Central Illinois Peoria-Bloomington Area

Midwest Carol · 03-25-2008, 07:51 AM

My surgery will be in Champaign. The reason is that since I am self-pay, I chose the Blis insurance coverage. This way, if anything goes wrong in the first eighteen months it will be covered. I was afraid that if something happened, my personal insurance would not cover it and I wouldn't be able to afford to have it taken care of. Apparently the Blis insurance coverage only works if you have the surgery at Carle.

Thor · 03-25-2008, 11:18 AM

Hope to see you April 1st, My prayers are with you, and I know all will go well. I got along great.I had wanted this so long, faught so hard for it I was not going to let anything rain on my Journey!!!!! God Bless you and remember just "BELIEVE" Becky

Midwest Carol · 03-26-2008, 05:05 AM

Thank you, Becky, for your prayers. It is 5 a.m. and we are heading off to Champaign. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thor · 03-26-2008, 08:04 PM

well you are probably home, thinking what have I done, but the Journey is well worth it, you don't need to get back to me till you feel better, In Much Christian Love and Respect."May Our Heavenly Father be with you this night and allow you to be painless and rest well" Becky

Midwest Carol · 03-28-2008, 09:47 AM

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. Surgery went well, and the trip home was fine, but I did have a slight problem. I had urinary retention and ended up calling Dr. R. at midnight. We had to go to the hospital in Springfield for a straight cath that night. That solved the problem, but it was rough for awhile. Today my belly is really hard from the gas and I'm getting a bit of the back pain, but other than that I am great. Drinks and pills are going down fine. I'm still hoping to see everyone next week, but I'm going to have to feel a little better than this before I take off on that drive.

dawnstunes · 03-30-2008, 01:34 PM

Carol- Hope that you are feeling better by now. I know that when I had my surgery I too had the gas/bloat pains. I found it helpful to use a heating pad or rice bag on it to ease the discomfort. It would be fun to meet you on Tues. night but don't want you to overdo it, take care and keep us posted.

Midwest Carol · 03-30-2008, 02:32 PM

I am going to try to make it on Tuesday. My daughter and her kids may ride along and go out to eat with some relatives in Bloomington while I go to Denny's. They love Avanti's gondolas. I'm really looking forward to getting some advice from people with a little more experience. Yesterday I was out for about six hours and thought I should get some protein in me before I went to bed. It was my first shake since surgery. Ugh. It did not set well. Luckily I had one anti-nausea pill left from surgery. Don't know if I just drank too much or too quickly, but it makes me a little nervous about trying another. Maybe one of you can help me order at Denny's. It will be my first time to eat out with the band.

Thor · 03-30-2008, 04:09 PM

You mean drink out!!!!! I am so excited about Tuesday, and meeting all of you, Good has blessed us all to allow us to be banded then to even let us get together without any problems,I hope I am not the only one looking forward to this????? Is you Tuesday. Becky

dawnstunes · 03-30-2008, 05:38 PM

Yep, this is the Tuesday that we get to meet. LOL on the "drink out". That's kind of what I was thinking. At this time you are still on liquid and softies right? You could bring your protein shaker and drink mix and order skim milk or if you have some protein soup powder get hot water. There is also good ol jello, applesauce or cottage cheese. Just as an FYI I will share with you some of my favorite little staples that I keep on hand and use. I drink Optimum Nutrition's Gold Standard Whey Powder in Extreme Milk Chocolate or French Vanilla Creme a lot in the mornings for breakfast. I also take it along when I have an outing or hectic errand day, it keeps me out of trouble. You can mix this up a little at the stage that you are in and add a bit of fat free yogurt, or a banana, sometimes the vanilla is good with orange juice as a dreamsicle. You can make it and freeze it for a bit and then you have a treat. I find that cold things are better later in the day or when I am really open as they don't go down as easy sometimes. Another couple of suggestions are Unjury chicken soup flavor and unflavored to mix with broths or cream soups as your protein. Lastly, Herbalife company carries a Shapeworks program that has powdered mixes for the on the go days or liquid stage folks. The mixes I use are the Peach Mango and Wildberry flavored beverage drink mixes and the Creamy Chicken soup mix. I look for bargains and will admit that most of this was picked up on ebay or amazon. I may have gotten the Unjury from their website due to the $ being pretty good. Know this is a long post but it is key to success to be prepared and have in your purse or car a few of these for just in case times so that you can stay on track instead of falling back into old habits. It is much easier to get hot/cold water or milk to mix things in than to try and choke something down and hurt yourself.

Midwest Carol · 03-30-2008, 06:18 PM

Thanks for the ideas. I printed them out. Don't think I can have cottage cheese yet, but it sounds awfully good so i will check. After my experience with the shake last night, I'm sort of afraid of it. I may just bring a packet of my soup, or maybe I can have them put some soup in a blender for me. Guess I will be the only one who can actually have a drink.

dawnstunes · 03-30-2008, 07:03 PM

My family and I were just at Denny's last night and if my memory serves me correctly Tuesday night is Tomato Basil and Chicken Noodle soup night. OK now you can maybe give me some help. I want to get one of those cute little tickers did you just put this as part of your signature and update it as needed??

Midwest Carol · 03-31-2008, 08:11 AM

Yes, but I had a hard time. Fenton told me that he had to start a new signature when he wanted to show his weight loss, and that is what I finally had to do also. Try clicking on my ticker, then try to copy the text in the box into your profile. Actually, my sixteen year old granddaughter had to do it for me. If it doesn't work, let me know and I will ask her how she did it.

dawnstunes · 03-31-2008, 09:45 AM

Ok, so I am a dork I guess. I made my own ticker and cut and paste the code with my right mouse clicker then I also tried to cut and paste with the ctrl c ctrl v method....nothing works. It tells me that my signature has too many lines. I am even using a small font. Any ideas anyone?

dawnstunes · 03-31-2008, 09:48 AM

I DID IT I DID IT...I had to use the other code I was using the html code and that wasn't working.

Thor · 04-01-2008, 09:01 AM

Morning all,this the day, hope to see you all there tonight, 6:30, wear yellow.In christian Love and Respect.....Becky NOT only yellow, but I have short whitish gray hair,I'm 60, so older than most of you, can't wait....