Out of the 300s!

You guys!!!! (Okay, hopefully you all know that I'm speaking to all of you, regardless of gender...it's the CA girl in me) Guess what guess what guess what? I have hit a HUGE milestone in my life:

I am now officially under 300 pounds!

Okay, now that is a craaazy thing to admit on a public blog, but I promised myself that I would be brutally honest here no matter what. Some people may not think this is something to celebrate, but I can guarantee that it's big for me (no pun intended).

I haven't been at this weight since shortly after my wedding (and side note: I am wearing today the pants that I wore in my engagement pictures. Yup, they fit. It's awesome.). In fact, I may even be around the same weight that I was when I got married...I don't remember the exact number. 

And while my weight did fluctuate throughout college and on my mission, I weigh less now than I did on my high school graduation day. That is an amazing feeling.

Sure, the weight is distributed in different areas. Getting older and having gone through pregnancy and childbirth will do that do a person. But I feel so good. I get so many compliments these days! I didn't do this for the attention, though--I did it to get healthy. And I would say I am well on my way there.

EGD results!

WARNING: Pictures of my insides are included in this post, so if that makes you queasy, you may want to skip the rest of the post! So as you don't miss much, know that I'm okay and the procedure went fine. They opened up the hole a little more and will do so again in four weeks. Yay! For those with stronger stomachs, please read on.

My husband and I arrived at the hospital a few minutes before my scheduled procedure on Monday. After filling out the paperwork and changing into a hospital gown, we waited for quite awhile before a nurse finally came to check my vitals and get an IV started. (Side perk of losing weight: starting the IV was MUCH easier this time around. Guess there's just not as much fat to go through to find the vein anymore. She only had to stick me once!) Then they wheeled me into the procedure room.

Once in the procedure room, the doctor came and discussed a few things with me--why I was there, what the problem was, a little bit of my recent medical history. He said I was at greater risk of complications from the EGD because of that silly perforation I had in February, but he reassured me that he would be extra careful. Thanks, doc. Then they put the oxygen thingy up my nose, had me lay on my left side, put a mouth guard in, and told me to start breathing deeply. At first, I didn't think it was working, but then I felt myself slowly slipping away...and I woke up back in the prep room, probably about 30 minutes later.

The first thing I remember is that I needed to pass some gas. Badly. I felt like my abdomen was full of air--I guess I swallowed a lot of air while my mouth was propped open by the mouth guard. Anyway, I had to wait until I felt more confident getting up to go down the hallway, but I made it somehow and...yeah, let's just say the relief was sweet. At least my husband was kind enough to say it honestly didn't smell. He's so nice to me.

Back in the prep room, the doctor told me what they found. It turns out the opening from my "stomach" (pouch) to my small intestine was about 8mm in diameter. Here is a picture:

How big is that opening supposed to be? Apparently a normal person will have a diameter of about 18mm, which means the hole was less than half the size it should have been. No wonder I was having trouble keeping food down! So the doctor put a little balloon in to increase the size, and now the hole looks like this:

That's about 12mm diameter. He said it may shrink to about 10mm over the next four weeks, and that I should go back in to have another procedure to widen it again at that point.

So! Apparently I wasn't just dreaming the tightness and difficulty of digesting solid foods, and I'm supposedly on the way to becoming somewhat normal again. Hooray! I haven't yet tried something really solid, but I did have some oatmeal with apple chunks in it this morning, and I didn't have an adverse reaction to it, so I think that is a good sign. Here's to continued improvements!

EGD on Monday :o

Well, apparently I'm having an endoscopy on Monday--it's officially called an esophagogastroduodenoscopy, or EGD. Why? Let me give you some back story. I've been having trouble keeping food down for awhile now. It depends on the type of food, but I've noticed a pattern that softer foods go through a lot more easily (stuff like refried beans, mashed potatoes, yogurt) and more solid foods often get stuck and I end up throwing up (usually happens with chicken, fish, or something else equally solid--once I threw up raw carrots). Since I need to eat solid foods to get the protein my body needs, you can see how this could be a problem.

I mentioned this to my surgeon last week, and he said that it's possible the opening (not sure if it's the one from my esophagus to my stomach or my stomach to my small intestine) is too narrow, which probably would have resulted from my second surgery, when they used a whole lot of glue and everything to hold it all together. He told me to keep an eye on it and let him know if it was a problem. After throwing up from a simple meal like clam chowder yesterday, I knew I needed help, so I called the nurse at the surgeon's office. She spoke with Dr. Watts, and I've been scheduled for an EGD on Monday. I'm not sure if this will just be exploratory or if they'll widen the opening while they're down there, but...yeah.

I'm kinda nervous about it, so prayers would be appreciated. It would just be nice to actually eat the foods that I'm supposed to without worrying about them getting stuck and me eventually throwing up!

A new me is breaking out of the shell...

Many of my blog readers probably already saw this picture on Facebook, but I had to post it here, too. This is the most recent picture I have of myself. I splurged and got my hair cut and highlighted on Saturday (kind of as a happy-birthday-to-myself--did I mentioned I turned 29 recently? Good year so far!), so that explains why my hair actually looks all nice and shiny and straight instead of semi-frizzy. And the shirt? Pretty sure I haven't worn that since the early days of pregnancy back in 2007. And the jeans? Couldn't even button them about six months ago, and now they're baggy. So baggy that I think I need new jeans. Man, this is awesome. I love seeing the new me :)