Maintenance

After the Colfax, I had some heartburn. It wasn't anything too serious and I figured it was just my normal "after long run" thing, which does happen. Then on Memorial Day, I headed to the gym where I did five miles on the elliptical and about fifty or sixty crunches on this ab machine there. We then went to the pool and all was well. Until late afternoon when I really started to feel like crap. I felt lots of pressure around my abdomen, around where the lap band is, but no reflux or heartburn. I figured I had some wicked gas, ate hardly anything for dinner and went to bed. The next morning, it wasn't any better and throughout Tuesday it got worse, with pain radiating to my left shoulder and pressure so bad that I really couldn't eat anything at all and could barely drink water. In the afternoon, I called my bariatric doc and scheduled an appointment for an unfill for the next morning. But it just got worse and worse and then I started to get all paranoid wondering if I was having some kind of heart attack or blood clot in my lung, and wouldn't it be just perfect if everyone thought it was just the band acting up and meanwhile I die of something stupid like that, right?

So, Chris gets home and I am lying in bed sick as a dog, and he says we are going to the ER, which I agree to. So, we head to the ER, and we are there for the next six hours. They do an EKG (my heart is fine) and a chest x-ray to look for a clot in my lung. Then they did a CT scan to look at the band, and found that it had slipped. They called my doc, sent her the pictures, and sent me home with instruction to see her first thing the next morning. I got some nice pain medication (was in LOTS of pain until I threw up the contrast stuff they were making me drink and food from my breakfast came up, which to me said a lot about what the problem was, but after I threw up I felt much better) and was ok, knowing that I wasn't having some major crisis, although the band slipping is bad enough.

So, yesterday I go to my doc, and she looked at the pictures and had to take ALL of the fluid out of the band. We talked about the half marathons and I told her I think I should probably just stop doing them, since after every single one of them I have gotten sick with some kind of problem going on with the band. She did not disagree with me, although honestly, nobody seems to know why intense exercise affects the band in this way or if it even is what is causing the problem. I told her the only things I could point to that were different in my routine were ab crunches and that half marathon a week before.

The hope is that the band will reposition itself after having all of the fluid taken out of it, and I have to go for another chest X ray in two to three weeks to see if it has. If it has taken care of itself, then we can start filling it again. If it hasn't, we'll have to "talk about other things we can do" which I am sure means surgery.

I did immediately start feeling much better after the fluid was removed, was able to eat and drink without pain, and this morning I feel even better.

But the bad news is that any assistance the band was giving me in maintaining my weight is gone. Zero restriction.

So, I am back on My Fitness Pal, with my goals being updated to simply maintain my current weight and not gain during this time of trial (not that I have really had any kind of concrete weight loss goal for some time, but now I definitely don't).

We are going on vacation in Hawaii next week, so this really could not have come at a worse time, but Chris and I talked about splitting meals and one treat a day strategies, so hopefully things won't be too bad while we are there.

Wish me luck and friend me on My Fitness Pal (mariannapher)! I need all the support I can get!