I decided to consolidate my summer, and give an update for all things that are happening here. :)
Gastric bypass process has been interesting. I saw the kinesiologist on July 4, 2017 and she made it sound like I had to get 10k steps per day, as well as 300 minutes of exercise a week, to be even considered for the program. I found out later, that's the ideal - not the requirement. The requirement is 150 minutes of exercise a week.
I met with the nurse, dietician and counsellor on July 17, 2017. The nurse was good - I told her about my disability, and also told her it was okay to "nod and smile" if she didn't know what it was. I'm sure she looked it up after I left, which is fine. What it means is that I may not consistently get 300 minutes of exercise a week, but that I'll try my darndest and do stuff that I can do.
For those new, and who don't want to go through the previous whiny crap on my blog - I have superior canal dehiscence syndrome
http://vestibular.org/superior-canal-dehiscence-scd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_canal_dehiscence
I've had two surgeries to try to correct it, and both have failed. I am pretty much permanently disabled, because my surgeon is not willing to do a revision - he feels it would do more harm than good. I have a very thin skull (make your own joke here) and my temporal bones are like swiss cheese. The likelihood of a new hole forming are high, even with surgery to fix the ones I have.
I've had a lot of counselling for this, and I've pretty much accepted that I'll be like this for the rest of my life - barring a new surgical technique to fix the issue.
The counsellor asked me about my disability, and if I thought that gastric bypass would fix it. I laughed and said "no, I know it won't. The only thing it will do is make it less painful when I fall". She was good with me going into the program.
The dietician...was horrible. When I went to orientation, I remember them saying "we're not the food police" .... well, this dietician certainly was. She picked apart my food journal, said "wow, that's a LOT of calories", and basically made me feel like a huge pig. For the record, my calories were about 2000 a day, because that's what myfitnesspal had set it at. I left that session practically in tears, and wondering why the hell I even bothered to try this.
I also signed up for the 3 craving change classes. Those were fun, but I didn't really learn anything I didn't know - but it was a good refresher. One thing I made sure I did was talk with the ladies running the classes about my dietician. I was in tears when I talked with them. I didn't care - I wanted to know why they kept saying that the classes/appointments were a "safe place", yet the dietician I saw was certainly judgemental. They were shocked, to say the least, when I told them what had happened. And when I said that I had written about my experience in my WLS group, and someone said "oh, you must have had Phyllis" and that others had had this experience, well... they were mortified. They made sure that I WASN'T seeing Phyllis in my follow up in October, and I wasn't.
I don't know what they did after that, but I'm glad I said something instead of letting it fester and take me off track.
I also found out that I'm not supposed to be losing weight on the calorie level they gave me. I have lost about 15 lbs since July, which I'm happy with. I'm still going to do the surgery, because what usually happens is I lose about 20lbs, then everything just stops. No matter how much I exercise or lower calories, the weight doesn't come off. There's something wrong with my metabolism, and that's why I'm doing the bypass.
My next follow up is Oct 26th, and I expect to get the go ahead to see the surgeon. I could have surgery by Christmas...>EEEEEEK!
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