The Shrinking Dog Mom, Pt. 1

Today's post focuses on the journey before and the day of my Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy (VSG) surgery. Part 2 will focus on my experiences after VSG.

**Disclaimer: this is just MY story. Someone else's experience may be very different. I am in no position to give medical advice. This is purely for entertainment purposes. Any questions relating to your health should be directed to your doctor. I'm just a crazy dog mom who overshares on the internet. I've dotted this post with pictures of me from before surgery, and included one from surgery day.**

My struggles with my weight

I've been varying degrees of overweight since probably the fourth grade. I don't really remember any particular "reason" or huge spike in eating or traumatic event, it just sort of happened. I was bullied a lot all the way through school, but even that I don't think was really a contributing factor to my weight gain. I don't remember having a hard time with being overweight until high school, which I guess makes sense because high school kids are ruthless and high school kind of sucks. Even now as a high school teacher, I still see that it sucks.

It probably took the better part of 10 years for me to really get to where I was like, "Damn, my weight is an actual problem." Throughout my teens and twenties I went through spurts of dieting and exercising, and I'd do really well for a while, sometimes even for a year or more, and then I'd hit a plateau and wouldn't lose weight. That's when I'd give up. If you name a diet, there's a good chance I tried it with a questionable level of success.

Somewhere in the haze of 2019-2020 I got really interested in running as my form of exercise. I loved that it could be as competitive as I wanted it to be, but that it was really a solo activity. I ran regardless of my size and at all different speeds. At one point I was going for a half marathon, and then the motivation died and the weight skyrocketed. At my highest, I was weighing in somewhere in the 320-330lb range. It was just too much for my body and my level of comfort doing activities I was interested in. I didn't feel good about myself, even if in most aspects I was healthy. I was always lucky that I was generally healthy in terms of my blood work and things like that, but emotionally and physically I just felt so shitty all the time.

Why I decided on WLS & wtf it has to do with dogs

I started seriously toying with the idea of weight loss surgery after a friend of mine had it and was looking and feeling so much better. Her biggest regret was that she hadn't done it sooner. I weighed (no pun intended) the pros and cons and talked to pretty much anyone I could about it. I was just really scared, and the "what ifs" never seemed to stop.

What if I'm not approved for surgery?

What if I do this and it doesn't work?

What if I do this and I still don't like my body?

What if I have complications and get really sick?

What if I do this and then I mess it up by continuing to overeat?

What if I do this and then I hate food?

I really just wanted to get back to running because I'd loved it so much, and had really been making some progress. Hell, I'd been planning a cross-country trip just to run a particular half marathon. I didn't want to keep feeling older than I was and just so tired and run down all the time. I guess I knew there was another version of myself hiding under basically 200lbs of excess fat.

On some level, I thought about my dogs and the kind of owner I wanted to be. I liked watching dog sports and was curious about getting involved in them. I liked the idea of taking my dogs running with me or hiking. I wanted to be more active with them, and with the dogs I'd have in the future. It was hard for me not to feel guilty in some ways because I just didn't want to do anything ever.

The process I went through to get approved for WLS

I was really fortunate that my insurance was willing to pay for half of the surgery if I went through their program to basically try to prove that I wouldn't be a "failure" with the surgery. I'll be honest, it was a bit of a joke. I had to do phone consultations with someone and she pretty much gave me the same info each time over the course of several months. Once that requirement was done, I had to move on to the doctor, which I thought was going to be the easier part.

My doctor required more when I made it to him. None of it was particularly time consuming, but it all felt tedious at the time, I won't lie. The majority of it was meetings. Meeting a dietician. Meeting with a therapist. Meeting with a lifestyle coach. Meeting with him. Just a lot of meetings. I found myself frustrated throughout the process and really just wanted it to get going so I could move on to the next phase: my skinny era.

One thing I discovered is that our healthcare system really is a huge pain in the ass. They do this surgery regularly with my doctor at the same hospital, so the fact that they couldn't seem to get me a price was thoroughly frustrating. I ended up taking out a loan and got it all covered, but if I hadn't been fortunate enough to do that, I would have been absolutely screwed.

Eventually though, everything worked out and I was approved for surgery. I waited until summer vacation when I could just focus on the surgery instead of a classroom full of kids, and set the date for June 29th, 2022.

Surgery Day & Recovery

For two weeks before surgery, I transitioned to a full liquid diet that pretty much consisted of soups, jello, pudding, protein shakes, and smoothies. The last two or three days before surgery were for clear liquids only. I cheated, yep, I did, I admit it. I ate a couple of bites of pasta salad probably 3-5 days before surgery. I'm pretty sure I paid for it by throwing up coming out of the anesthesia and damn near choking on it, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I went and stayed with Dog Dad before surgery since he was in charge of taking me to the hospital and taking care of me for a few days afterwards. We woke up stupid early in the morning and went to the hospital. At this point we only had Grimm and Rudy, so they stayed home together while we were gone. I'd only had one other surgery before, and that was when I was seven or so and had my tonsils and adenoids removed. I don't remember much about that experience at all.

I was nervous, crazy nervous, but I tried really hard to hide it from everyone. I think the worst part for me was the IV. It really burned, so much so I asked the nurse if she put the needle in too far... then she told me it wasn't even a needle. Shows how much I knew about what was going on. It was really just a lot of waiting around since they make you show up so early for your surgery. In my mind, the surgery was like two seconds since all I remember is getting moved from my bed to the operating table before I fell asleep, and then waking up choking on my own vomit while they were putting an oxygen mask on me. I woke up again, what I assume was a couple hours later, in my bed in recovery with a pretty hefty amount of pain and discomfort. There was one nurse in charge of a whole row of us, and I remember that the guy next to me kept trying to hit on her which was pulling her attention from me and all I wanted was some water. I said some choice words to him, then begged for water, she said I wasn't allowed, and then I asked if I could go to the bathroom. My whole plan was to shove my face under the sink and get a drink that way then. She knew what I was up to and made me wait.

I had no conception of time, so when I finally found out it was like 2PM, I was thoroughly surprised. My doctor came around, asked how I was doing, I told him fine. He asked if I'd walked, I told him I'd done two laps around the floor (which I had), he nodded, and I asked if I could go home yet because the nurse was trying to put me in a room upstairs. He told her to do my discharge paperwork and I started getting dressed sitting down (way harder than it should be). Somewhere in this shuffle, my cell phone got caught in the sheets and I was too out of it to notice.

We left the hospital, I went to grab my phone about 20 minutes down the road and realized I had left it. So, we got to turn around and go back for it and I was really lucky that I caught it before my sheets were too far gone. It was during this little escapade that the gas pain really got to me. So much so that I got out of the car and just started wandering around the hospital parking lot. They say walking makes the gas move and helps to get rid of it... I think this is their attempt at getting you active because that so didn't work for me that day.

When we got home I went to lay down pretty much immediately. They sent me home with two different nausea medications, and two different pain medications, all of which I greatly appreciated. I slept for a bit, then got up and felt pretty good for maybe an hour before I went back to sleep. It was a huge help being at Dog Dad's place so he could help out with Grimm, who just really didn't get why I wouldn't play with him. I really just slept a lot for the first two days, but I distinctly remember that the day after surgery I really hated my life and didn't get out of bed more than I had to. From there, it's been pretty smooth sailing.

I've been really lucky not to have any complications from my Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy (VSG) and hiatal hernia repair. I still deal with acid reflux every now and then, but in general it's been physically a very easy road. Emotionally... well, we'll get into that in part two.

Thanks for reading this tail, and here's to many more!

Danielle