from work and have stripped off all my work clothes before I slip into something casual. One thing I've noticed is that it's a completely rare occurrence for me to weigh less when in the evening than in the AM. That used to never happen to me. It's kinda cool, the downside is that the following morning's weigh-in isn't as dramatic a drop, so I guess it all evens out. Anyway, I may do an official weigh-in tomorrow just to gauge progress. I'm still with the Big C, ugh, so that's affecting things. Only way to really resolve it completely, at least temporarily, is to do laxatives, but that means staying close to home all day and I ain't doing that this weekend.

I'm on the hunt for some more restrictive control garments. Spanx and Assets are fine, they work pretty great for the stomach area, but I need more control in the thighs and I haven't so far found anything that works like how I need them to work. There has got to be something out there, I will find it. I had soooo much excess skin in my thighs, and I mean a lot! Pre-surgery, my thighs were the part of my body that were the most grossly disfigured by my weight. With the drastic weight loss, they have proportionately more excess skin than the rest of my body. It can be annoying because it affect the way I walk and the size of pants I can wear. All pants have excess inches in the waist because I have to get larger sizes to account for my thighs. I don't have *that* much more weight to lose, but without a doubt the weight I will be losing will be mostly below my waist. Removing the excess skin around my midsection, stomach and arms would put me in like a size medium t-shirt, there isn't a lot of fat left up there. Below my waist, I plan on being a 12/14 by the end of the year, I'm guessing. That would be awesome!

Par-tay + Lost

So I've been looking forward to this gathering thingy tonight for several days now and for some reason, last night and this morning I've been hit with a fair amount of trepidation about it. Those old feelings of fear are creeping back into my consciousness when socializing comes into play. I guess what makes me anxious is that I don't have those one or two "safe" people to tag along with when I usually go to these types of things. There could be zero people there that I know and those situations I tend to do poorly in...historically, anyway. I'm just not very good at those types of situations, but the weight loss does help. 265+ lbs ago, there would no way in hell I'd be going, no way, not even a consideration. Now, it is a consideration, it's just a mental thing at this point.

A cool thing about it is that it's an opportunity to look cute. I love looking cute, I'm hoping I can look cute tonight. It's not a formal affair, sort of a happy hour kind of thing, I'm guessing since it's like 6:30 PM on so I can't imagine many people dressing up for it, I assume most will be barely business casual which is typical for the industry. I will probably wear a nice pair of jeans and a nice blouse and some cute shoes (God help me). My hair will be done and I will have some nice jewelry. I haven't crossed the makeup threshold yet so there will be none of that. So I should look okay.

The only problem with tonight is that it's also the season finale for my current obsession, Lost. What were they thinking?!? Thank God for DVR's or else that joint would be empty!

I never had a chance to see my PCP this month so it's going to be a priority next week. When I was in Texas, I checked my blood pressure everyday with my dad's machine and it was consistently in the 95-105/55-75 range. I think that's pushing being too low so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Dr. B. will take me off the meds for good. I sometimes do get lightheaded when I stand up quickly so keep your fingers crossed that the meds are out the door!

I made a refill order with Vitalady for all my necessities earlier this week so I should fully back on track starting this weekend. I'm actually looking forward to starting fresh, if you will. Eating clean and drinking my water like I should always makes me just feel better, regardless of how friendly the scale is. I've been feeling a little sluggish lately so it'll be good to do things right.

Anywho, I've got a crap load of work to do before I can call it a day and breakfast is getting cold...

No mas!

I'm contemplating ditching a dinner New Year's Eve Day because it's the start of one my New Year Resolutions which is to start the year off with 30 days of kick-ass nutrition, hydration, supplementation and exercise. I just really, really need to remind myself how well I can do, how good I feel and how well my DS works when I don't engage in any sabotaging behaviors. As of Jan 1, I have 8 months of my weight loss window (if you believe in such things -- I'm not entirely convinced) so I'd like to hit goal by August 30th. I am around 75 lbs away from goal #1 (199 lbs) and around 100 lbs from goal #2 (175 lbs). This year will be my last year for losing weight, after this I am done. I finally saw the commercial Valerie Bertinelli did for Jenny Craig where she very poignantly said that this New Year's would be the first one in 20 years where she wouldn't wake up and the first thing on her mind was losing weight (or something like that) and I certainly understand the emotions she was feeling. 2008 is it for me. I promised myself at the beginning of this journey that I was going to do the work and get it done, that the next two years would be my last two years of "dieting" and I'm going to stick to that.

This morning I weighed in at 273.4 lbs, up 0.2 from yesterday which was to be expected. I didn't drink enough water yesterday, maybe 64 oz and I drank the first 32 oz around 8:30 AM and the last 32 oz around 10 PM, so that wasn't so great. Today it's back up to a gallon and hopefully I can spread it out more. I hate to say it, but sometimes water sucks. One thing though, I haven't had nearly as many diet sodas as I previously did now that I am drinking all this water. I have this nagging notion in the back of my head that all those artificial sweeteners can't possibly be good for me so I least I can take a little comfort in that.

It's been raining off and on all day in Atlanta and we certainly need it. The drought we've been having has been terrible, every little drop counts. I just got back from the bank and the whole area is covered in this misty fog, it's actually quite beautiful and serene. I wish I had my camera with me.

There have been quite a few posts on the DS board at ObesityHelp.com concerning Flagyl. When I went down to Savannah in August, a good friend gave me about 20 or pills and I think in all I've taken make 4. I heard a rumor or two that it may slow your weight loss and after looking at the pros and cons, I decided I just don't need it right now. My smelly gas is more than manageable when I am mindful of what I eat. Eating a low gluten, low dairy, low carb diet really keeps the gas at bay and it's only when any of those three things aren't so low is when I have issues. When I am at goal, I can see myself being on Flagyl as I can tell you right now, the first thing that I will definitely be eating a lot of is cheese. I love it and I miss it and at that point I won't care if it clogs me up. Cheese is my favorite food so I must have it again. Yum.

I have to go down to the Data Center tomorrow where my company's servers are being co-located. Fun. I don't know if y'all have ever been in one, but they are actually kinda cool if you've got a moderate geek quotient. The only bad thing about a trip to the data center is that it if usually very cold and it's illuminated 24/7 with very bright artificial light and there is a non-stop electrical buzz, after all we are talking about a giant room with thousands of servers that need to be cooled. Data centers are high risk so there's usually multiple levels of security to have access to your own servers and typically if you were to see the building from the outside, it would look totally non-descript. Hopefully I will only be there for a few hours, I really don't feel like freezing my butt off all day!

BPL v. SBL

I came across a post on OH about a study on weight loss and the length of the bypassed bowel in Duodenal Switch patients. Here is the abstract and I've highlighted an interesting part:

BACKGROUND: It is commonly believed that weight loss after biliopancreatic diversion/duodenal switch is inversely related to the length of the alimentary limb and the common channel. However, the effect of the biliopancreatic limb length (BPL) on weight loss has received little attention. METHODS: A total of 1001 patients after biliopancreatic diversion/duodenal switch (209 men and 792 women, mean age 42 +/- 10 yr, mean body mass index [BMI] 52 +/- 9 kg/m(2)) were divided into 2 groups according to the ratio of the BPL to the total small bowel length (SBL): a BPL <=45% of the SBL versus a BPL >45% of the SBL. The nutritional parameters and percentage of excess weight loss were compared between the 2 groups. RESULTS: In patients with a BMI of <=60 kg/m(2), the percentage of excess weight loss at 1 year postoperatively was 66.8% for those with a BPL <=45% of the SBL and 69.3% for those with a BPL >45% of the SBL (P = NS). At 2 years, the corresponding percentages were 73.7% and 79.5% (P = NS) and, at 3 years, were 73.4% and 75.2% (P = NS). In patients with a BMI >60 kg/m(2), the corresponding percentages of excess weight loss was 56.8% versus 61.4% (P = .07) at 1 year, 62.2% versus 77.5% (P = .04) at 2 years, and 59.8% versus 77.5% at 3 years (P = .05). CONCLUSION: The results of our study have shown that amount of weight lost after biliopancreatic diversion/duodenal switch is directly related to the proportion of small bowel bypassed in patients with a BMI >60 kg/m(2). Also, the effect increased with the duration of follow-up. In less heavy patients, the BPL/SBL ratio had a minimal effect on long-term weight loss and a more pronounced effect on nutritional parameters.

This is interesting because it appears as though the amount of your small bowel that is bypassed can be an indicator of success for patients with starting BMI's over 60. Turns out it's not all about how long your common channel is. I ran over to the Lab Rat Data to crunch my own numbers and have determined that Dr. Marchesini bypassed around 67% of my small bowel so that bodes well for me. I was also encouraged to see that on average those with a BMI over 60 had lost 60% EWL after the first year, I think I lost around 62%. It took me awhile to accept that I wouldn't be one of those DSers who loses all their weight in their first year, it'll take me 2+ years to get it done, I did start at over 515 lbs after all.

I also did some research on diuretic withdrawal, for lack of a better term, and it seems like I am looking at 2-3 weeks before my body gets back to normal. I checked my overly elaborate (anal) weight tracking chart and it seems I'd been taking them for around 3 1/2 months. Sucks, but I am determined to get through it without going crazy. So far I've "gained" around 15-16 lbs in water weight, I don't know how much real weight I've lost, I gotta believe without all the excess water, I've lost a few lbs. Well, I've been drinking water like crazy, over a gallon a day which isn't as fun nor as hard as it sounds. I also read that I need to cut back on my salt intake. I definitely did not do that yesterday, so starting today, I am going to keep it as low as possible. Anyway, information is power so I'm just going to keep moving forward.

Woo-hoo!

Well, I know what I am doing this weekend...taking lots and lots of pictures. I got the toys for my camera and I'm so giddy, I could dance the jig! I am "working" from home tomorrow so I will have time to do some runnin' around and snap some photos. I am also going to go see Anne in the hospital to see how she is doing. I talked to her sister this afternoon and she is finally out of ICU and in a normal room.

I haven't said this lately, but I love Dr. Marchesini. I emailed him today about all my latest travails and he got back to me in a couple of hours. He said that to have my albumin checked so I will to see if I still need to do the 200+ grams of protein a day. My albumin levels have been in the normal range since surgery through mid-May. I have no idea what it is now, but I'm going to contact my PCP and see if I can get the blood tests done. Truth be told, I'd rather stick to around 100-120 grams of protein a day if I can. It's just much easier to deal with. It also looks like I will be taking Protonix for a good long while -- just another pill to add to the regimen. Since I'm negative for H. Pylori then it's just a case of my body producing excess stomach acid and there isn't much I can do to fix that. Dr. M says to stay away from spicy foods and alcoholic beverages. The spicy foods might be a little hard, but I have no problem with completely excluding alcohol since I don't drink or like it anyway. No problem.

I'm curious as to whether the Protonix will affect my weight loss and how. I've noticed in the last few days sensations of edema in my lower legs even though I am still eating like a mad woman, but then again, I did have some cheese in my chili so it could be that crap working it's way out of my system. I don't know, I guess we'll see.

Waiting...

I bought some new toys for my camera. I bought a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash, Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce Flash Diffuser and a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF Nikkor Lens. Combined with the camera itself (Nikon D80) and my two lenses (18-135mm & 70-300mm) I think this will work well for the different types of photography I like to do. I am especially happy about the flash. Flash photography is my weakest skill by far so I want to get better before my friend's wedding in October. I am not the photographer, but I'd love to see how well I can do on my own.

As I sit and wait to leave to go to my endoscopy later this afternoon, I just realized I crossed the 200 lbs loss mark from my surgery weight. The difference between my highest weight and my surgery weight is 6.6 lbs. Unfortunately I do not know how much I weighed on the day of surgery because I actually weighed like 5 days before. I did weighed before I left Brazil and somehow lost weight by the time I got there. I think much of that was stress related. The trip over sucked big time. Long story, short I should have gotten the wheelchair service. Anyway, I weighed 510.0 lbs at Dr. Marchesini's clinic the day after I arrived and today I weighed in at 309.6 lbs. Woo-hoo! Buh-bye 310's.

Anywho, assuming I'm coherent at all, I will hopefully get some meaningful info from the doc about the endoscopy and pass it on. I will certainly let y'all know!

Eh?

I swear I woke up this morning down an entire dress size. Ever experience that? I put on my khakis this morning and was like "wait a minute....these don't feel familiar." They felt unusually baggy, I didn't feel that way a few days ago, the last time I had them on.

Yesterday as I was waiting in the doctor's exam room (freezing my ass off), my thumbs caught my attention. Totally random, I know, but I was like, these don't look like my thumbs. My thumbs look 1/2 way normal. Trippy.

Speaking of freezing, I am always cold, it's insane. We've had pretty high temps here in Atlanta and it hasn't phased me at all. At work, I regularly make trips to the restroom, even if I don't have to go, just so that I can wash my hands under hot water because they are always freezing.

This morning I am down to 331.2, down 0.2 lbs. Woo-hoo....Oh well, at least it hasn't gone up. I'm a little disappointed because I should have crossed the 200lbs loss mark by now and as it is now, I am 15+ lbs away. I can't help but think that this is it for me. I had thoughts of maybe losing 225-230 lbs my first year, but now I'm not sure I will hit 200. I had hopes of seeing 299 on the scale, maybe 290 by my one year anniversary, but I don't even know. The worst part is knowing that I still have at least another 100 lbs to lose and if I can't even manage to lose 5 lbs in a month what hope do I have of hitting my ultimate goal? I know, I know, this is all fatalist talk, but damn, I can't help it.

To get myself out of this funk, I bought myself some geeky goodness. I just acquired a new computer that has a lot of new bells and whistles which I have yet to put it into production, but I plan to do some of that in the next couple of weeks. I just splurged and ordered myself two 22" LCD monitors for my home office, I plan to run them in a dual monitor setup. They are so pretty. I am currently using a 19" LCD and have managed fine, but it's time for an upgrade to go along with my new box. I was very, VERY tempted to buy one of those 30" displays mostly for the kick-ass factor alone, but spending $1200+ is just a bit much, especially since I can get two 22" for half that AND if I am so inclined, I can spend that other $600 on goodies for my camera! I also bought a few more pedestrian things like 2 GBs of RAM and a monitor cable, so once all the stuff arrives, I will be in geeky heaven.

Since my core hobby of photography is picking up steam, hopefully next year I will be able to buy a Mac with one of them 30" displays. It all hinges on my ability to justify spending like $4000 for a computer and monitor coupled with my ability to hopefully start doing some photography work professionally. I am buying a friend's used set of studio equipment and will set up a spare room in my house as a learning studio of sorts.

In due time....