Days Are Slowly Going By

   It is a very early beginning to Day 6 and I am ready to tackle it head on. It does seem that as the days without eating heavy amounts of food pass by it is getting easier to get through each one. I won't say that Day 5 was a cakewalk but it was much more bearable. I talked my the nurse practitioner at the Heartland Gastric Clinic yesterday and picked up a couple of pointers that helped. One was to add a little more protein to my regimen of Slimfast shakes. Seems I was not quite getting enough protein through the shakes and so I picked up a protein powder mix and can add some to my evening shake which helps the evening go by smoother. Another thing that is very helpful is adding more V8 juice to my daily intake. It is more filling and adds a small amount of protein more often thru the day.
   These tips, along with the encouragement from my wife, mother, and friends on Facebook and emails are really helping me get thru these first few days of carb addiction withdrawal. Yes, I said carb addiction. I never really thought about it that way, but, according to the Cindy, the nurse practitioner at Heartland, that is exactly what I am going through. Withdrawal symptoms to something I never really thought of as being an addiction. She is right though. I have been addicted to carbs in a very big way for a very long time. I was always able to manage the sugars in my diet but never the carbs. I now realize what a big mistake that was in my eating habits of the past several years. And since I had cut out most of the sugar in my diet due to the diabetes I guess the most logical replacement for the sugar was the carbs which I am thinking now are probably worse for anyone than the sugar.
   My diet for the last several years has been a flood of high carb food items like pasta, rice, chips and other snack foods that while not high in sugar, were very high in carbs. And not the good carbs that the body needs but all the bad carbs that add pounds of fat and cause many other health related problems such as diabetes. For example, my normal evening activity would usually involve a snack, or more, consisting of some sort of high carb item like tortilla chips and salsa, which by the way, they had as free appetizers here at the hotel yesterday evening and I cruised right on by without hardly a glance. Wasn't easy, but I didn't let myself linger to get the chance to develop the crave for them. I sure do wish sometimes there was some way to block the smell because that really tends to make me crazy when I get a big whiff of some really good food that I am missing.
   The messages I receive and encouragement from family and friends is fabulous. It really does help strengthen my resolve to make this work. I even got friended on Facebook last night by the sister of someone I know that is going to be having her surgery today. I wish her all the best and her words to me last night were quite encouraging as she went thru what I am going thru and was able to help with some much needed insight that at about day 6 or 7 it got easier for her although she admits she did have her moments even after that. One other thing she told me that I had never really thought about is that besides the need of shrinking the liver for the surgery, the diet prepares you and gets you thru that initial carb withdrawal without having the extra burden of recuperating from the surgery combined with the torture I have been thru for the last several days. I think, laying around and recovering with the added withdrawal symptoms would have been pure hell. Now my body will already be prepared for and past the stages of carb withdrawal and recovery week won't be nearly as bad. It is, after all, an all clear liquid diet for the first week. So no Slimfast shakes or V8 juice for that week. I would hate to imagine what the first few days of carb addiction withdrawal would be like on a clear liquid diet. I think insanity would set in and a person would lose their mind.
   Is all this torture worth it? That is a question that still rattles around in the emptier portions of my head constantly but as I get closer to my surgery date I believe it is and am strongly committed to make it through.
While these past several days have not been the most fun days of my life, I have been able to survive and am not any closer to the edge of sanity that I normally am. Writing this blog has also been a big help and I am very glad that my wife recommended it. It lets me have a chance to focus my thoughts and express my feelings about the different things happening to me as I go thru several changes with each step along the way. I am already seeing benefits to what I am doing as my legs are looking better, I had this really horrible rash looking areas on both legs and they have almost totally cleared up in just the first few days. My blood sugar is lowering, still not into normal ranges but it is getting lower, and my body is already starting to slim down quite a bit. I can't tell how much weight I have lost as I have no scale to weigh myself with, but I can tell in how my clothes are fitting that I have slimmed down quite a bit.
   So here comes Day 6. I am ready and excited to face the day before halfway and hopefully it will be an easier day for me. I am still in King of Prussia, PA working and now will be here until the end of the week. At that point I am not sure what my schedule is going to be for the next several days but am hoping the days will start going by a little more quickly and a lot smoother. I do know that the encouragement I receive really helps and am so happy to have friends and family that are so supportive during this time. Thank you all for the kind words and I look forward to hearing from you each and every day. It is a blessing to have this help. Have a great day everybody. All for now, George.