Ayn's Multiple World

Pretty much a personal day ... lots to go through got lost in it all

Good morning. This is me. We’re at work now. It’s about 8 am. We’re getting settled in, but we haven’t really done too much. We had a candy bar already. We have to try harder at that, but these seem like empty word, because it’s difficult to want to stop when the opportunity is there.

We had a couple of appointments yesterday and that seemed to exhaust us. We went to see the surgeon. And, then we had an appointment with the dietician, and then we had an appointment later with Dr. Marvin. In between, we helped Rich with an important report. I had the easy part, we just typed in numbers. We did help in getting the program downloaded and we helped in some of the editing, but it was nothing like what Rich went through in gathering all the numbers and crunching them down. Yeeks. Sometimes I forget how smart Rich is. He’s so cool.

That was something too. Twice in one week!!! Hehehe we’re at work so we’ll not go into the details there but the guy is so gosh darn hot. Pshwoo!

Annnnnnnyway. *Sigh*

We also had the chance to IM with the boys over the last couple of days. AHA! We are going with the Joe. I just talked to him for a moment on the phone. He is going to send me directions to the place from his work. I think he works like 10-7. It’s been confirmed though that I am going with him. He says he thinks its south, but he doesn’t know enough to say if I should go his way or he should come my way. He wants to get back up directions like we did last time, which is fine with me.

There was also some buzz about the big bout mid-November. I think it is like the 17th. That is the one that the whole family is going to. Not my family, but the boys. I don’t think we mentioned that yet, but there was a lot of back and forth on that. I was feeling as if I’d embarrass the boys, and Maury was like … no, it’s not that, but that he didn’t want to leave me alone, but that he’d really made plans to be with the rest of the family and friends. He said there were about 45-50 people going to be there. We also went through some stuff about videoing. I thought I wanted my camera and Maury thought he wanted my camera. Hmm, no, I didn’t win.

He’s pretty much decided that he would take the better pictures and that I would be flinching too much when Joe got hurt. I was like Joe ISN’T going to get hurt.

Well, anyway … there you go … guy against mom. Ok, enough of that.

Anyway, one thing I wanted to say is that I think that what’s happening here is that we’re all proud of Joe and Alex and we’re glad to see them going for things that are harder and beyond the regular bounds of life. I think that Joe does these things to challenge himself. I wish you could all know him. He is very, very good. *Sigh*
Ok, we’re getting mushmellow again. Let’s just say he’s the best Joe I ever met.

I’m pretty proud of him. Good strong Joe Michael Garvey. OK OK … we’re tripping over ourselves now. I’m so happy that I can make him a priority as to being at the matches that are important to him.

Hmm, ok we should probably go through the medical for a minute before we forget all of it. We don’t yet have it into a format that we can go from start to finish and feel that we did the listening/questioning session justice. Let’s say at first that it was like an intense 20 minute session with the surgeon. Those people are pretty smart. She had my record on the computer right next to her where we were sitting.

And at one point, she had me stand up to check the incisions from the hernia operation. She said that the work the previous surgeon had done was excellent. You could see that she had a look of respect for the work. I guess he’s now at a director position in some major hospital to the East … I forgot which one, but I knew Dr. Ayoo was impressed. She also looked at the surgeon’s notes on the computer. It was to look at her as if she’d read a masterpiece. I think that is good. I hope that her work is too. She talked about doing extra stitches by hand attaching the stomach to the small intestines. I know that sounds pretty gross, but she prided herself on that small handwork rather than just the staples. There will be staples too, but they will be on just the part where the old stomach part gets put off to the side.

No, I don’t have all the right words yet, but hopefully I will get better. The hardest part that I talked to her about was that she said that the chance of death is 1 out of a 100. She says that I have to take the heart test again to see if I’m up to that kind of stress, because the last test was back in 2004. I have to make an appointment with those people. Hmm, so much to do. I’m not sure if I should do that soon, or closer to the date. She said definitely, she would do the surgery.

She gave me plenty of time to ask questions, but suggested strongly at the end that I bring someone in with me to support me and to ask questions as well. I don’t know if Rich is going to be so happy with that. We talked to him about it already. He’s still not happy with this decision, but he’s respecting my space. I’m grateful of that. He very didn’t like the chances of 1 out of 100.

I don’t know what to do about that either. I think that if I don’t lose weight I will die. I’d rather give it a chance to succeed. I would like to be thinner again. That is the bottom line. If I’m going to be around for Rich, the boys, and my grandchildren, something has to happen and it may have to be this drastic. It was scary talking to the Dr., but it was also underlining exciting. She says that if the insurance company is cooperative that it will b about an 8 month process.

That would put the surgery to about … June. That would be good to get going before the July staffing. There is a lot to get done before now and then. It’s all a process and us and Dr. Marvin have to be working on things that are getting in the way now. He said specifically that we are going to need going over what happened with BJ.

Last night … we talked about the first ½ hour about the weight stuff. We tried to tell him everything we could remember about the surgeon. There’s this one part though that we keep forgetting and that is that … wait, let me back into it.

One of the things that happened is she explained very carefully the risks, and she explained the process of the operation. She asked me from the start what kind of surgery did I want … and I said gastric bypass, but not the band one. She said there were many different kinds of bariatric surgery, and as it happened she was the one that knew best the three biggest ones. I felt relief in that. We told her we wanted the one that worked the best and that in talking with Dr. Allbright, she said that this was the best. Specifically, well even Dr. Marvin didn’t know how to pronounce it, but it is … Roux-en-Y-gastric bypass. There is a traditional and a laparoscopic one. She is going to try the laparoscopic one, but she told me if they got in there and it couldn’t be done, they would revert to the other one that would leave a large scar down the front of my stomach. She said that there would be work up on top and work on the bottom. She said usually she could count for us ahead of time the number of incisions. But, in our case because of the hernia surgery, she might have to make more.

I guess that’s what we’re getting to. It’s a bit riskier, because she said that the other surgeon had put in a large mesh to cover the hernia and that she might have to cut into that. We were like, ok, we’re seriously listening, but we’re going to depend on you to tell us what’s what and do what you need to do. So beside the gastric bypass and the lap band, there was one more that would leave kind of a sleeve of the stomach instead of a pouch. She said that was kind of an intermediate surgery. We decided that we really wanted the one that was going to give us the best chances of a happy life meaning – work the best – no cheating. She said she was glad I said that, because that’s the one that she liked – speaking of the gastric bypass – the more intense surgery – it’s more drastic, but more complete. As it turns out she’d just given a lecture on it to a bunch of Dr.’s and our Dr. Dr.
Allbright was there. Dr. Aayoo says that it sounded like she was paying attention.

We said that Dr. Allbright is very conscientious. She took time to listen to us and she was very good at referring out, which helped to be taking care of problems before they got real bad.

Dr. Aayoo talked about needing to go through a life change where we would do a lot of things differently. Because of that and because of insurance requirements, we are going to be required to go through a 6 month regulated set of sessions with a specialist in these kind of surgery’s. We are required to lose also 15-20 pounds.

And, there will be different things that come up such as the 10 days prior doing a
liquid diet. I have to pass a psychological testing set of things too. That is going to be by Dr. Marvin and maybe one other specialist that is in his department.

Mostly, because they are asking for a specific set of tests, that he is unfamiliar
with giving. We told Dr. Marvin that we asked her to send anything important to both Dr. Allbright and to Dr. Marvin. That is part of being the UIC system where everyone can read everyone’s notes. Maybe some people would think that its too invasive. But, you just don’t know how helpful it was that she could just open my file flip to a separate link and know everything about me. In the same way … she could flip to the page where my triglycerides were and say definitely mine are too high. I think that and being low on the good other stuff that these were things I was happy she was seeing. She emphasized that I would probably be on vitamins and minerals for the rest of my life, because my body wouldn’t be able to absorb enough of that from the food I was eating and I thought that was fine. She also said that we would need to check with a pharmacist about which medicines we could take in an elixir form and which ones could be crushed. We’ll talk all that over with either Dr. Allbright, or Dr. Marvin. Also, we know that the diabetic pills will most likely change, because the quantities of food being eaten will of course be less.

There are a lot of things to consider. So, let me see heart test, I have to make that appointment and also we made an appointment with the nutrition and wellness center – that will be like on the 15th of November. Got to remember that we’ve got to go too to the people for getting the sleeve for my knee. Hmm, that’s another thing. I asked Dr. Marvin to read the report from the guy who looked at our knee, the funny Dr. Dr. Marvin stated that I have two things wrong with my knee. Above the knee, I have arthritis and below and to the lower part of my knee I have bursitis. I have to look that up now. I think this is what Rich haves in his arms and shoulders. Sometimes. Sometimes he isn’t feeling pain, but then others, he can’t barely lift his arms.

 AHA! This is the kind of bursitis I have … I remember him saying goose foot! Pes anserine bursitis is inflammation of a bursa that lies at the inner lower part of the knee, between your shinbone (tibia) and three tendons connected to the hamstring muscles on the inside of your leg. This type of knee bursitis, also more common than others, is sometimes called goosefoot bursitis because the three tendons somewhat resemble the shape of a goosefoot.

I guess it’s a complication of the arthritis. Aha … it goes hand in hand with the tight hamstrings too … that’s what the other doctor was having us treated for aside strengthening the muscles to be better dealing with the arthritis. We’re at greater risk too because of the diabetes and are more susceptible to infections.

Hmm, we’ve read enough … we went to one of the common reference sites and then we went to MayoClinic. They usually give pretty good information. Even if those people are good they zapped me once and we have to be cautious of our affiliations there.

Now we’re into some kind of mind wasteland. Everything is affecting everything. I think the wake-up call for the weight loss is because of the knee. Now we know that we have arthritis and bursitis … it’s like ok, uncle, uncle. This is too much, I need help. It’s just the newest of problems we’ve got added to our pedigree. There are like options … they can aspirate the knee and draw fluids out, and from that check infections, and they can give it the cortical treatments, then in a severe case they could surgically remove the bursa. I don’t thing we want to try that, but it seems we’ve been in pain long enough. From what I read the cortical treatments are very quick acting, but then they say that with arthritis it may be a long lasting thing. One thing at a time … maybe we better look at … Ok, ok November 1 at 3 pm. That’s when we’re going in for the knee wrap, or sleeve. We’ll see what happens after that. It is supposed to be weight bearing, Which, I think means its going to help take some of the knee stress off. That be a good thing, but optimally is lessening the weight situation.

Ok, good. I think we got down some main points. Hmm, there is one more … Oh yes the doctor showed us pictures. We liked her confidence and what seemed like excitement going into surgery. It’s hard not to pick up her enthusiasm. We have to concentrate on loosing the required weight now. That’s going to be hard. It’ll be good to back to the nutrition and wellness center, right? I think their receptionists are idiots, and I’ve not found a great doctor through them. Now there is another Dr. Berger. I think she’s a she and at this point we’re going for that, because I think the medical doctors are too pissy. I just need someone who cares even though we might be having a hard time with it.

The nutritionist person I liked … not a lot of personality, but did good through the interview. She was like me just kept typing notes. Although I can see Dr. Berger earlier, this nutritionist Is booked until January. I don’t know about that … she said to make an appointment I thought she meant this year. I suppose I will just wait and see what the Dr. says about it. I know that the meeting yesterday was the marker of having started the 6 month registered weight loss. And, we’ve been warned that we can’t be missing appointments. I think we’re going to need going back to our registered system of having dates available. I think they are now in 3-4 places and they are not complete – we need to be making appointments.

Rich and us talked last night after the appointments. One of the things that came up was to be making the entire back room into a weight room. He said he was looking for chairs on the Internet and there were places that sold old equipment for a lesser price. I don’t think he realizes how important it is to get into the swimming pool though. I can’t do it right now on my own unless I cut the medical.

He said there is another place he was looking at too that was closer with a swimming pool. Hmm, the Dr. said something to about a fitness center at Loyola Hospital.

Let me call them.

Ok, got the info there. They are a fitness center that charges $300 for enrollment, and $61 per month after. They have some classes that are free and others aren’t … they sound competitive. They have the swimming pool and are open 6 am to 10 pm weekdays, and on weekends are open 7 am to 5 pm. Those are reasonable hours, but doesn’t take into consideration Riches real late hours, but then on those nights, he is not going to want to go out. I like the idea that it is associated with the hospital. Also, one of them said that sometimes the insurance company included it

posted by Ann Marie @ 10/26/2007 04:06:00 PM Comments: 0