All went well at the surgeon's office yesterday. She had me take the brace off and I have been in pain ever since. Well, since it got cold anyway. It's turned chilly here. Too much for my incision anyway. I am sitting here with a heating pad on the wound site hoping the heat will take the pain away. I may actually have to take one of my few remaining Lortabs tonight to sleep. We still do not have heat in the house. They don't deliver the propane tank until next week. Perhaps by next Friday we will have heat. Until then we are freezing. Space heaters just don't cut it when it gets this cold this fast.

Anyway, I asked the surgeon if they had a plastics department there. She perked right up and said, not only yes, but that her husband was one of the 2 plastic and reconstructive guys there. So I asked her if I could see him. She said sure and whisked me off to make an appointment.

So I go in November 28th to have him look at Rocky and Bullwinkle and see how much it will be to get them removed forever from my arms and legs. So far the plastics guys here in Rogers gave me a quote of $8000. I told him I would see him when I saved up the bucks. He wants payment up front. UAMS does not. UAMS will let me make payments. They also do things on a sliding scale. My hernia surgery was less than half the quote I got from the surgeon here. Plus, I only have to pay whatever they say my sliding scale cost is. Does it get any better than that? I think not.

If things go well, I will probably be having the surgery in mid January, the dead time in my work world. I am going to have at least two weeks of serious recovery time after that kind of surgery. It will make this hernia surgery appear like popping a pimple by comparison. So for the first time since I was a teenager, I will have something that sort of resembles a normal body. Sort of anyway. At least I won't have 6 extra inches of flapping skin hanging down off of my arms and legs anymore. I'll still have it hanging off my ass and have a lumpy stomach, but hey, I really don't give a rat's ass about that shit. It's not like anyone is ever going to see me naked in bed ever again.

I just want to be normal, not sexy. Just ordinary looking. I want to be able to wear a tee shirt and not have to worry about it needing to come all the way down to my elbows to hide all that extra skin. I want to be able to wear shorts and not worry about skin hanging down out of the bottom like it does now when I cross my legs. I just want to be normal looking. Is that too much to ask? I think not. This isn't about vanity, this is about feeling like a normal, ordinary person.

My surgeon understood that. She was so enthusiastic when I told her I wanted to lose Rocky and Bullwinkle. She understood that I just want to look like a normal person now that I have lost all this weight.

Sometimes, in fact, most of the time I have a hard time remembering that I am smaller now. I am so not used to being small. I don't stand out in a crowd as the big person anymore. I am just ordinary looking (except for Rocky and Bullwinkle which I hide as best I can).

My stomach is still swollen from the surgery, so when I look down I still see this huge belly. It's not really huge, it just feels that way to me right now. The surgeon says that eventually all the fluids will be absorbed by my body and that I will have this sort of hole where the hernia once was. I kind of see it taking shape right now. I can see where the hole will be once all this swelling is gone. There is all this wrinkled flabby skin starting to sink in there. It's kind of gross in it's own special way. Still, at this point in time it's not enough to make me run off and get a stomach lift. I am good with it all for now.

My surgeon says that I am lucky in that many people who lose huge sums of weight have a huge flap of skin that hangs down off their abdomen. I am lucky because I do not have that. She says I must have been very proportional in carrying my weight. I told her I was actually. Most of my weight was in my ass and thighs. Which is why I have so much extra skin there now.

I am not happy with my ass because, for one thing, I no longer have one, but I am also not willing to endure surgery to have that extra skin removed. Instead I am going to work on pumping up my non existent gluts. Hopefully that will fill a little of that hanging skin on my ass so that it's not so apparent. Wish me luck, I don't even get to think about lifting weights for at least another 6 weeks. My surgeon threatened me with in an inch of my life if I did. She told me to do lots of reps with no weights. Ha! Like what kind of reps? I don't know. I need a physical trainer now. Since I am going to be making monthly payments to UAMS for the next 5 years, I think I will be holding off on finding someone to do that for me.

Anyway, that's where I am at in my head and body right now. Getting better in so many ways day by day. I am rebuilding me, a me that looks normal and is healthy.

I am done for now.

Ciao