Still in a sort of limbo. My surgical team sent me home after the one-week checkup with thumbs up and instructions to come back at a month, unless something goes wrong. My incisions I think have started to actively heal; they're now much more swollen but they're not hot and rather than hurting, they itch - I take this to mean they're healing internally. I have no fever or other symptom that might indicate infection, which is good.
My energy is vacillating wildly, which is interesting since my diet/caloric intake and my sleep isn't really changing at all. I'm sleeping rather well, around 9-10 hrs a day. I attribute the better sleep to two things - first, I have lost 30 lbs in the past month, and second I have a new automatic CPAP machine and lower-profile mask, both of which make sleeping easier. Normally (i.e. prior to surgery) I tend to sleep around 7 or 8 hours a night on a 'good' night - one with no insomnia. I attribute the longer sleeping to both better sleeping conditions and the fact that my body is still trying to figure out what the fuck was done to it, which is likely what's also leading to the vacillations in energy.
I'm still on clear-ish liquids. Tuesday I can begin eating 'purees' which is a softer term for 'mush' or 'pap.' I think that will include yogurt, which will be welcome; I know it will include full soups up to soft noodle soups, which I'm also grateful for. If I'm fortunate, it will include scrambled eggs or egg whites. I'll be checking with the medicos during the week.
A couple of folks online and off have asked me how I'm doing with the transition. They mean dealing with the fact that my eating and my body have permanently changed. Some folks here and elsewhere have written with wonderfully supportive tales of their own transformations and transitions of a myriad of varieties, reassuring me that this part really does suck and that I'll come through it. I'm grateful. The answer at the moment is that I haven't really dealt with the 'permanent change' in a concrete way, because the one thing it will really affect - how I'm able to eat - I haven't been able to do at all in any case. I think once I'm cleared to eat solid food is when it will become viscerally (haha) apparent to me what is different, and that's when I'm most concerned with how I'll handle it.
Update:
Went to the Met with some friends. Also decided to not take a man-bag with me, the first time I've been loose in NYC without one in...good grief, must be years. I wore cargo pants and stuffed my iPad mini in a pocket, compromising. I felt OK carrying an umbrella, what with predicted T-storms.
One of my friends had just run 10 miles in prep for a half marathon, so he and I with my dodgy knee and weird energy fluctuations hobbled around the museum and looked at Arab art while his wife shook her head and put up with the pair of us. Then we went to a hip wine bar type place on the West Side, and I practiced my new skill of Drinking Water While Others Eat And Drink(tm). On the plus side, got out of the house, saw friends, walked around, went to Museum.
Weight: 301.4