The Story so Far.

Well, this will be my first blog entry. it's been forever since I kept a blog, and I'm sure I am a bit out of practice. I guess the best place to start will be the beginning.

 In December 2009, I decided I needed to do something about my way. They did not have a family doctor, because I only recently moved to Ottawa, I went to a walk-in clinic, found a doctor and ask for a referral for weight loss surgery. in about February 2010 I got the referral to the Ottawa Hospital.

Fast forward one year now March 2011, and I had my first meeting at the Ottawa Hospital. This was a fourth of pre-surgery class to let people know about the risks of surgery, and to allow people to make an informed decision ask you whether they wanted to proceed with surgery or some other course of action. After this meeting I was told that I needed the surgery and I should be fast tracked to have this surgery. I was told that I could either have surgery in Toronto, where I live now, or have surgery in Toronto, which should take place a lot faster than Ottawa. I obviously chose Toronto.

This turned out to be my first mistake. I met the surgeon in Toronto, and after about three minutes of him looking at my file and maybe 5 minutes to me he basically said I needed to lose 50 pounds before I can do the surgery. He then sent me on my way. This was in May or June 2011. This also started my adventures with Optifast. I'm not going to talk much about Optifast here, except to say that it works if you stick with it, and for me it was incredibly hard to stick with it because of the side effects tht it gave me. After about nine months struggling with Optifast I had lost about 45 pounds which I thought would be close enough to have surgery in Toronto.

 This turned out to be my second mistake. Have it turned out, the doctor did not want me to lose 50 pounds, rather it was 60. So instead of being 5 pounds away from my goal I was now 15 pounds away from my goal. The nurse practitioners at the Ottawa hospital decided that the restriction that the surgeon in Toronto put Honwee were a little unrealistic, and they referred me to a third inning on tour. I readily said yes to this. After seeing the surgeon, I got a phone call about three days later, and a surgery date was set for one month after that.I was initially told that the ideal surgery for me would be a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass operation. But I was told that this may not be technically possible, and that a gastric sleeve procedure would be done if the Roux-en-Y could not be done. the advantage to doing the gastric sleeve procedure is that it will help me lose a lot of weight, and if my weight loss plateau, I can go back and do a full Roux-en-Y procedure at a later date.

 I went into the hospital Monday morning, and got home yesterday afternoon, having had the gastric sleeve procedure done.