The End of the Beginning

Hello friends, my name is Ron, and I'll be your guest blogger until Angela has recovered enough to resume her entries.

Today, her operation finally happened.  Angela and I arrived at the hospital at 7:30 a.m., and the staff wenth through the standard pre-op checkout and questionnaire.  She thinks I didn't hear her pre-lap band weight, but I did.  No, I won't reveal it - I might want to use it for blackmail at a later date :)  Once all the paperwork was in order, she went into surgery at a little after 10:00 a.m. local time.

All went well, and we (me, her Mom, sister, and BFF) met her as she came into post-op at around 2:00 p.m.  She was pretty sleepy, still under the influence of the anesthesia.  They prescribe walking every 4 hours as part of the post-op.  Angela was still pretty doped up at the time of her first excursion (around 3:00 p.m.), and it only went about 8 feet before bringing her back to the bed.  The next one went much better, I'd say a good 150 feet or so.  She was still having some pain issues, mainly because she didn't understand how the morphine dispenser should work.  It allows you to give yourself a very minor dose every 9 minutes or as you need it.  She hadn't hit the button for 3 hours!

BFF and sister visited again later in the day, and I left her snoozing at around 8:45 this evening.  And so, the real "life with the lap band" story begins.  As Winston Churchill once said, "This may not be the beginning of the end, but it is, I think, the end of the beginning."