By Jess

Yesterday, almost exactly one month after my surgery, I had my first fill. To recap, when the band is inserted during surgery, its silicone pouch is empty, meaning that it basically causes no restriction–it’s like a belt that’s two sizes too big. Starting a month out from surgery, once a month, the physician’s assistant injects saline solution into the pouch through the port attached to the abdominal wall. It usually takes about four fills to reach perfect restriction.

So, yesterday was my first one. They say the first one is the worst, and I hope that’s right, because it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. The port is directly under the biggest incision (not a coincidence), so the needle has to go through a lot of scar tissue before it gets to the port. Imagine lying on your back, your head in the air, trying not to wince while watching your PA make a “this isn’t quite working” face as she moves a needle around inside your fresh scar, trying to find the opening to your port. Because that’s what happened.

And then, when that didn’t work, she pulled the needle back out, asked me to take a deep breath, and started pressing really hard on my incision and asking me to tell her when she hit a tender spot. And believe me, I could tell. The tender spot was, apparently, the port, and after only a couple more minutes, she was actually able to get the needle in the port and inject the solution into the band.

So, I’m partially filled. My band holds 14cc of liquid and right now it contains 5.5cc. Apparently most people reach full restriction when they have between 9cc and 11cc in there. Nobody requires the full 14cc.

The PA told me that I may or may not feel any restriction after this first fill. I’ve already decided that I WILL feel restriction. I have no actual basis for this other than the fact that I think I could feel a tiny bit of restriction even without any fill at all, so it would make sense that filling the band more than 1/3 of the way would make me feel more restriction. Plus, if I THINK I feel restriction, then psychologically I’ll probably want to eat less. And I’ll do whatever works.

So now I have to spend two days back on that miserable liquid puree diet, then two days on soft foods, and then I can start reintegrating regular food into my diet. Every time I get a fill I’ll have to do this, and sort of slowly test the waters to see how much restriction I’ve achieved and what foods I can and cannot tolerate. At some point I’ll stop being able to tolerate bread, most likely, and also probably a few other foods (examples of things other people can’t tolerate: corn, shrimp, eggs).

Also, while I was at the surgeon’s office, I had another weigh-in and according to their official records, I’ve lost 25 pounds! That is an EXCELLENT way to kick off the next phase of this surgery.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 8:10 am and is filed under Blogs, Not a Diet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.