most importantly, Granma died on November 29th.  I was off work for a week for bereavement for that.  I don’t wanna talk about it yet.

as for the surgery/weightloss/smoking stuff…

I quit smoking for 17 days.  took all my labs 14 days after quitting; everything came out well, and the nicotine screening was clean (KP apparently does it by blood, not urine as I thought it would be).

I started smoking again right around thanksgiving.  then granma died.  so I’ve not quit again yet.  cut back a lot, though.  down to 2 packs a week; used to be almost 3.

anyway.

turned in my paperwork and stuff after new years.  haven’t received a call back from them to this day… but that’s okay, because I got some better news last week.

long story short, KP signed a new contract around christmas with FV Hospital to do surgeries there.  I got a call asking if I was interested.  of course I am.  so now I need to do a new EKG and chest x-ray for them; appointment is next thursday.  from there, I’m not sure what happens next.

so while I’ve had some pretty bad times, there’s a thin silver lining to look forward to.

oh, and I’m 30 now.  yay …

today is day 7 of being nicotine-free. the insane urges to smoke real cigs started to taper off around.. wednesday afternoon, I think. so that’s like, what… about 5 days, give or take.

I have tobacco/nicotine free alternatives, herbal mouth spray, and a bracelet with a “Strength” charm. I think I can manage another 20 days.

here’s the plan. I make it to the 29th (a monday) and go in early to do my labs before work. I wait until I get my labs back a few days later (hopefully). if everything goes well, I’ll decide then if I want to start smoking again.

If I do end up smoking, it will be half as much as I used to, if not less. why? because I’ll have to quit smoking again before my surgery pre-op labs that I have a feeling they’ll want to do. duh.

pray I can make it another few weeks without wanting to kill my sister.

so far, my record is 44 hours. if I make it through this evening, I’ll have a new record.

I’m trying something called Miracet. It’s a homeopathic spray that’s supposed to cut cravings and withdrawl symptoms, without having any nicotine. all-natural & stuff.

so far, it’s working better than patches, gum and lozenges. which all have nicotine.

how does that make sense? I’m not saying I have 0 urge to smoke, because I do. I’m fucking climbing the walls trying not to. but I found myself still lighting up on the patch and the gum.

oh. speaking of lighting up… I found these nicotine and tobacco-free cigs. they’re made from like.. ground up cocoa bean shells. you like, smoke them like regular cigs, but they like, have no tobacco or nicotine, and extremely low amounts of tar.

I ordered a carton – oddly enough, they’re still cheaper than regular smokes by about $1.25 – $1.50 PER PACK. a carton (10 packs) is only 40 bucks. regular cartons are more like 50.

I just need to get through to the 30th. That’s when I’m doing my blood work and nicotine screening.

/em crosses fingers and prays a whole fucking lot that she can pass the screening…

I hate my lack of willpower.

I understand why they’re doing it, and while appreciated, I’m still accustomed to going outside for some non-office-recycled air. I did just fine this morning…

well then. if they’re going to stop inviting me for breaks, then I’m going to take my own breaks without them. fuck them.

ps – I want a cig so badly right now, it’s not even funny.

they apparently do not require you to lose 10% of your weight after all, though they “highly encourage it”.

on the other hand, I’m still due to do some lab work. I have to do a fasting panel, a gallbladder ultrasound, and… a nicotine screening.

fuck.

I knew this was coming, but now I’m on borrowed time. I have to complete these three labs before they will submit my referral to the surgery center. it takes three weeks for nicotine to leave your system completely.

I’ve decided that I’m going to shoot for these labs being done around October 21st or 22nd. That will give me enough time to get the nicotine out of my system after I quit (again) on wednesday, and I might as well make a day out of it. three labs with one appointment.

wish me luck.

they expect you to lose 10% of your weight before surgery.  I understand that it’s to reduce the risk and so that the surgeons have an easier time of it, but..

I mean, if I could lose 10% that easily, I wouldn’t be in this fucking situation to begin with. 

this is a lot more painful a process than I thought it would be.  I’m not saying that intellectually I don’t understand it, but c’mon, seriously?  they need you to lose wieght before you can get wieght loss surgery? 

that’s the shittiest idiocy I’ve experienced in a long time.  and to penalize someone who can’t do it by cutting them off from the surgery is the icing on the fucking fat cake.

I’m so stressed about trying to lose the weight that I’m having a hard time with quitting everything else they want us to quit, like smoking, caffiene, ibuprophen..

did I mention I hate this?  fuck life, man.  just fuck it.

been going to classes.  in fact, just had class #6 on thursday.  not too bad so far.  my weight loss isn’t going as fast as it should, but I’ve lost 10lbs so far.  need to kick it into high gear though.

I made it a few days before I started smoking again, but I’m going to try again to quit next week.

yeah, we’ll see.

I’m still lonely and angry at him.  oh, you didn’t hear about that.

so I confessed.  yeah, again.  and he didn’t say anything about it.  granted, I told him I was just telling him & he didn’t have to say anything.  but not three weeks later, I found out he had a girlfriend.

yeah, didn’t mention that one to me, either.  I had to find out from a friend, and then see it on facebook.  FACEBOOK.  Ef Ay See  Eeh Bee Oh Oh Kay.

whatever.  anyway.  I let it go for a week or so, then called him out on it.  said it wasn’t cool to find out something like that about your best friend through a fucking website.

so yeah, I’m still mad.  jesus h.

sadly, I still smoked 3 cigs yesterday. I blame all the driving I did, and the gum chewing which didn’t seem to help.

I’m making a new attempt today. So far, I’ve only had 1, and I’ve gone through 2 peices of gum already. Hopefully, tomorrow will be cig-free.

thus ends my confessional.

it seems that the lap band isn’t as effective as the commercials make it sound. I was aware that it wasn’t as effective as other proceedures (roux-en Y gastric bypass and gastric sleeving) but I figured that since I didn’t have a huge amount to lose, that it would be the best idea.

the surgeon told me that the lap band hardware has an average self life of about 5 years, with 7 years being the longest anyone has had one in before it had to be removed. once one fo them is removed, the food intake restriction vanishes, and most people gain the weight back & then some. there are some folks that don’t, but I’d rather not take that chance.

I’ve been overweight/obese my whole life; if I’m going to have a proceedure to prevent that from happening again, I want it to be permanent.

I had some other questions that he was happy to answer for me to the best of his ability. (he didn’t know how much I’d have to pay out of pocket, which makes sense, since each person’s health plan coverage is different.)

what he did answer for me is that I need to quit smoking before I start my classes. they start on july 8th, so I have 2 months to get my act together. I’m going to try the patch starting next weekend.

he also let me know that I had to lose 10%, which I already knew. what I didn’t know is when I had to lose that by. it turns out I have until I ‘graduate’ from the classes to lose it by, so that gives me until end of september to lose 25lbs. I better get cracking.

the other thing I wasn’t sure about is if I lose the 10%, and it brings my BMI below 40 (it’s at 43.2 right now) if I would be disqualified.

he let me know that they ‘weren’t that cruel’ and I wouldn’t be disqualified because I lost weight. That was a relief, as I thought that maybe I would be.

he also suggested I look into getting a body bugg. I let him know that I’d been interested in one, but that I didn’t have the funds to spend – they’re about 200 bucks, plus a monthly membership to use it.

a fair amount of good information given, and a few obsticles to overcome in the following months, but things are looking good.