The skin after the thin...

Okay, it clearly has been far too long since I posted anything.  Let's get up to speed, shall we?

I've been insanely busy lately.  I know people always say that, but I really have.  It's amazing how much you can do when you can, you know, actually DO stuff.  So I went to Colorado Springs for a weekend for a post-bariatric seminar, I almost went to the local renaissance festival (temps of over 100 degrees scared me into seeing the next Twilight movie, which cooled me off but made me feel like an old pervy lady going to see tween boys without their shirts), I've been to several farmers markets, went antiquing, a gardening show, and even to the gym a couple of times (dude, I even tried Pilates, which I loved!).  Whew.  I'm exhausted just reading the list.

Here's the long and short of it, my 6-month check up is this Thursday, and I'm down about 125 lbs.  My triglicerides went down about 100 points but my cholesterol went up a bit (still in the normal range, but much higher than before), my hormones are all over the place (reference old pervy lady comment above), and because I get a period for 3 out of 4 weeks in the month I'm slightly anemic.  Otherwise, doing well--all things considered.

So, Miss TinaM wants to know the question of the hour--what about all the skin?  Actually, I get asked this more than any other question, so apparenlty inquiring minds want to know.

I have good, thick, German skin.  Pasty as all get-out, and every scar hangs out as a red mark for at least a year, but it heals good.  No keloids, no pitting, and FAST healing.  Oh, the skin cancer scares aside (and I've had a few--before I even turned 30), I got good skin.  So even though I've lost an Olson twin in less than 6 months, I have a lot less of the droopy, withered bits that almost everyone who has had successful weight loss surgery gets.  Yea me!

I do have some weirdness.  There is a slightly deflated-balloon appearance to my lower abdomen.  And some weird dangly bits that weren't there before.  But all told, it isn't too bad.  How do I know this?

At the aforementioned post-surgical seminar I went to in Colorado Springs there were several different lectures on post-op life, including a segment done by a plastic surgeon.  I learned several very important things:
1.  Ya gotta WARN people before you start flashing up enormous slides of naked people, whether or not they are post-op.  I looked at my brochure to catch the Dr.'s name, and when I looked up I got smacked in the eyeballs with ENORMOUS NEKKED BOOBS.  Not that there is anything wrong with enormous nekked boobs (in fact, I am a proud owner of a pair).  It's just that after a very tame discussion of converting recipes to weight-loss friendly foods I was not prepared.  I'm telling you, it's weird to have the black "censored" box over a FACE and not the boobular area or the naughty bits.  Honestly, a person should have a warning that this is about to occur so that said person does not almost spray the person in front of her with half-chewed protein bar.
2.  Ya also gotta WARN people that it is an actual plastic surgeon who will be discussing the horrifying details of what they do to people when they are passed out naked on the table.  Remember the Seinfeld episode with "The Assman", and how proctologists always have the best stories?  Yea, plastic surgeons are so freakkin' close.  As in, "You should have seen the size of the skin flap I took here.  It took three of us, pulling and stretching so tight (insert pantomine of wrasslin' and pullin') that we had to start the sutures with superglue."  Poor black-box-faced lady.  It's better she doesn't know.
3.  When standing in a room of post-ops from bariatric surgery, it's easy to spot the people who have had the skin removal/tummy tuck/neck lift/etc.  They are the only people in the room who look proportional.  Everyone else looks like a normal person from the waist up, and then a tire worn around the waist, and then normal legs.  You see, it's not just me--everybody's like that.  Until they get with a surgeon who evens them all out.

All things told, I'd like to have surgery on my midsection at some point.  Half the point of this whole process is to be "normal" and proportional--I'd hate to lose nearly 200 lbs (my ultimate goal) and still look like I'm smuggling waist-level bags of whatever people are smuggling these days.  But I'm only 6 months out and hoping to lose another 60+ lbs before I can even go there.  So I can say, loudly and proudly, that my shar-pei belly is here, it's weird, get used to it.  For now, anyway.  We'll see where the poochy goes in a year or so...