The Skinny on Getting Back into the Groove

Week two has been an eventful one—though sad to say, not on the scale. In fact, the scale didn’t move at all for 5 days. Luckily it started up again and I’ve lost 3 pounds in the last 2 days. Now, I know I need to get out of this pesky habit of weighing myself everyday. I certainly can’t expect to keep up the rate of loss I have for the weeks pre and post op, but it’s hard not to expect big changes when you’re eating 600 Calories a day. Anyhow, I’m down a total of 24 pounds in 3 weeks and still going in the right direction plus you can already see a change in the way I look—especially in my face—so I’m pretty happy with that.

But what else has been happening in the week since my last blog? Well, for starters I went back to work. My first day back was Wednesday. Now normally I work a 4 day work week which means I work 12 hour days during the week. That meant 12 hours Wednesday and 12 hours Thursday. Luckily Friday is my day off, though I did have to work a 6 hour shift yesterday. It actually wasn’t too bad. We were pretty dead on Wednesday so I got to do nothing most of the day, and Thursday wasn’t particularly hectic either. Of course I’m told it was a zoo all last week, but of course that’s what happens every time one of the doctors is off. My biggest concern has been evenings. For night hours there’s only me, one assistant and one receptionist so it’s harder for me to go without lifting. I definitely feel bad when a big dog comes in and I have to just stand there and watch while my assistant and the client do all the hard work (well, physically hard anyway). But, I’ve been managing. One day soon I’ll get to stop feeling like an invalid and start lifting things again. Saturday was more hectic but I have lots of help and the assistant who was assigned to me was a big, manly man who works out everyday. It made me feel less bad about not participating in the physical labor part of the job. Tomorrow starts my first full week, but I’m pretty much feeling back to my normal self, so I’m not too worried about it.

Other news pertaining to my work—right before I left someone managed to abandon their dog in our waiting room. We’re not sure how they got the pup in there without anyone seeing, but low and behold, there she was. She’s a cute little schnoodle (poodle/schnauzer.) The poor thing was completely matted with fur, covered in fleas and emaciated. She also had some mammary masses. Well despite the sorry state she was in (or perhaps partly because of it—I am a vet after all) I decided to keep her. While I was off, the other doctors took care of her for me. They cleaned her teeth and biopsied the masses (we almost had surgery on the same day :P). Luckily the masses were benign—no breast cancer for my little pooch. She still needs to be spayed and she’s still very weak and has a bad hip, but she could be a lot worse off right now. I’ve decided to name her Maddie (which kind of sounds like “matt-y” which is what she was when she came to us.) I brought her home on Thursday night and she’s been attached to my hip ever since, although today she spent a little time with my parents. My other dog is tolerating her well, but you can tell she’s jealous. Oh well, she’ll get used to her eventually.

So how’s the post op diet going, you ask? Well tomorrow I’m scheduled to start mushies—yay! Though I must admit that I’ve been a bad girl and taken a couple of liberties this week with the liquid diet. I had scrambled eggs twice, though they were really runny and it took me about 45 minutes to finish them. I also ate a few tiny bites of matzo ball out of the soup I got for lunch one day. I didn’t have any problems with that or the eggs. Tonight however, I took my mother out for Mother’s Day and decided to move on to mushies—for real—one meal early. Bad me, I know. I had ~1 tablespoonful of chicken salad and ~2 tablespoonfuls of my father’s chopped steak. I also had some chicken broth with a couple of bites of matzo ball. It took me a long time to get it down as I was taking exceptionally small bites and chewing like crazy. I was still feeling a little hungry in my stomach but I started to feel a little bit of pressure in my esophagus so I stopped before I had the last little bit of chopped steak (my nutritionist through my surgeon recommends 2 oz (~4 tbsp) of protein and 1 oz of carbs per mushie meal for a total of 6 meals a day so I was just about on target.) I don’t think it was stuck, though I haven’t experienced that yet so I don’t know for sure. But I didn’t feel like regurgitating and didn’t start sliming up or anything. It’s pretty much settled now.

Anyhoo—Tuesday is my first post-op check up. I’m excited. I hope I get clearance to go back to the gym, at least for cardio, plus I’d like to get permission to swim/bathe—then I can follow up my work-out with a soak in the hot tub. Doesn’t that sound like fun? Or maybe I just need to get a life.