Fat Man on a Diet

The procedure was carrried out using ‘keyhole surgery’ techniques which I’d sort of assumed would be virtually painless. Obviously I was wrong. The operation, keyhole or not *is* quite a hefty thing!

The process roughly speaking is as follows (would be better with diagrams but I’m not in the mood yet… maybe later). The ring which is a solid piece of silicon with a small gap is slipped around the stomach and slightly tightened leaving a ‘pouch’ which will hold roughly 15ml – 20ml once the ring has been fully expanded. It’s then stitched to the wall of the stomach to hold it in place whilst the rest of the procedure is carried out.

The remainder of the stomach is then lifted to surround the ring and is also stitched to the outer wall of the ‘pouch’. The purpose is for the stomach to form a ring of flesh around the silicon ring to prevent it slipping or moving at some future date.

After that the surgeon might work to tighten the oesophageal valve to reduce the risks of relux, and he would also repair any sign of a hiatus hernia to prevent the stomach protruding (or expanding) up through the diaphragm.

That’s basically it, except of course I ought to point out that as simple as it appears, there is still tremendous disturbance to the surrounding organs, especially the liver which has to be manouvered out of the way.

Who’d be a surgeon??

Back in Sept ‘08 I chickened out totally from going forward with the Gastric Band operation. This time I decided I had no alternative but to go through with it or face a shortened life suffering crippling pain and a very restricted lifestyle.

I went to see Dr. Roy Brancatisano and he outlined the three week preparation procedure.

Put simply I had to reduce the fat and sugar content of my liver as much as possible. The operation is carried out by a ‘keyhole’ procedure and so reducing the size of the liver makes it easier to push it out of the way to allow the surgeons to work. Also of course any reduction was preparation for the diet regime that would follow after the operation, especially the liquid and puree phases..

To begin I was put back on a meal replacement diet – this time using Optifast – in which my entire days intake of food was restricted to three meal replacements and a cup of steamed vegetables. Yes this is restrictive, but I actually managed it quite well.

Having said I ‘managed’ it, the experience did serve to reinforce just how incapable I was of controlling my appetite. Despite knowing why it was important to stick to the diet I still found myself ‘picking’ occasionally at the food the rest of the family was eating!

Part of the preparation was a series of blood tests and a barium swallow – neither of which were particularly pleasant but did at least tell me that other than the morbid obesity I was still remarkably healthy overall, and had luckily avoided developing Type 2 Diabetes!

Last week I arrived for the ‘pre-op’ meeting with the Doc to discover I’d lost nearly 9 kilos during the three weeks and was more or less in good order. Back at ‘Reception’ I handed over the $5,000 to pay for the operation, picked up the hospital admission forms and left.

I’ll confess I left with a sinking heart knowing I’d committed myself to a *real* life changing experience… hopefully a positive one but one that nevertheless *will* have a huge effect on my lifestyle. These changes are to be discussed in other posts.

So… the three weeks went by *very* quickly and the day before the operation arrived. This was an experience in itself.

To begin with, on this last day I was to eat nothing… not even the meal replacements. I could drink liquids such as tea with skim milk, Bovril or Bonox, or water but nothing else. I had to take a sachet of PicoPrep which, for the uninitiated, is a quite disgustingly flavoured preparation intended to clean out the gut, i.e. give you diarrhoea. It worked.

It worked that well that despite having taken it at 11:00 a.m. instead of the 3:00 p.m. they suggested, it was still working the next morning!

Still, it meant that Sunday I ate nothing… Monday (the day of the operation) I ate nothing… Tuesday (the day after the operation)… I ate nothing. Today I managed to get down an Optifast milkshake so I seem to be healing ok. More on that later as well.

Basically preparing for the operation wasn’t as traumatic or difficult as you might imagine despite the apparent strictness of the diet regime. I found it relatively easy, which led my wife several times to question why it wasn’t possible for me to simply keep it up in my ‘normal’ life, but of course if I could answer that question perhaps I’d not have been considering the operation to begin with?