The price could scar your very SOUL…!
When I was in 4th grade I went swimming at my mom’s friends neighbors place. A small, in-ground pool nestled in the emerald green forests of the Appalachians. The only ladder out of the pool was missing a top step, but still retained it’s rusted screws of considerable girth. On my way out of the pool, I let my left hand slide down the railing of the ladder. The screw sliced open my entire little finger from base to tip requiring 14 stitches. I remember my mom rushing me to the car, holding my arm up and out the window in the back seat, blood running down my arm, but I don’t remember any pain until the shot of local anesthesia that my crack-pot doctor gave me. When I cried out, he threatened to give me another if I didn’t be quiet. I watched him stitch my flesh back together slowly, marveling at the lack of sensation. His unskilled stitching caused a large, white knot in the center of my finger instead of a long, even scar.
...rather phallic in nature...
Medicine, and doctors, have progressed since then – greatly. Incisions are now being sealed without the use of stitches. Mine were sealed with an adhesive (most likely DermaBond) and covered with a tape that I thought would hurt to all seven levels of hell. I even had a dream of it the night before I had the tape removed. A dear coworker yanked them off me mercilessly. The next day, my surgeon yanked them off fiercely, but they fell off easily like skin on a cooked chicken.
So I have FIVE incisions…five of them. Not four as stated erroneously on the video. The topmost one, nearest to the bust, is a little sore as is the one at the “waist crease”.
I completely forgot to mention the $25,553.13 discount that’s given. Total amount pending insurance is $38,329.70.
I am super tired today. Covering an early shift for a sick coworker. So this post isn’t very coherent.
Me go sleep nao…
08.13.09
LoseIt! App Tour for iPod Touch / iPhone
When hand held gadgetry took a step from the realm of entertainment, liability and annoyance and into functionality with the iPod Touch, I decided to jump ship and see what it has to offer. Through many an exultation from my friend The Red Devil, I came to learn about particular apps to help us on our ever winding road to health and wellness. One such app has been LoseIt.
The fine folks at FitNow, Inc. have combined weight, nutrition, diet and exercise tracking and crammed it all into one rather comprehensive program. It allows access to an extensive nutritional database of foods both common and commercial (and, for the lovers-of-the-esoteric such as myself, the ability to create recipes and log original food items) and has a broad spectrum of exercise selections where you can adjust the length and even intensity of your workout.
Concerned about more than just tracking your weight and calories? Worry not! LoseIt can allow you to a daily and weekly glance at your current intake of the major essential nutritional points such as fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar, and of course protein.
There two things I’d like to see changed in the future updates; namely, the ability to track essential vitamins and minerals (this is very important in particular to bypass patients!) and a more forgiving “Create New Food” menu. Once you add your own food but realize you’ve made a mistake either in the spelling or amount of nutrition, you cannot go back and individually correct it. It must needs to be deleted and created from scratch. Annoying.
All in all, a wonderful app that is already helping me on my new daily regimen!
08.12.09
The Buzz vs The Bulge
Everyone is more and more aware of the fat and calories hidden in those tasty, creamy, seducing, comforting, warm, inviting, enticing cups of frothy deceit. Yet we still bend our will to dive tongue-first into the foamy head of caffeinated captivity.
Perhaps I’ll think twice after committing the following chart to memory.
I confess I am still prone to the McDonald’s Sugar Free Ice Coffee and the more sinful iced milk tea from the I <3 Boba down the street.
mkandlez has some great ‘infovisualization’ pieces.
08.08.09
Lap Band Check-in: HaegumPlus & Crazy Hook
I love how flat-out drunk Koreans get. The Korean Cultural and Language Meetup went to Crazy Hook in Ktown after seeing HaegumPlus perform downtown. Very cool evening. I remember passing Crazy Hook on a number of occasions and thinking “Wtf is that?” but never stopped to look. I had no idea it was a pirate-themed Korean bar.
If you’ve never been to Crazy Hook, and are looking for a good night of Korean drunkenness with a piratical theme, I suggest checking it out. Non-Koreans don’t get stared at.
They serve beer in these massive plastic “syringes” with a valve at the end.
Unfortunately, the waiters are not dressed in pirate garb…but are sexy nonetheless.
If you’ve never heard of HaegumPlus, I suggest checking them out too.
It’s interesting seeing the cross over in musical instruments across Asia. The Haegum is almost exactly like the Chinese ErHu but is considered a traditional instrument of Korea. The Haegum has a thinner, almost reedier sound, whereas the ErHu as a rich, deep, melancholy sound. Both are equally beautiful.
Anyways, onto business.
My confessional for the day is that I had 3 things I should not have had at all when I was at Crazy Hook.
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3 tiny pickle slices
2 tortilla chips
8oz of dark beer.
The beer did the most damage. I had a pretty fierce tummy ache, even though it took me more than an hour to finish it. I am proud, and yet still sad that I didn’t give into my craving of the sampler that everyone bought.
This week has been a bit of a trail. I did not expect to feel HUNGER but I do feel it, for certain. I think I miss chewing and texture as much as I miss the taste for savory things. I’ve noticed that now that I am not eating as I usually do (healthfully, mind you!) I am craving things I normally never crave. Bad things. Smells drive me crazy even if it’s things I normally don’t eat (e.g. the vendor hot dogs you find scattered throughout town). Two more weeks of liquids and I can move onto mashed foods for a week. Then onto solids.
So far, if you use the weight I was at the morning of surgery at the hospital (292) I am down 5 pounds this week at 287. I obsessively weigh myself at different parts of the day to see where water weight creeps up. After a nap, I noticed I dropped another 2 pounds. After my protein shake dinner, I was up 2 again, and then an hour later teetering at 1 pound less. Now that I can actually use a scale I am interested in seeing how and when my body teeters.
Most people probably didn’t notice, but not very long ago commercially available scales used to reach only to 300 lbs. Any weight applied to the scale over that would result in an E for “Error” For the longest time I didn’t step on a commercial scale at all lest I think the US changed it’s methodology for counting to include the alphabet.
Now that the masses have increased in mass the weight limit is 330. I didn’t know this until recently when I saw the Wii Fit board (it’s on my wishlist!) goes up to 330. I shed a silent tear of thanks to Nintendo that day :)
I’m getting anywhere between 600 – 900 calories a day and walking at least 10 to 40 minutes a day. But with as little calories as that I am still guilt ridden of a few additions to the diet that should not have been there.
We can’t ever really be satisfied.
