I haven’t written in a couple of weeks so, I will recap and then go from there.
The patch is working, but not taking the RLS all away. I sent an email to my Dr. and asked if she would ‘up the dose’ and see if that makes a difference. It took a couple days to get an answer, but she did give me the higher dose. It took another couple days to get it from the pharmacy and then I started using the new patch (8mg instead of 6mg). The first day was no different and I got a little discouraged, but knew it might take a couple days to build up in my system. After a couple days I noticed that when I did have RLS it was hardly noticeable and was more of a 1 or 2 in pain strength instead of being a 7 to 9. That was a big improvement and I didn’t always have to take Tylenol all the time. I still have RLS but it doesn’t bother me as much and when I do have it, it is more controllable. Some days I don’t have it at all, and some days I get it lightly and I don’t uaually have to take something for it.
Today I had it a little this morning in my left leg, but when I got up and moved around and went to the bathroom, it went away. But, it did come back in my right leg and lasted until I took my shower at 1:30 pm. SO… is the patch working?? Yes, but I still have “break through” sometimes.
My RLS is still acting up. The last few days have been rough, not as intense but just as annoying and frustrating. Tuesday it was right at bed time and I had already taken a Tylenol and an Oxy so I couldn’t take anymore. It was 12:30 am before I finally got to sleep.
Wednesday it started about 2-2:30 pm and I finally took Tylenol at 4:30 pm and then about 6 pm it started in the other leg. Luckily it didn’t last too long.
Today it started about 3 pm and I finally got some Tylenol about 5:30 pm. I’m going to call the doctor and see if she will up the dose and hopefully that will help better. 😦
It has been a crazy week. Friday I talked to my doctor about this cream someone told me about for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) and she said she had never heard of it but, would order it if I wanted to try it. (I don’t remember the name of it). But she said there is a “patch” that works on RLS and wanted to know if I’d like to try that. I said yes and she sent in the order. It is called Neupro ( NEUPRO® (rotigotine transdermal system) is the first and only Parkinson’s “patch” you wear on your skin. The NEUPRO Patch delivers the dopamine agonist rotigotine through the skin, directly into the bloodstream. … NEUPRO is a small, thin, flesh-colored patch that comes in 4 doses. Even though I don’t have parkinson’s, the patch is found to help with RLS. I gave the order to the nurse here at the center. It said to stop the “Requip” that I was taking (that day at 5pm) and to apply the 6mg “Patch”. Well, I couldn’t take my 5pm “Requip” (This medication is used alone or with other medications to treat Parkinson’s disease. … Ropinirole (Requip) is also used to treat restless legs syndrome (RLS)) because they had already stopped it, and I couldn’t put on the “Patch” because I hadn’t gotten it yet. So, I had to go without anything for my RLS until the “Patch” came in and I had to go all weekend without any “Patch”.
The pharmacy said it would be here Monday night for sure. Well, Monday night came and went and no “Patch”. Tuesday came and went and still no “Patch”. By this point I was going crazy with my RLS and was living off Tylenol and my 10mg Oxycodone just to make it thru the day and night. And it didn’t help that much. I couldn’t lay down, or sit down. The only thing that relieved it was walking and I couldn’t walk all day or all night, so I just suffered.
Finally on Wednesday morning the “Patch” came in and they put it on when I got dressed at 11am. I have to wear it for 24 hours. I didn’t have any RLS all day. Then at night while I was watching “Heartland” it felt like my arm was trying to get restless but, nothing ever happened. Was the “Patch” working? I don’t know because my leg went restless for about 2 1/2 hours that night. I didn’t take anything for it, it wasn’t really bad so I just watched more “Heartland” until it stopped and I was finally able to fall asleep. Then this morning I laid back down after breakfast and my other leg went restless and didn’t stop until I took a shower 1 1/2 hours later. It wasn’t really strong, but still there none the less. So, is it working? I still can’t say yes for sure, but my RLS is less intense.
I have been trying really hard to watch what I eat and to get my 64 oz. of water. I have done it every day this week, except maybe today and Monday. Today was the centers scenic drive and we were gone about an hour or so. I forgot to take my water bottle so I didn’t drink my 3 cups of water. I have 3 more cups to drink tonight and don’t know if I can stomach 3 more cups of water. I used to love water and had no trouble drinking lots of water. But ever since I stopped taking my OXY, I don’t like to drink water and I would only drink 1 or 2 cups a day. So now that I’m trying to drink 64 oz. it is really hard!
I didn’t get any exercise in today because of the scenic drive, and I was to lazy after lunch. I’m not going to do the “T-Tap” DVD anymore. I ended up hurting my side again and it took me over 2 years to get it feeling better last time. I’m going to look up some exercises on the internet to see if I can find some that are sitting down ones since I can’t get on the floor. Today is Thursday and no exercise class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (I have all the stuff to do them in my room on those days).
Watched a movie today and I love the Hallmark Channel. They have good movies with less bad language, violence, and sex. I have been watching them on You Tube. Sometimes there are commercials but I just skip them. I tried to watch Heartland, but it just kept ‘loading’ and would never start. I will try again tomorrow. Today I’m on my laptop downloading embellishment packages from My Memories Suite. I still have 500 or so to go…
Today is the day that I start tracking my food and water intake. I had exercise class in the morning but didn’t get to go to BINGO in the afternoon because of my Weight Management Group. I didn’t like it because we had to talk about what we liked about ourselves. I don’t like anything about my body, so it was hard. Everyone said I have really pretty blue eyes and that I have been in a good mood lately. I guess I’ll take that. I also think I have a good soul.
I didn’t get to drink as much water as I was supposed to because I forgot my water bottle when I went to group, and forgot to drink my water right after dinner and didn’t want to drink a bunch of water late because I’d be up all night going pee.
When I weighed in today I was up another 4 pounds at 296 lbs. I figured I would gain weight just because I always do. So with tracking my food, drinking more water, exercising and walking I’ll see if I still gain more weight. In a way it is good that I’m gaining the weight back because it shows the surgeon that I can’t keep the weight off even when I watch what I eat. That is why I’m hoping that with a smaller stomach and everything I will be able to lose the weight. (5-2019 – Side note, boy was that stupid thinking about the gaining my weight back).
Liz (kitchen supervisor) is supposed to be getting me the protein shakes so I can get enough protein in my body. And drinking more than 64 oz. of water should help too. I guess I will try harder to drink all my water tomorrow.
NOTE: I will be including other life situations besides just weight-loss so that readers know of my struggles and my successes. This post today is mostly about my struggles with my RLS (restless leg syndrome) and being off my Oxycontin.
I haven’t written in almost a month. Not that I haven’t had anything to say, I just hate writing stuff down. A lot has changed in my life in the last 3 1/2 weeks and I will try to remember them now.
The pain in my back isn’t to bad being off the Oxycontin (oxy) pain meds. Mostly when I sit a lot my back starts to hurt pretty bad. I can’t just lay down and rest for a couple of hours like I did when I was on the oxy. My body will only relax for about 15-20 minutes (30 if I’m real lucky) and then my RLS kicks in and I can’t lay still any more and I have to get up. I take Tylenol to help with the RLS. Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t help then sometimes I will take an Oxycodone 10mg to see if that will help, but I don’t do that very often. Only when it is really bad, like at night sometimes. Being off the oxy has changed the way I sleep also. I used to sleep from 10pm to 8am, get up for breakfast, back to bed until 11am, eat lunch and back to bed until 4pm when it was time for dinner. This was my routine unless I had an appt. sometime during the day. No exercise, no BINGO, no activity, I was just too tired. Now I’m not going to sleep until 11pm or midnight, if my legs are bad, and waking up at 3:30am. Then I rest until about 5:30am to about 7am when I get up and eat breakfast. Then I go to exercise class at 10am, eat at 11:30am and up until 2pm for BINGO, and still up til 4:30pm for dinner. It has been a whole new life for me.
After I was so sick in March my strength was gone. My legs felt like I had a ton of bricks on them and it was very hard to walk, even short distances. My strength is coming back slowly and I’m able to walk more, so that is nice. I’ve been spending my many waking hours on the computer doing cards, downloading the over 600 graphics I have and working on my family history. I’m working in the opposite direction; instead of doing my deceased relatives, I’m doing my family, my kids, their husbands/wife, and grandkids and putting in as much information as I can get into Family Search. Kellie’s and Sarah’s families are all done, but Krista and Brenda haven’t gotten any info back to me and I didn’t even ask Andrew yet. But this is the third day in a row that I haven’t been able to get on the internet, so I’m stuck doing nothing. I was able to get into My Memories Suite and made my Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards, but can’t work on my 4th of July card because I don’t have those graphics downloaded yet. That also takes the internet.
So I went to Pain Group today and I’m back up to 292 lbs, but I wasn’t surprised since I’m eating like crazy. I can’t seem to get enough to eat. This is another change since going off the oxy, but I’m still under 304 lbs. so I’m happy with that.
I talked to the cook about having the surgery and she gave me a taste of the Premier Protein shake she drinks every day for lunch and it tasted really good, I was surprised. And it has 30 grams of protein, 24 vitamins and minerals and only 160 calories. She said she would get me some at Costco. I’m going to try and replace a shake for my lunch and see how that works. All in all things are going pretty well.
SIDE NOTE: Today I didn’t get to go to exercise class because I had Pain Group, but I got more walking done. I did my usual 3 times down to the dining room but then I did 2 small loops around the halls, went down to BINGO and went out to Group.
April 2018 – I went to a baby shower for a friend and someone took this picture of me. Here I am at 304 lbs.
Today I went to my Bariatric Evaluation at Acacia Wellness Center with Julie. She has to do a general evaluation to make sure I’m ready for what will be happening to my body and make sure I’m ready for the life change I have to make. I have never seen Julie before, so it was a little different. She asked me all kinds of questions about how I eat, what my plans are for changing my eating habits, what my plans are for my weight loss, how I plan on changing for my new life style and a bunch of other stuff. This evaluation has to go to Dr. Valentine’s office so that he and Medicare can decide if I am ready to have my sleeve surgery. I think I did pretty good.
They did not have me weigh-in, so I will have to wait until ‘pain group’ on Friday (march 23rd) to get my weight. So I’m holding at 286 lbs. until I weigh different. I will be doing 10 of my modified sit ups today before going to bed. These are sit ups that I do sitting on the edge of my bed with my feet on the floor. I then lay back on the bed and then use my muscles to bring myself back up to a sitting position and repeat it 10 times. 🙂
Today is the last day of April and I have decided to start a blog about my weight-loss journey. I have documented it in my journal and will be starting on Monday March 19, 2018 and going from there…
MY WEIGHT-LOSS JOURNEY
Monday March 19, 2018
Let me recap a little. I have been trying to get my weight down for 35 years. 5 kids in 6 years, 8 foot surgeries, many diets and exercise programs, losing and gaining weight, I am now up to a top weight of 304 pounds. I finally got a doctor to listen to me and referred me to a Bariatric surgeon to reduce the size of my stomach, help me lose weight and start a new life style. I was excited to start the process on February 8, 2018.
I have been tracking my weight and what I eat and the exercises I’m doing. The first few weeks were the same, 304 pounds. But the next week I lost 2 pounds. Then I got sick for a week and a half and I weighed in at 294 pounds. WOW! I just lost 6 pounds from the 300 that I was bouncing around with. That is super fine! That was last Friday (March 16th) when I was at “pain group” (I attend a pain management group every other Friday and I get weighed in each time). I weighed in today at “weight maintenance group” (I attend this group every other Monday so I can have my surgery) at 286 pounds!! I haven’t weighed that in about 5 years or more. That is a total of 14 pounds in about 2 weeks!! WOW! Now it is the struggle to keep it off, and not gain it back. But I think it is going off the Oxycontin (I was on Oxycontin for my sever back pain and got very sick and stopped taking it) and being on the Turmeric (this is for weight-loss and RLS, Restless Leg Syndrome) that is making me lose weight because I haven’t changed anything except to cut down on my portion sizes. But over all I’m happy with my progress. 🙂
Laura's Journey After Gastric Sleeve Surgery 