Every day I put "update my blog" on my to do list and every day I put it until last after checking in to the CK forums, reading my favorite blogs here on CK, checking into Facebook and all the work stuff - e-mail, etc. - that I should just be leaving alone since I'm on medical leave.

Well, now it's Tuesday night and I must write! So much has been going on and I am trying to stay mostly sane through it, but it's a little tough.

Surgery Follow-Up
As of yesterday's follow-up with the surgeon I am doing great. She says I'm healing fine and generally doing well. I'm down 15 pounds since my last pre-surgery visit with her. She did however give me heck about not measuring what I'm drinking and therefore not being able to tell her how much liquid I'm getting daily. Dehydration can be a problem right now as I get used to the smaller stomach. I can't just gulp down a liter of water the way I used to. So, the liter water bottle with measurement markings came out last night and I am sipping and measuring. I think I'll get in 32 oz. of water in today easy. And I just had a 12 oz. iced coffee (over a 60 minute period) but tomorrow I need to work harder to get 48 oz. of water in, as the caffeine can be dehydrating.

Also, I did my first "real" post-surgery exercise today. (Apparently pushing the cart through Wal-mart and the grocery stores doesn't count as "exercise" for my surgeon.) I spent an hour walking around the neighborhood - it was a beautiful day - and the HRM says I burned 456 calories. Can that be possible? Honestly, I don't care right now how many calories I burn, just that I'm moving and keeping the exercise habit alive while recuperating, but that seems so high. (I'm still learning how to use my HRM. I wonder if I need to adjust it for my decreasing weight. Hmmm . . . not quite sure how the HRM calculates calories burned.)

Today I also went pain medication free. I took some liquid percocet last night to help with pain and to help me sleep, but since I woke up this morning, nothing, not even Tylenol. I feel pretty good, although I may have overdone it on the walk for the first time out and I ate my teeny pureed meal too quickly for dinner, so that caused a little pain going through the teeny tiny stomach. Still pain med free, though. Maybe a small dose of the percocet to sleep tonight.

Work
So I'm on medical leave from work right now, but my type A personality has me checking in to e-mail a couple times a day to see what's going on. I dunno why. I found out that I am on a list to be laid off in the next couple weeks, while I'm out. (Yes, it's legal. I'm not sweating it since I know it is a sound business decision.) I should be forgetting that job and working on finding the next one.

I've got some "feelers" out for another position. Networked from home a little last week and hoping and praying that it might pan out as a quick turnaround to a new job. It would be sweet to get on somewhere else before I burn through my severance (which since I haven't actually been formally let go I don't know how much it will be . . . just a guess based on company policy and my short tenure with this company). Maybe I could even bank some of the package. Trying not to get my hopes up.

In the mean time I've been working to clean up anything I can at work to make the separation easier. I brought home everything I need/want from the office before my surgery (the writing has been on the wall for a month or so now) so it will just be a matter of signing paperwork and dropping off my gadgets - - Blackberry, laptop, etc.

Ewww . . . hadn't really written any of this job stuff down yet. Don't know if it's writing it down or the caffeine in the iced coffee, but I'm a little nervous now. Fingers are crossed that this possible opportunity comes through.

Everything Else
All in all I think I'm doing pretty well for someone making some BIG lifestyle changes, recovering from surgery and prepping for an inevitable lay-off. It builds up once in a while and the fact that I can't take my antidepressants right now with my new tummy has made me a little weepy at times. But I'm still making good choices. Working out. Cutting back on the narcotics. Trying to eat the right nutrients to heal and taking my vitamin/mineral supplements. Wow are these next few months going to be a challenge!

Oh. I'm already bored/annoyed with pureed food. Granted there's alot more variety than I had with the full lilquid diet, but I still would love a salad or some bread . . . Salads (raw veggies) don't come back on the menu until about week 12 post surgery and bread may never be something I can tolerate well. We'll see. Additionally, pureeing all my food is a HUGE pain. We're talking about going out of town this weekend to visit friends and family and I'll have to bring my scale and my blender. What a PITA. Oh well.

Namaste, friends.