2 weeks

I went back to work on Tuesday, 5 days ago, and haven't had a chance to blog since then. This weekend we went up to Seattle for our belated Christmas with my family and we got home this evening. Whew. It was fun,though. My brother's youngest is a daughter who is 10 months older than Lucy, and after they get over their shyness they always have fun playing together.

Going back to work was tiring the first day, but I got back in the swing pretty quickly. I forget often that I had surgery at all. But it is very challenging to get my fluids in at work. At the GI clinic it is a little easier because I can keep a water bottle outside the treatment room and sip between cases. At the hospital it is much harder. I only have 2 breaks and a lunch, and rarely have much time between cases. When I eat lunch I can't drink, so it doesn't leave much time for the fluids.

I still find that I am having a hard time stopping eating before I am full. "Full" is now much more like other people described the band. When I am full, that's it, period. One more teaspoon, and I will be regurgitating at least some food. Gross, I know. But my stomach and brain aren't in sync, so I have to learn to be more careful about my portion and not overdo it and feel over-full.

The scale has stayed exactly the same for over a week, to the 1/10th of a pound. Weird. I know a "stall" at this point is common, but it still sucks. I'm ready to see some progress.

I'm starting to move to purées now, because it's still a week before my post op check up and I'm in week 3 now. I'm not fully into them, though, because I'm really not hungry and no one has told me I'm supposed to advance yet. I rarely have the sensation I recognize as hunger, and when I do it is often when I wouldn't expect it, like now, just 15 min after eating a snack of 1 slice of lunch meat (which took over 30 min to finish). This morning we had breakfast at the restaurant of our hotel. Hubby had taken our daughter back to our room to get her blanket, and the food arrived while they were gone. I looked at it all--breakfast, my favorite-- and realized I had no real desire to eat any of it. It was quite nice actually.

I'm doing other stuff besides waiting for the scale to budge. I am planning this year's garden, and hand-quilting a quilt. I've made many quilts but this is my first attempt at hand-quilting a large one. It is going to take forever...but it is fun, nonetheless. I did all the piecing by machine. That took forever, too. But I think it will be nice in the end.