Art

At this moment, my father is about 40 minutes into a bariatric surgery. He's worried, naturally, and so am I. It's a major surgery, which has its risks, but perhaps the bigger concern is how to cope afterwards.

He's opted for this surgery after a long adulthood of being overweight, nay, obese, which has led to no end of physical health problems. Type II diabetes, high blood pressure--the works. There will be a lot of tough lifestyle changes that HAVE to happen post surgery, and I worry about the aftermath. As does he, and rightfully so. There will be both physical and psychological changes, and I hope he hangs tough emotionally. He and my stepmother's social life revolves a lot around having dinner with friends (doesn't everyone's?), so that will be a particular stress.

A really scary part about this morning is that going in, they weren't sure just what kind of surgery they were going to do. Dad has a lot of scar tissue in his abdomen. He had his gallbladder out back when they slit your tummy a foot across rather than pluck it out through the belly button using a laparoscope and three small incisions like they did with me. He's also had one (or maybe multiple?) hernia repair in the navel region. So they're not sure they can do the typical gastric bypass. I'm not entirely sure what the second option is, but from what he explained about it, I'm thinking it's a sleeve gastrectomy.

At any rate, help me think good thoughts for him.

Update: He's having the sleeve gastrectomy, which actually worries me a little more than the regular gastric bypass does. I guess it's because it's a newer surgery. They had a bad storm last night, so things actually didn't begin until about an hour ago (it's 12:15 currently) rather than at 8 as expected. Stepmom is keeping me in the loop.


Update #2: He's out of surgery, will be in the hospital for a couple of days and seems to be doing fine. Whew.

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Out of respect for my Dad's surgery I'll leave aside the entry about the restaurant I went to last night for another time. Suffice to say it was really good, and I used to be somewhat of a regular when it first opened. The owner (who's hot) sent out an appetizer for us, so glad was he to see us back. "Stew! Where have you been?" Ok, maybe I'm not so respectful, because that's basically the whole story. But my lord is he hot. And the Osh is fantastic. They need beer on tap, though, and it's a little cold in there. Let me make myself feel a bit better by mentioning that the food there is really, really healthy.