-25lbs! w00t

Well, it's my 14th day of the modified diet today (started liquids St Patty's Day 3/17/10) and I am -25lbs today @ 380lbs! Recently found out (because I live under a rock...) that Rex Ryan had the same surgery. The article linked is good, conveys a lot of the same things I am thinking...

I really have to find my camera... Im already down 25 and I want good before and afters!

Starting Weight: 405
Current Weight: 380
Lost since 3/17/10: 25
Overall Goal: 250
Target Loss: 130

"the bands all here"

Well, I guess I'm recovering nicely from the surgery. My expectations going in were based on the experience of my girlfriend when she had the procedure and what the program told me to expect. They were:

• gas pains within my body (not the typical fart or burp gas). This is what I was really worried about because the only thing to make that better would be time. So far I think I experienced these pains for maybe an hour or so however they were extremely tolerable.
• surgery pains. I was expecting much worse than I have. My mobility is probably 80-90% and my stomach muscles are the ones that are a little sore I guess, it's really more a discomfort than pain. Getting in and out of bed, sitting up or down and bending over are hard to do but I am working around that. Stairs and general mobility seem to be fine.
• recovery room. I was prepared to wake up a painful miserable mess. Instead I was doing really well when I woke up and didn't have any pains until I had to transfer from my recovery bed to the bed in my room (I had to get out of one bed and into another) and even then the pain was me trying to stupidly use my stomach muscles.

Jenn is taking good care of me, helping me out with whatever I need, for that I am really grateful. I am looking forward to getting back to work on my tasked items of the sales book (which is ~80% done) and the newly tasked website creation. Mainly because I want to just get it done but also it's money and I need that now, so hopefully I'll be home soon. Right now the only issues I have are discomfort with the stomach, a little swelling and I get tired quicker than I probably should. My follow-up appointment is less than 2 weeks away and as of last night I re-started my liquid diet.

I'm excited about seeing what this baby can do with the right approach. I'll probably start attaching pictures soon to this blog and making a new album on my facebook page.

Lap band....

As you probably already know I've been testing for the lap band since October. Jenn and I woke up at 4:30 am on Friday because I was scheduled for 6am admission and a 7:30am surgery.  I felt like I was getting up to go to work, special thanks to Jenn though who stated she "only was up at this time when she was 19 and coming home from a night out".

It was "installed" on Friday at ~8am.I wasn't worried about the procedure. I received enough information from my girlfriend and the dr that I felt ready for all I was about to encounter. After meeting everyone I waited in the pre-op room and then was wheeled in and put on the skinny little operation table. I was strapped on the table, towel roll put behind my shoulders (for the breathing tube to be installed later) and started to get some drugs. My anesthesiologist nurse Mike said "you're vision should be getting blurry"... I said no and then bam! I remember the anesthesiologist walking in and Mike filling him in on all the prep work he did... then I was out.

I woke up in the recovery room to a few people around me, one of them in the beginning was my surgeon Dr Powers saying I did really good. I was given some pain meds that gave me nausea so I had to take something for that. I started coming into focus and after a few minutes they let Jenn and my mother into the recovery room. After a few hours I was taken to my own room on the first floor.

I was up Fri night walking around, surprisingly little pain, I expected much more pain or discomfort. Late fri night I started to get some discomfort at the site where they did the work, nothing major just awareness. Dr Powers came in to see me and said the procedure went well, that I looked great and it was all normal. He also told me I have the 10cc AP Lapband, a newer band that's supposed to be better.

Friday night into Sat morning I was woken up twice to see if I was ok by the nurses then I was told at about 6am I had to stay awake because my heart rate was too low, in the 30's. I got up, walked around a bit. The nurse then asked if I had urinated since the catheter was removed, I had not. I was then informed that I had 10 minutes to so or get another catheter... no way Jose!!!!! I was able to go and avoided that mess.

I was wheeled down to the radiology department and had to get tested to see that the band was in the right position and all was ok. I waited back in my room for the results and once it was good to go I had to drink 1 ounce sips of water or tea every 10-15 minutes. After doing that then they brought me another tray and I had to do the same... yikes, too much. I was discharges at about 2pm and Jenn drove me back to her place where I will spend my time recovering.

Today and tomorrow will be clear liquids days. Then for 2 weeks I will be back on a liquid diet mostly the protein shakes and some puddings. Week 3 & 4 will be "soft & mushy foods" like mashed potatoes and stuff like that. Week 5 will be normal foods once again. Well, it's time to find out how to co-exist with this band :) .

Now I'm about to nap or something for a bit. A very special thanks to m'lady Jenn for all the care she's given me thus far. Also thanks to my mother, Chris and Mike B for visiting me in the hospital, it meant a lot to me.

Current Weight: 385.2 (prior to surgery on hospital scale)
Overall Goal: 250.0
Target Loss: 135.2

Fucking wind and rain...

So I've basically been up since 1:20pm on Sat. running fire calls or something else weather related. I was told we did 73 or 74 calls yesterday and there were like 20 or so today. These consisted of one working building fire, 2 gas main breaks and many many trees down/wires down/electrical fires. Then when I went home Sat night my block was not fully powered so we kept having issues with the heating system and other things around the house... going home to sleep yielded a whole one hour if I was lucky.

Today we had a fun call too! House had all the above ground electrical running in the back yard and the transformer fell, remained energized and charged the chain link fence on the sides and rear of the house. Moron LIPA supervisor was like "power is shut down" as the fence was arcing into the ground and lighting nearby things on fire... great. After they pulled their heads out of their asses they shut it down, about 30 minutes later...

All this and I never even mentioned that Sat night was supposed to be the annual Dept Dinner, the Volly Prom, Dog and Pony Show... and all the inactive members were there to pat themselves on the back while the real people were running calls like mofo's. Don't get me wrong, if you're an old member who's past the point of being an active "call runner" by all means go to the dinner. However when there's a probie there drinking and having a ball fuck him (just also so happens to be the probie who was in my recent extrication class who would rather not gear all the way up and drink a water while a commissioner busts his ass with hand tools, then wouldn't follow my orders... douche.). I signed up to be a firefighter, the volley prom is a sorry to my significant other  for always running out on calls or drills etc. Ugh...

So yeah, no sleep... I'm beyond the point of tired now. Also missed filing for my unemployment insurance and working on the sales book because I was out running around. Perhaps I can put in a little more time on the book and call and get help back-filing the unemployment...

My surgery is also around the corner... starting to get ready for it. Have to go out tomorrow and get stuff for my special diet for the pre-surgical and post-surgical periods. Tomorrow (Mon) was going to be my last day of real food before the 10 day liquid diet but Im going to do 5-Guys with Jen as my last meal on Tues night, may as well send myself off right!

Ok, let me get back to trying this sleep shit... I have a lot to do tomorrow (today... shit...) and need to rest up since I havent slept for crap.

Progress... in the right direction?

Level 8 Website : bare-bones placeholder splash page
Client's sales book - 33% done with the major outline/page designs
New client search - not started
Training videos - approx. 10% done (there are a lot of vids. thanks to Chris)

Next client deadline - 13 days
Client expectations - High (they now know I've lost my job and have "all this free time"...)
My outlook - favorable, I think I can get a great chunk of work completed at my current skill level
My goal - Complete framework of book and at least 60% of content by 3/23

Also I have my surgery coming up. I just received all of my liquid meal replacement drinks in the mail, tomorrow I am going to try one to see how it tastes. Which reminds me, this weekend's Department dinner is going to be my last drinking episode until probably like 2 months after my surgery (May 26th-ish) so I'll be operational by Memorial Day!

I need focu... ooooh! Shiny thing!

Watched a bunch of InDesign training material today, worked a bit over the weekend on the business cards for Level 8 and had a bunch of other things going on that kept me from the computer. However I didn't get much of the work I need to do for Tues evening's meeting done.

Here's the plan. I've been waking up and going to bed whenever, and I'm finding out this sucks. My routine is non-existent and I need some sense of regularity in my life. It sucked getting up at 4:40am each weekday for work with the old job and I guess I've been overcompensating for that. Time to get on a schedule again, maybe wake up at 7 or 8? That sounds reasonable right?

Level 8 Update

Tonight I watched a tutorial on one thing for flash on Adobe's website and ended up teaching myself something half-assed on my own.

Currently my first ever flash project is the temporary home page of www.lvl8.com

I'd ask for feedback but currently nobody seems to be reading this. Ah, ramblings of a broken mind...

Level 8

So I decided (finally) on a name for my "company" that I'm gonna tinker with, "Level 8". Turns out with a lot of google help and searching online there are a lot of other web design/desktop publishing/media companies that have a similar name. That's great to know I'm not the only crazy guy out there thinking of that name, horrible because I'm now associated with them all.

Bought the domain www.lvl8.com and posted just a simple logo picture that I envisioned and my friend Chris was able to polish up for me. I'm sure there will be an infinite amount of revisions made to it over the course of it's existence but I like it for now.

Being out of work right now I should really be more productive however lately the wind seems to be taken out of my sails and I'm not one who enjoys rowing. Tomorrow I plan on getting back into it strong, make a sizable dent into my "clients" sales book and do some work on the new website. Probably going to print up a small batch of business cards so I can eventually seek out new clients.

Thank you also to Chirs and Alvin who are working on getting me plenty of training videos so I can "level up" on my Adobe Suite skills.