Thanksgiving 2011

This was an eventful week: my hubby N had his Vertical Sleeve surgery as well as my 2-week follow-up appointment with the surgeon followed by Thanksgiving/black Friday and then the week ended with my mom being hospitalized with congestive heart failure last night.

N chose the VSG surgery because he liked the fact that it was a simpler surgery that didn't involve rerouting the intestines and didn't leave the remnant stomach inside. After I sailed through my surgery, he was sure he'd have the same experience. Hmmm.... I told him to make sure the anesthesiologist gave him nausea meds because heaving is not a good thing with stitches on your gut. They did give him some, but not the 3 different meds they gave me because he spent his first 24 hours post surgery dry heaving with a pillow clutched to his abdomen...ouch! Otherwise he also experienced much more pain than I did. Which now makes me a hero in his eyes (which always is a good thing!) He was released Thanksgiving afternoon and is currently taking each day at a time.

Normally I host Thanksgiving Dinner for my 3 kids, their spouses/significant others, my 6 grandkids and my sister and mom. Which nicely fills up the house with loved ones and the scent of roasting turkey... To me that's what Thanksgiving is. When N's surgery was scheduled for this week, I told everyone that they were on their own. I just felt that N needed to rest, not stress about hosting a family dinner. I was hoping one of the kids would squeeze us all into their house and I could come eat a few bites of turkey drowning in Gravy. But they all took the opportunity to go to their in-laws for dinner instead. So I went visiting to my daughters for a tiny bit before picking up my hubby from the hospital. Later, I nuked a turkey Lean Cuisine. Which was the best thing I've eaten post surgery!

Later that night I decided to try my hand at Walmarts Black Friday sale. I honestly have never partaken in this kind of thing, I'm not fond of crowds and I'm not sure what I was thinking...I really thought, "How bad can it be? Take the worst Saturday crowds and multiply it by 2." How about multiply by maybe 10! It was amazing! I left as soon as I could, empty handed about 30 minutes after I arrived. For those of you who haven't participated in this before my suggestion is this: DON't! It was truly scary. If there had been a fire, I would have died. It was a gridlock of human beings out to save $15 at the expense of being kind or considerate. Ugh...

My surgeons appt went fine. There wasn't really remarkable about it. My weight loss according to them is about 20 lbs from me first visit. That's what I'd been thinking myself.

Last night my sister (who takes care of my 85 yr old mom) called to tell me that they had admitted her to the hospital. I don't really know more than that, but will find out more than that today. I pray she'll recover soon.

I've got to run, take care!

~ barb