The Bandster Fairy Godmother

It's official: I am your bandster fairy godmother.

Bring your problems to me. If I can't reason them out, I will wave my magic wand over you and make it all better.

Please take a number and queue up to the right. No, not that right. Your other right.

Port Repair

As I think I mentioned before, my port has flipped over on its side and can only be accessed with the help of x-rays - at 3 times the cost, and about 30 times the inconvenience, of a fill in my surgeon's office. When this problem first began, I wouldn't have known it if it weren't for the fill difficulty. Now I can see a weird bulge on my abdomen where there was none before, and it can be uncomfortable when I do certain exercises.

So, now that my work schedule has eased up, I called my surgeon's office to tell them to go ahead and submit my port repair to BCBS. I also asked them a bunch of questions about the repair.
Here are the answers.

1. It's done under general anesthesia.

2. I have to do pre-op tests (blood, etc.) 3 weeks in advance.

3. I can go back to work immediately, depending on how I feel, as long as I don't take narcotic pain meds at the same time. (Dang! I had hoped they'd tell me to take a month off, preferably in the Caribbean with Lisa as my nurse)

4. The doctor will not do a fill at the same time as the port repair. I can only have fills when I'm awake and can swallow water. No, she won't do a fill and then put me to sleep.

I thought maybe the no-fill thing was because bringing me in for a fill at a later date brings in more income, but an obesityhelp pal told me that her restriction got tighter when she had her own port repair, so maybe the anesthesia or whatever affects the band.

Another question: nobody at my current workplace knows that I had WLS, and I don't care to share that with them. Not that I want to hide it, but when you get as far as long in your WLS journey as I have come, it's a unique pleasure to interact with people who have never known you when you were obese. And considering the hyperactivity of the gossip mill where I work, I do not want to add grist to the mill. So I decided that I would tell the store manager, and anyone else who persists, that I have a medical implant that needs repair. If they ask what the medical implant is, I will say, "My artificial brain."

Stress & the band

This is my mom and her best friend's granddaughter. A photo taken many years ago (the granddaughter is grown and married now).

Seeing Mom's smile is especially important to me tonight, because she passed away today.

It's probably been said before, but:

Stress can make your band tight.

Driving home from work tonight, I was so hungry I could have eaten my own arm.

My husband greeted me with the news that my mom (age 90) had passed away this morning.

Not really a surprise - I think she was ready to go - but later when I sat down to eat supper, two small bites of very mushy eggplant parmesan got stuck.

But no big deal. I have maybe 30-35 more years to eat eggplant parmesan. What matters is that when I saw Mom yesterday, I got her to eat two bites of chocolate cookie. Yeah, it was Thanksgiving, but she'd rather eat one bite of something chocolate than 10 lbs of pumpkin pie.

So, eat a bite of something chocolate tonight, and say, "This is for Betty."

Tilted Port

So, here's the latest in the never-ending story of my tilted port.

On October 27th, I had my 3rd re-fill, done by my surgeon in the hospital radiology department because my port can no longer be accessed without visuals (x-rays). My port was fine for the first 18 months, but now it is tilted severely towards my right side. It could be the result of - um, indifferent surgical technique during my original surgery (I had to think for a minute there to come up with a non-libelous adjective), or a suture that failed due to dumb luck or exercise.

My surgeon was able to do the fill with only 2 sticks, but the whole thing was a huge chore - taking time off work, driving to Memphis (a 2-1/2 hour drive became 3-1/2 hours in the pouring rain), waiting 2-1/2 hours past my appointment time for my surgeon to finish surgery, driving home again. Dr. Weaver said we can go on doing fills in radiology, or we can fix my port - an easy, 15-minute procedure. I told her I want it fixed. I'm going to live with this band and its port for the rest of my life. I want it easily accessed. But there's no way I can find the time to have even a quick surgical procedure during the holiday shopping season, so I'm going to call Dr. Weaver's office in December to ask them to submit the repair to my insurance company for approval so I can have it done in January 2010.

In the meantime, this last fill is making a noticeable difference in my eating. It's taken 2 weeks to kick in (who knows why?), and I feel I could use another small fill to get back to optimal restriction, but I'm very happy to be hearing from my band again!

A Creature of Habit

I have a lot of excuses for my recent blog inactivity - a new(ish) job in retail (at the start of the holiday shopping season), 19 dogs, 2 cats, medical problems (not band-related), and a tilted port. I don't mind being so busy, and when I worked as a VCASA (volunteer court-appointed special advocate) in child-abuse cases years ago, my supervisor told me, "If you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it." What I mind about it is the unpredictability. I think part of the reason for my weight loss success with my band is that when I had surgery, I was self-employed and in complete control of my schedule, so I could attend to everything from medical appointments to planning nutritious meals to exercise according to my own preference. Working for someone else sure has put a spanner in my works (to paraphrase PG Wodehouse). I pride myself on my flexibility, but maybe I'm not as flexible as I thought I was.

(Note: a spanner in the works = ruining a running engine by throwing a wrench into it.)

When I was growing up in New England, the makers of Prince Spaghetti ran a series of TV commercials on the theme, "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day." An Italian mama would lean out her tenement window calling her son Anthony to supper. Anthony ran home through the streets of North Boston, happily anticipating his Wednesday Prince Spaghetti supper.

As much as I like spaghetti (it's food, isn't it?), I've never been a Wednesday is Spaghetti Day kind of girl. Or a Meatloaf Monday girl. I've known women who swear by the ease of day-of-the-week meal planning, but I crave variety too much to eat that way.

On the other hand, I am certainly a creature of habit and I love the safety and ritual of my routines (and I'm Episcopalian, too). Laundry on Monday, meal planning on Thursday, grocery shopping on Saturday, and so on. When I was hired at JC Penney this fall, the store manager told me she couldn't promise me a predictable work schedule, and I assured her that was no problem. No, it's not a problem. But it sure is a challenge!

Creamy Date Spread

One of my old favorite treats was a slab of date nut bread covered with a slab of cream cheese. Especially if someone else made the date nut bread, because I'm not much of a baker. I was trying to think of a new dip or spread to go with my afternoon fruit snack and came up with this yummy-licious creamy date spread.

1/2 c. low fat cottage cheese (I use 1%)
2 oz low fat cream cheese (you could use fat-free)
1/4 c. chopped dates
1 tbl Splenda
1 tbl honey (don't skip this - the flavor it adds is worth the sugar calories)
a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg (optional)
a few drops of vanilla, almond, or caramel extract (optional)
2 tbl chopped walnuts (or other nuts)

Put everything except the walnuts in a mini food processor and whiz until well combined. Stir in the walnuts. Spread it on slices of apple, pear, or banana.

I figured out the nutritional info based on the cottage cheese/cream cheese mixture above and compared it to what it would be if you used all cream cheese. Using the cottage cheese/cream cheese mixture saves you 14.5 calories, 1.5g total fat, .9g saturated fat per tablespoon.

Nutritional info per tablespoon:
Calories: 35.7
Total fat: 1.5g
Sat fat: .6 g
Cholesterol: 2.6mg
Sodium: 44.9mg
Carbs: 4.4g
Fiber: .3 g
Protein: 1.7 gram

Half a crab cake? Half?

Last night my husband and I took my friend Elaine out to dinner. Elaine is Chinese, lives in Hong Kong and China, and comes to the States maybe once a year. When I traveled in China on business three times a year, I would spend a lot of time with Elaine, and ate many, many wonderful meals with her. She loves my cooking but since I had to work yesterday, I decided not to try to combine cooking and socializing, so we went out to Sassafrazz, one of our nicer local restaurants.

Elaine and I each ordered the appetizer crab cakes (2 generous cakes) and a half-size house salad. We were served the salads first, and by the time they arrived at the table, I was starving. I hoovered down the whole salad, no problemo (it was quite finely chopped), then thought, "How could I eat that whole thing?" (forgetting the days when I would have eaten a full-size salad and an entree and a dessert).

The crab cakes were marvelous, but I told myself I would eat only one of them and save the other for lunch the next day. Crab cakes are so soft, they really don't count as solid protein, so I didn't expect to feel much satiety after eating the one cake. Surprise! Halfway through the crab cake, I had to stop eating. I heard myself say, "I can't eat another bite." Hurray!

Elaine is a few inches shorter than me and (like all her family) solidly built, but not fat. She told me that she has gained 10 pounds and asked me to guess her weight. I hate that kind of game, but I played along. I guessed she weighs 130 pounds, so I said,"120 pounds."

"No! XXX! I weigh XXX pounds!" [Note: she swore me to secrecy about the actual number.]

I was truly astonished. "But Elaine, that can't be! That's only 10 pounds less than me!"

She in turn was astonished. "No, Jean! I think you weigh 110 pounds."

That was a slight understatement! I laughed, but I was flattered.

Elaine made me promise to follow up with her in a month to make sure she's still working on losing those 10 pounds.