My Sleeve is Not Always My Friend

Most of the time, my sleeve and I get along just fine. Tonight? Not so much. Of course I have a bajillion things on my mind. I was insanely busy today, I spent way more time on my feet than I normally would, I was on the go, all day today. But I could not sleep. I finally fell asleep and my sleeve decided not to cooperate and here I am after 2 hours of off and on sleep.

It will be a LONG day. My day consists of being gone all day. Which means no lazy, Sunday afternoon nap like normal.

You see, if I am stressed out my sleeve likes to clamp on down and give me a ton of restriction. Normally I can an entire string cheese for a meal (sounds lame, right? ) and this is ok with me. When stressed, I can usually eat about a 1/4-1/2 of a string cheese. It can be a wee bit scary when you know you barely eat enough anyways.

The good news is that my sleeve will chill in a few days, she is just picky at times.

She also does not appreciate when I space on my medications.

One of the drawbacks of my sleeve and the complications I had/have dealt with, is acid reflux. Something I had only suffered from in my twins pregnancy. Now? It's a normal every day part of life that exists of 2 Nexiums and 1 Zantac a day. It's not normal reflux like most people have. It's a direct result of my surgery and me being a complete freak show and NOW having a Hiatal Hernia, when most have it before and have it repaired during their WLS.

Ya see, my body likes to keep it interesting.

Stupid me, was distracted this morning and spaced on my Nexium. So I took it before we ate dinner. And then I spaced and did not take my second dose later in the evening. My bad.

In other sleeve related news, I have continued to lose weight. Craziness I tell you. I am at the point where I am (when she is happy) trying to increase my calories with more healthy fats (ok and some candy lol) to stop losing. At some point my body will be happy and just want to stop naturally but I don't think I want to know just how low it wants to go. My current weight is 134 lbs. Um yeah, I haven't weighed this since early high school, like sophmore year kind of high school. I didn't think it could happen. I actually fit into juniors sized clothing. Uh yeah. I have 4 kids and I can wear juniors! Even better? I was in a 5 juniors and I need to move down to a 3!!

Life in general is super crazy. Between homeschool and Tae Kwon Do and kickboxing (for me), cooking, cleaning, shopping, Church responsibilities, and a ton of other responsibilities we are always on the go these days.

My friend Mike I mentioned recently went home to be with the Lord. We are thankful he is no longer in pain but our hearts break for his wife and family :( The week prior to that we had an 87 year old lady go Home too. So it's also been a very emotional time for all.

I suppose that is enough rambling from this sleep deprived state....So I will leave you with the only recent (and not so flattering picture of me in a size 8 dress that is now way too big on me!) pic of the kids and I, ignore the crummy quality

Sometimes it is hard to stay positive

Praise the Lord I know He is in control...

Because sometimes it is so hard to just stay positive when watching so much illness around...

There is a lady that I love dearly. She was always like a mom to me. She is my YoYo <3 A few days ago her daughter, who was my best friend in high school, contacted me to let me know YoYo was in the hospital and the doctors thought it was cancer. And that it was affecting many organs. She has been in pain for quite awhile.

I called YoYo today, she started to cry. She said she knew something was wrong but ignored it. Today the diagnosis came back as Stage 4 metastatic liver cancer. They cannot operate. They said if anything they could do chemotherapy. For now she is still in the hospital and once she is home she will get to go see an oncologist and start figuring out what the next course of action is. Her husband, I call him RiRi, is sick too. It's a miracle he is still alive as he has been sick for as long as I have known him...

They are both fighters and I praise the Lord for that.

Then there is Mike. Mike is one of my closest friends husband. He is a trustee in our Church, he is the associate Pastors son. He loves the Lord, he loves his family, he loves his friends, he is an encouragement to all those around him right now. Mike has cancer. Mike is not doing well and was taken back to Hospice today. He is only in his 20s and losing his battle with cancer. My friend, only 28 years old, is facing a life without her husband.

I. HATE. CANCER!

From that to this

Even my hubs has changed, his braces are FINALLY off!

Small sizes don't last!

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be complaining about skinny people clothes ;) Why is it that my fat clothes seemed to last FOREVER but these skinny clothes just don't last?

I am now inching towards 8 months post op. And I am still losing. Slowly. But the weight is still moving down. Since my last update I am down another 8 lbs, putting me at 142, however I flew right though an entire clothing size! Seriously. It lasted like a month, if even that.

Not long ago I was super excited to squeeze into a size 8. Two days ago I had to go buy a pair of size 4 jeans because 6s were falling off. I am now buying small shirts too. WHAT?! Craziness! Many times my husband and I discussed that I would probably be in a 6 once I had a tummy tuck. Uh yeah. If I am already in a 4, will I actually get smaller once I have the oh-so-lovely 3 c-sectioned, twin carrying gut removed?! After many complaints and dealing with issues with the plastic surgeon I am preparing to go see my surgeon again and discuss a tummy tuck with him and pray he takes sympathy on me..

It's not just an issue with vanity. I am not one of those girls that just wants to wear a bikini because frankly bikinis kind of freak me out. I don't like the idea of everyone being able to see that much skin on me, so no, you won't ever catch me in one. It's a matter of comfort and decreased pain. Looking in the mirror does gross me out. And it's not just because I was fat and have excess skin, it is actually an issue with having had 3 c-sections in 2 1/2 years. And having carried twins. You see the excess skin and of course the fat that is left there hangs over the crease from my c-section scar. I actually broke down and measured it a few days ago. The excess hangs 2 1/2 inches below my scar. When I measured around it and under it at the scar, there is actually a 3 inch different in the size of my waist.

Then there is the medical side of it, which my primary doctor is dumbfounded by this new plastic surgeon I saw, is claiming it to not be medically necessary. I cannot eat sitting upright, if I do, the fat/skin pushes up and restricts even further what I can eat. Now it's important to know how little I still eat. I am sitting around 1/4 cup of food at a time. If I sit up right like a normal person that amount is about cut in half. I have to stand or sit leaning back right now to eat. It's annoying. Then the issue with jumping. I cannot run or jump at all unless I bind my gut tightly and that is just not comfortable. If I jump up the excess flops up with me and flops down HARD. Add in back issues that cause daily every day of my life, a lack of muscle strength from the previous surgeries, and scar tissue that has caused pain, you can imagine how painful that whole jumping/running thing becomes. It's just not pleasant.

Overall I am so glad I went through with this surgery, though it didn't fix all the problems, like the sleep apnea that is just as bad now as it was before, it was still worth it, even with the complications...

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GGGOOOAAALLLLL!

I cannot believe it. It has been 6 1/2 months since my surgery and I have lost all the weight I wanted to. Every last stinkin ounce. 90.0 lbs to be exact. I stepped on the scale yesterday morning and imagine my surprise to see that I now weighed in at 150.8 lbs. The best part? No one believes I weigh that much ;) Gotta love having a body that can hide the weight haha!

So now here I am, weighing what I haven't weighed in 10 years. Yes seriously, I weigh right around what I did when I got married nearly 10 years ago. There was a short time period when I did get close to this weight due to some serious medical issues after the birth of our twins but that was short lived.

I can fit into my wedding dress. I can wear two juniors skirts I had from when I was a teenager. My rings are too big. Everything is too big! YAY!

Now that I have hit my goal I am beyond thrilled. I never cared too much about my weight, it was more wanting to fit into a size 8, which I do. Now I might just go for a size 6 ;)

Where were you?

10 years have passed since his horrible day...

I remember where I was, do you?

I didn't have children yet. I wasn't even married. I didn't even know my husband yet. I had never sent someone off to war. I was just a teenager who had just graduated high school a few months prior.

I had gone to my best friends house the night before. We stayed up late and planned to sleep in late. For some reason we both woke up. Her dad was in the kitchen and told us to turn on the tv. She turned it on, I thought it was a movie.

There is no way this was reality. Stuff like that doesn't happen in the USA. It. Just. Cant. Be. Real.

She changed the channel, there it was again. And again. And again.

We spent the morning watching the news until it was time for me to go. We watched it all happen. Over. And over. And over again.

I had never felt so scared, how could this happen? Who did this? Why did they do this? Are they targeting where we were too? Would I be safe to drive home? So many thoughts ran through my head that day.

I was terrified to drive home, scared to be on the fwy. Scared someone was going to crash a plane into somewhere I was going to be.

So many lives lost. So many families torn apart and left devastated and forced to rebuild a new life. So many heros risked their lives and many lost their lives trying to help the others get out.

And now here we are 10 years later. I have since met my husband, married my husband, sent him off to war twice, had 4 children, buried 1 of them, dealt with the PTSD after affects of war and countless other life experiences. And now little by little watch as our own country falls apart. Praying for no more terrorists attacks but knowing there are people who hate us. People who cannot stand freedom. People who cannot stand the one true and living God. It's an evil world. 10 years ago today, our eyes were truly opened to the evils of this world. So many lives changed forever.

Yet we have a chance now to look and see God's hand in this, He has carried us through this terror, He promises an eternal life in Heaven if we just trust in Jesus Christ. We don't need to be scared anymore. We have eternal life on our side. Praise the Lord for that!

I know I will never forget September 11th, 2001....