hannie’s spot. all hannie.

news from home October 19, 2011

Sometimes when it rains it really pours. And then as I’m standing in the rain I find that I’m entirely blessed.

My weight is right around 290 right now. I think it’s because my sleep is still off and I eat at night. I know what I can do to correct all this, it’s just actually making it happen that’s a little harder.

The sleep issue is correcting for the time being. I’ve slept super well for the past 3-4 nights in a row. I’m so happy and I hope that continues. I don’t want to get super stressed out about lack of sleep.

In other news, my teeth are destroyed and I have to have them yanked out. Talk about painful, but I’m hanging in there, you know? That’s one of the more miserable things about the surgery in the first place. Sometimes you malabsorb so much that other parts of your body take a serious hit.

Okay, off I jot for the time being. I’m just not into writing lots as of late..

the new plan August 10, 2011

I’ve been working steady on this “remove the hanniefunk” from my world. I sleep better because I’ve been active all day long, whether it be window shopping, people watching or doing household chores. I’m proud of myself to stick to this sort of agenda for three days so far. I’m moving just like my political alignment, in a progressive way. My life didn’t fall apart in the course of one day. It took a few years for that storm to come to a head.

I’ve been writing down the different things I’ve been doing this week, in case I might feel discouraged. I can peruse over my list with my accomplishments and know that I’m getting stuff done, more in fact that I’ve been doing for quite some time. Some of my friends don’t like writing lists. But to me, they become actual proof that I’m moving in the correct direction.

I’m tired tonight but have committed myself to write something each day, to try and get back into the swing of things. If I have money next week, I plan on coming back to South Kitsap and write about yet another person I grew up with that’s running for office. It will be so good to see him again, and watch his presentation.

it’s been a while (some more) August 1, 2011

I apologize. I really should be writing more, but I just had this long mindblock. I couldn’t figure out anything to say past 140 chars (find my twitter account, I’m really amusing or I think I am). I literally stopped doing all the things that I had once thought were really fun.

Heck, today is the first day in a long time that I’ve spent more than half an hour in front of a computer. I used to spend all day staring at the computer. My home life sucked and I was deep in a state of denial about it. Now things are okay, but I’m still sorta stuck in a rut. I want to stay home and just hide in my own little world.

I think I’ve come to a couple of conclusions about this. I’m constantly in a state of sick or in pain and it translates into some sort of deep depression. I’m not saying I’m a sissy, but rather that I need to improve this situation.

I read the one book that the pain specialists at UW told me to read. It’s called the pain survival guide. Matter of fact, I’ve been doing lots of reading as of late from my phone. I just have this thing about returning to reading after a long vacation from it. I need to learn. Back to the book though. It helped me to understand where my marriage really fell apart. It helped me to understand this depression funk I’m in. It helped me to realize that in order for something to be done, I had to get off my butt and make it happen. So I am or I’m at least trying to, following suggestions from the book, of course.

I hope that someday I can return to my political writing. I know I miss it but truthfully, I am almost ashamed of where our country is going. I don’t know if I can honestly write positively all the time. I don’t want to depress people around me.

Anyways, hopefully I can get back into the swing of things. I’ve really missed my regular readers and the opportunity to write and share experiences with others. I miss Port Orchard as well. *sniffle*

I’m musing December 5, 2010

So I see that lap-band is back in the news. They want to lower the weight standards so that more people can get a lapband. Great. More people can go under the knife thinking about just losing weight, not the complications that might come with it.

Right now, according to the news, you have to be at least 230 lbs overweight to get the surgery. That’s a large number and you bet it made me gasp. I always thought it was at least 100 lbs overweight. Then I started adding up what I lost each time and I had an aha moment of my own. I was at least 230 lbs overweight any way you slice it.

but did you really expect it? July 26, 2010

I remember long ago, being a fresh post op and listening to these women just being, in my opinion, catty bitches. They were carrying on about how all these people paid attention to them now and OMFG this is a life shattering event. It was deeply traumatizing to them that anyone looked at them with any sort of interest. At the time, I thought they were nuts. After this weekend, I start to understand their thing much better.

I don’t think/feel I was anything much to write home about looks-wise through my entire school career. I was me, indeed, but I never thought I caught much of anyone’s eye. Far as I was concerned, I existed to no one in a potentially romantic way.

I’m at this show the other night and I’m with the love of my life. I’m good, he’s good and you know, I would not change him for anything. All these other men start striking up conversation with me and I’m like, “Hmm, I have to be a freak show magnet”. A couple guys later and I’m like, “You know, maybe I’m taking this too personally but you know, you would not have given me a second look twenty years ago so no, your credibility as a human is potentially shot to hell”. I have to say, right now that there is NOTHING that beats that love of your life catching your eye during a reunion show of a band we both loved as kids…and his eyes are sparkling and your heart just melts in happiness. Your best friend is right there.

Now what I’m saying. Sometimes the psychological self image issues you think are total horsecrap at first just might come true for you as well but later on down the road. Never take anything for granted. Just don’t.

an aside here: The first boyfriend which is the last boyfriend whom I referenced above…thinks I’m beautiful inside and out. I don’t think that’s changed much for him over the years, but the frustration level was rather high at times. For that, I surely apologize. Life is way too short to be frustrated with one another for any period of time. hah!

so recently July 12, 2010

My doctors have changed hands again. I’ve learned that some surgical decisions I made a while ago weren’t exactly the best choices. No kidding, you don’t say? I had to laugh hysterically when the doctor told me that. It was insanely funny to me because here I was being told what I’ve already known but on a different level. I dislike explaining gastric bypass to any regular physician. Either that have no clue, no clue, or no clue. It’s rare to find a regular primary care doctor that might have an inkling as to how gastric bypass works post operatively. When you do find one, hold onto them for dear life.

So yea, I’m following through on what my last surgeon told me to do, which was visit a pain clinic and see how I can better my world. I want to be more productive and I want to go and do and see more things. Right now, I still have a neuropathy issue in my left leg/foot and where the tack is coming off hurts all the time. I just don’t talk or speak to it because if I do, I think that it perhaps leaves me feeling bitter, negative and hateful. That in turn just intensifies the pain.

I’m in anticipation of a great come back here. I’ve sorta taken up this new hobby of encouraging those who are wls who feel they can’t lose the weight. Hi, did it twice. Lost that weight twice I tell you. Surgeons gasp in disbelief over that. They also gasp because I can still dump like no one’s business and I have reactive hypoglycemia. Okay, your mileage may vary on all of that. I’m just a complicated girl. But I beat the odds against some of the best bariatric surgeons out there. Don’t ever give up on you. Ever.

you gotta know May 2, 2010

This morning, I wanted a nice leisurely day filled with nothing but a crepe (I’ve never had one. I’d like to have one in this lifetime.) and to fix things around that needed to be fixed. In fact, I figured out a quicker cheaper way to fix things. I’m proud of that. I’m proud that I fixed a lawnmower yesterday with the most MacGvyer-ish of tool sets. I did that because no matter where I’ve been in this lifetime, I’ve been a survivor. You make shit work because you have to. There is no choice in the matter.

So I’m in Fred Meyer and I am talking to one of my friends about “instant gratification”. Everyone wants it here, now, right now, instant solution, easy fix or ELSE. It does not work that way. Life is not planned to work in that sort of an idea, because if it was, we’d have no war, no suicide, no people trying to kill people, any of that. There would be no reason for any conflict whatsoever. We’d get bored quick and wonder why we even exist at one point, I’d think. But, just my opinion.

Maybe five minutes later, I feel it hit. The wave of “OMG I am going to have an accident and OMG not here in this store where I pretty much literally know everyone.” I try to fight it. I do. However, I emerge from it less than victorious, although I did make it to the bathroom. I should have cried. But no, I cleaned up best I could and carried on and had to take a moment to laugh. Anyone going into that bathroom for a couple hours is going to vomit from the stench. I apologize, I do.

But when you smell that stench, please remember that I used to weigh over 400 lbs. I made a decision to have a surgery that I thought would change my life and make me healthier. Oh it changed my life. But unfortunately my friend, your sniffers just got a good dose of no, it didn’t make me healthier. Think twice before making food your new best friend. Think twice about having an entire box of hoho’s because your latest asshole boyfriend said something mean. Take good care of YOU and do not allow you to destroy yourself over stuff that you had no control over whatsoever but you had control over YOUR REACTION to it.

Okay, so as you know, we now have two doctors that deem me inoperable. Doctor two whom you will know as Surgeon two who literally saved my life a few years back looked at my assessment from Doctor one and asked me why I was even visiting. My abdominal wall is literally coming apart and there ain’t a damn thing anyone can do about except watch it come apart. That and watch me make it through days of pain, accidents in stores and at home and friend’s houses, days where I don’t want to move, days where I’m lucky if I can put anything down my throat because I’m that nauseated…Crap, I’m the luckiest girl you know. I’m still here, regardless of all that yet I will never step foot in a bariatric support group meeting again. I too was happy and king of the world at year two. However, my crown got obliterated at about year five and my story should be heard, not for how negative it is, but as a lesson to you. You hear me, and for the love of whatever deity you like this week, do not BECOME me. Insist that your doctors run tests, ask questions a million times over, know what all your options truly are, and DO NOT become me. Be that weight loss success and personal success you were always meant to be. Do it for you. Not for your surgeon (although they like the praise, honestly, they’re just wanting YOU to fly and succeed), not for your family, not for some guy/girl, not because Carnie Wilson did it, do it for YOU. Somewhere on down the line, you forgot about yourself. Find yourself again, right now, and start by loving you again. You can do it. Believe me, we just heard my delightful story of the day and hey, I still love me after that.

Sometime soon, I have this wild urge to fax or send all my OR time to a couple surgeons I love and admire in San Antonio Texas. I know that they will give me the same diagnosis as the last guys. But I want them to take a good read, because I want them to see and learn exactly how much hell I’ve been through and teach every one of their patients that success is all up to them. Oh yea, they do that already, I mean, tell them that success is all up to them. Both of them, respectfully, know my case and of me and have known me for years, although I have never been either of their patients. I am honored to have the privilege of even SAYING that. Most bariatric patients just know their own surgeon and call it a day. I know a whole slew of surgeons on a personal basis and not necessarily because they have ever spent time with me in an OR suite.

I’ve taken my shower now, I feel tons better. Okay, pain still sucks, I’d like a nap, but dog gone it, I’m going to have that crepe. It sucks that I look like I’m carrying twins and I’m 9 months pregnant and it all hurts, but hey, that’s everyday. When it’s everyday it just sorta becomes old news.

with a little more feeling now April 9, 2010

Yesterday I got to see the same surgeon who saved my life, literally, after Katrina. I had three sections of trapped bowel and tons of hernias that had destroyed my abdominal wall. This was the first placement of a mesh wall to cover this, and it took about ten hours, but that surgeon believed in me as I had to believe in him.

Anyways, I tell him that I’ve already been given a diagnosis of “inoperable” by one of the best surgeons ever. Ever. So he asks me after giving me the rundown on how good the first surgeon I spoke with was (which I already knew, thanks) why I was there. I don’t know, honestly. I handed the yellow sheet of paper stating I was “inoperable” to my regular doctor and he said I needed to see a bariatric surgeon. I knew you were the guy to see, we’re talking about “continuity of care” and I knew that you, if anyone, would know my case and would know how best to run with it. We chit-chat over a million things, I hand him my last ct scan on disk that clearly shows the disintegration of my current abdominal wall and he can’t read it from his computers. So he leaves the room.

So he comes back and he tells me that they send cases like me to the same doctor I’ve already seen who’s told me I’m inoperable. Great. Well yea, you’ve been told you’re inoperable by this guy, you’re sent here and the only thing we can really do is tell you the same exact thing. I hear the apologies one more time. I appreciate it, I do, but I am more angry than anything else because I’ve wasted his time, I’ve wasted my time. Other people who could have an improved quality of life could have used that time. We know I’m not at “improving” anymore. We know that I’m at “maintaining and surviving”. Here’s what I was told in a nutshell.

1. More sleep. I need more sleep to properly rest my body and this doctor knows I am not getting that. I didn’t get it in a hospital or at home under his care before, he knows I’m not getting it now and he knows that I won’t lie to him on this. More sleep. At least 8 hours a night and if I don’t get that 8 hours, then I’d best make time to get a full 8 hours.

2. More and better eating. He knows that before, I was super picky on what I was and was not going to eat. He knows that because I am doing so much on any given day, I don’t make time to eat. Yes Johanna, you are MAKING time to eat and you are doing it correctly right now. Great, you’ve seen a dietician who can concur with that, but make it happen right now. I may gain a couple pounds in doing just this, but who cares anymore. Eat correctly, don’t short-change yourself and do it now. I thought he was a bit cavalier on the “vitamins and nutrients” issue as he didn’t glance a single lab that showed I was bottoming out, but oh well. I wonder if he’s going to crap if he looks this morning and sees the same thing I did, that although my ferretin looks great my red blood cells are still coming up severely uneven in size. Shit, who cares? (I don’t usually use profanity, but I will here.)

3. Exercise lots. Yea, great, I am in a constant state of pain and we’re still working on getting past that as the pain doctor blew me off. The pain doctor told me I was too young for any sort of aggressive pain therapy (narcotic based). She never saw either the ten surgeries I’ve survived or the actual area of pain and why it was present. I’m simply too young for all this. I want to start swimming again, but I’m not cleared to touch a pool until the physical therapist sees me again. I still have severe neuropathy from my left hip down to my left foot. Walking is sorta out right now, much as I’d even like to do that.

One family member will tell me “you know, you survived so much already, you can’t let this crap hold you back.” Yet another says, “well, in the past few months you’ve been handed a death sentence how many times?” I don’t know. I think I’m going with option A. I’m not letting any of this hold me back. I have all sorts of other medical issues which just compound what I’ve described above. Bah. My god is bigger than your storm and somehow, it’s just gotten ferocious Katrina style. I survived that. I can survive freakin anything if you count my odds.

People ask me April 9, 2010

..all the time if I really thought that my weight loss surgery was worth it. I think about the compromises I have had to make in my life. I have thought of all the battles I had lost, both physically and emotionally. I thought of all the inpatient and outpatient time spent at the hospital, I thought of the fact that I had to learn to depend on others sometimes, I had to turn over the very decision between life and death to my mother. Make your head spin? It does mine.

I don’t like basing the very idea of leaving the house or going somewhere or seeing someone on how much pain or ill feeling I have at that moment. Can I get through it calmly for that timeframe? Or is there no chance in heck I could manage it? You have to ask yourself if hindsight truly have been 20/20, would you have slid over to that cold gurney in the shiny white room with tons of different types of stuff they sew you up with on the wall? I think about that all the time, and I still couldn’t totally tell you if it was worth it or not. All that bad crap happened to me, but yes, I’m grateful each time I can open my eyes and I can breathe the air and I can kiss those who I love. Sometimes in the quest to better ourselves and do things in the name of “improving ourselves” we forget that. We forget the simple things that make us unique on the inside and make us special.

(permanent draft, I am not finishing this)

woah March 20, 2010

In the past two weeks, I’ve had to deal with tons of stuff that neither emotionally nor physically have been too terribly wonderful. Some of the emotional turmoil has created some of the physical that I’m dealing with at the moment. In the past few years, I’ve made note of the things that emotionally make my body physically revolt and call for a motion to table. If you’re post op weight loss surgery and it’s been a long time since you’ve had that surgery, allow me to tell you what I speak to.

When I face one heck of an emotional storm, here’s what I notice. I’m tired. Who cares about that? But here’s where you should care. My blood sugar drops to double digits. It should be at triple digits. Most people call this hypoglycemia. I call this sign one that something is going wrong.

Sign two, I literally threw up yesterday. Because of my digestive re-arrangement, I’m not supposed to throw up. I bend down and all of a sudden I have a mouthful of icky burning stomach acid. I’m in a room full of people and no one gets what is happening here, what the implications are, whatever. The only person who knows is my daughter and she clears the sea of people and points to the sink. Good enough.

That’s how life works for us. Maybe you follow me on Twitter, maybe you don’t and maybe you just don’t care. But yesterday, I posted a couple important things. One such thing I like to say is this. Shit happens. If you stay seated, don’t fight the obstacles and stop caring, how are you moving forward? Guess what? It’s absolutely true. Sometimes you’re going to get those obstacles and it seems like everything is going wrong. It’s compounded boom boom boom, one after the next and at one point, you start contemplating your internal and external strength to process it all and deal with it.

Much as my life thus far hasn’t been easy by any stretch of the imagination, I try to think that, for the most part, yes, shit happens. Somehow I manage, because of the past to make the present work and hope that someone is interested in what the future brings. I know I’m interested. But aren’t you interested? Doesn’t it make you think that the choices you make now can affect not only you later down the road, but tons of other people who are daily fighting a battle of some kind?

I’ll just bore you with the sordid details of what I’ve been told or had to comprehend during the last week. What I may find important, you may not. I will tell you right now though, I absolutely hurt and I feel like I’m 40 going on about 90. I did that myself though. Accidentally, but I did it myself. I’d like another nap. (I hit my head, so I’m sure that this is not a good thing).

I keep watching this same movie over and over again. In the movie, you see a relationship lost and the two main characters keep being brought together by circumstance. In the end, they get locked (on purpose, courtesy of friends) in an elevator. Flash forward, the elevator opens and you find them surrounded by a party of friends clapping and confetti flying everywhere. We’d all like a happy ending like that, wouldn’t we?

I feel like hell right now in a million ways. I know that I have many challenges set ahead of me, on top of the ones that I’m already dealing with. Going back to the previous movie moment I cited, I got “locked” in a place with someone that was always important to me, but our relationship got lost. No party or ticker tape on that, but our differences got ironed out and we like to call it the “we were young and stupid” years.

Sometimes no matter what the storm is that’s dealt me, I think about that. I think about the countless amount of people who have stood by me despite the situation, I think about those who have disagreed with me and in turn, taught me incredible lessons. I think about that one person I lost long ago, but gained back in my world. I think about that “locked” situation with him and understood that yes, we had our differences. But what I learned was this. I somehow had missed the message he had been trying to tell me all along. I missed the “hey, I love you, I’ve been with you through good and bad and I care. I don’t want you to go anywhere, but I want you to see that I need you and there’s tons of people who do as well.”

Despite that storm, I think about the lesson I’ve learned from him. Yea, my head hurts. I want a nap. I’d like the pain to stop and start feeling good all the time instead of some of the time. But that responsibility begins with me. I can have a million people tell me what I coulda, shoulda, woulda do…but the responsibility for me being in the best health I can despite the tons of “bad news” given me that gives me little to no hope (or it should) all comes back to me. I’ve seen more doctors within the past two months that I really either wanted or cared to see. They all understand and have seen through documentation that I’ve had to fight to stay alive a couple times. Literally. Each one of them has asked me to turn up that fight just a little more. Good heavens, I am about tired of fighting for whatever reason. I’d like a nap, please and could I possibly go for a day off?

Best week spent this year so far? I turned my phone off, stepped away from the computer and sat on a boat feeling the slight rocking motion that such a boat would produce. I spent that week with perhaps the most incredible person who not only loves me but has fought for me since we were both little. We’re old now, so we can share old people whine like no one’s business. But when we do, we laugh and somehow I’m thinking, you know, I may not have millions of dollars in cash. But I’m a millionaire when it comes to the love and appreciation that others show me. You’d like to believe that the former is much better. It’s the latter that’s more meaningful and has the higher value. That it is.