Bucket list.....not so much

So I started this week with high hopes of my food bucket list.  As it turns out, so far nothing is as great as I thought it would be.  I wanted Thai food, had it for lunch last Friday and it just wasn't good, it was all sticky and sat like a lump in my stomach for hours.  Then Saturday, I had Chinese buffet, and it was a really good place, but all it did was give me a stomach ache. 

I guess that part of making this decision, to have this procedure done, is knowing that "food" isn't what makes me happy really.  Maybe I have been looking at eating and dieting the wrong way for many years.  Oh sure I would eat for comfort whether I was happy, sad, excited, angry, for whatever reason have you, I would find something to eat.  Its that attitude that got me to where I am now.

On Sunday I went back to eating like I should at this stage of the game.  One or two protein shakes a day, and a normal meal.  

I also tried taste testing the clear protein drinks I'm going to have to drink immediately after the surgery.  That Isopure drinks are not THAT bad.  They do have a funny aftertaste but all I can say is I will dilute it in water if I turn out that diverse to them. 

So come Thursday, I will have a Doctors Appointment every day till the end of the month.  After that, its all quite until the Surgery.  Which is 29 days from today. 

Not MORE Doctors!!!!

In order to be approved for the bariatric surgery, my insurance requires a person to jump through many hoops and put out buku bucks for copay's BEFORE they consider the surgery.  Pretty dumb on their part since it alleviates a lot of other medical problems that come with being overweight.  

So far I have been to a Gastroenterologist, psychologist,  and yesterday I went to my 1st of 2 nutritional visits.  I have appointments for a cardiologist, pulmonologist, and an endoscopy at the end of the month.  Then my pre-op appointment with the surgeon on the 27th. 

Sometimes I think that they just make you do all of these appointments to see if you are really ready for this life altering operation.

Food Bucket List

I was thinking today about all the foods I will be giving up after the surgery.  Im sure it wont be forever, but in my head it will be for a long time.  Im ok with this idea, over eating, bingeing, and grazing is what got me to this point, so sacrificing for the time being is what I have to do. 

However, I still have 5 weeks till the surgery so I decided Im going to start a food Bucket list.   I dont think I will get through all of it but it will be interesting to say good bye to some things I may never, or for a long while, have again.  So here is my Food Bucket List, in no specific order:

1.  Chinese food buffet.
2.  Boardwalk or fair food.
3.  Hybachi or bento box
4.  BBQ all you can eat
5.  Ihop Breakfast
6.  bagel sandwich from a real bagel place, not dd's
7.  A banana split
8.  Thai food
9.  More to come, maybe.....

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

So my name is Kelly and I am 47 this month and I am morbidity obese.   I live in Morrisville, Pa with my long time companion, Thomas, who I call Tommie, and his adult daughter Shannon. 

I work for the Brothers Koretsky in Central Jersey.  I love my work, I have really cool bosses and I work with some of the best co-workers ever.  I have been with the Brothers and this company for about 8 years now.  I wont go into particulars but my office is at one of their 3 national warehouses.   My step daughter, works in the same office building as me but I rarely see her during the day.

As I stated before I am very over weight.  I have lost weight and gained weight 100's of times throughout my life but now am at the point where its starting to talk its toll on my health.  I have type 2 diabetes uncontrolled,  meaning I'm so fat so I gave it to myself.   I suffer from sever bouts of back pain and sciatica.  My knees are starting to hurt from holding up all of this weight. 

I currently take about 200 units of insulin a day, pills for cholesterol,  thyroid, kidneys.  That's when I am not in pain, there are more pills for those days.  Better living through chemistry right...well not so much.

In the past, my health benefits at work would pay for all of the specialist but would not pay for Bariatric surgery.  And lets face it, its expensive and how many of us have $25,000 to put out for this operation?  I had gotten deep in dept once before in my life and its no fun and not easy to recover from that, but I did, so I wasn't about to go back into debt a 2nd time.  Besides other than a bank account, I had a home now they could take.  Financing the operation just wasn't an option in my book.

Well, last Fall our health benefits changed, it included a lot of other stuff the other policy did not.   I was ecstatic to find out, it covered the bariatric surgery as long as you had certain "comorbilities"  (love that word, what it means is that you have other problems that can kill you!)  and jumped through 7 or more levels of hell, they would pay for the operation.

So I did my research, and on April 22nd, of this year, I made my 1st appointment with the surgeon.  

I am intending to journal my journey on this blog.  I am hoping to let people understand that people who are over weight like I am do have hope in overcoming this lifelong affliction.  I think that many people believe that because I am fat, I have been lazy and eat crap food all the time, when it couldn't be farther from the truth.