No I Did Not Go For Liposuction

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Well, my surgery went fine! It's two weeks post operation now and I am doing okay, I guess. Doc gave me 3 weeks off from the day of surgery and I am entering the last week of my recuperation period and is doing good I guess.

How is the whole process?

Okay so, I checked into the ward on Sunday evening, and had to fast starting at 12AM till the operation on Monday. The anesthetic doctor came to see me to explain the whole anesthesia process and side effects where they will put a tube through my throat to my stomach to drug my tummy during the surgey and got me to sign some stuff. Side effects after the anesthesia included nausea, vomiting, hard to breathe ( because my lungs shrank a bit during the time the anesthesia goes thru my body) and a few others I don't remember.

Then my doctor came and asked me how I was and explained again how the surgery will go. At this point I didn't feel much but I couldn't really sleep, being at a new place and all. The next day, hospitals being hospitals, and the surgery ended up starting around 1:30PM. I had to get butt naked and get into the white operation robe, laid on the bed and let them wheel me to the operation theater (OT). Inside was freaking cold. I kept thinking about those medical dramas I watched and wondering if it were like that, but NOOOO, the journey was more dingy and noisy than expected. Felt so vulnerable and scared. Thankfully most of the docs and nurses were so kind (I guess they sorta get it that I'm scared stiff about them poking inside my stomach and cutting it up and stuff).

Anyway once they got you asleep, you're gone. I didn't feel a thing. All I remember is waking up on the bed and groaning cuz my stomach was having this searing pain and I was crying and saying 'It hurts, it hurts'. It was all sorts of hazy (is this what it feels to be high muhaha). I remember vaguely nurses came to check on me and injected me with painkillers and tried to soothe me. Then I was out again haha. Next thing I know I was in my room and my mom was next to me asking me if I'm okay.

My operation wounds were covered with band aids, but my stomach was a bit swollen on one side. It hurts he most on the left side, and doc said that was the biggest wound because that's where the tools had to penetrate 3 levels of muscles before reaching the stomach and it is also where they take out the the cut stomach.

It hurts, but I won't say it's not bearable. Initially my pain threshold is already pretty low. I'm a crybaby. So yeah, I was in pain but not to the point of crying. My mouth felt dry and it was hard to breathe cuz every time your stomach moves you get a jolt of pain. I was not allowed to drink or eat anything for the first 2 days, only medications. I was pretty weak. Couldn't even prop myself up on the bed without help and cannot even go to the toilet. Two times I had to pee and had to call the nurse to help me pee in a container and she wipes my privates clean. Oh I don't think I can ever recover from that horror.

Doc and his team will come visit and check up on you everyday and nurses will come in every few hours to check your blood, blood pressure and give you medications if needed. Food comes even though you cannot eat, so mom eats em. Trust me, after the operation, the smell of food just makes you wanna vomit. By the third day I just cannot stand all the hospital smells and dying to get home. I was not allowed to shower for 3 days dood. THANKFULLY, it was the day the doctor told me I can be discharged. He took out the band aids covering the operation wounds and sprayed some chemical stuff to make them waterproof and told me okay, you're good to go after the dietitian briefs you on your diet during recovery. Finally saw my operation wounds and was surprised it looked like nothing much. There are four thin lines in total. Two around 0.5 cm long and another two around 2cm long. Like cat scratches.

Dietitian came and explained all the four transitions of food that I have to go through while going thru recovery. First phase; liquid diet. Second phase; mashed/pureed diet. Third phase: Soft foods. Fourth phase: Slowly introducing normal food. My eating habits need to change. Chew many times and swallow slowly. Eat protein first in any case. The amount of food I can ingest is very small as compared to before so I need to pace myself. If I overeat, I will vomit.

Anyway, ALHAMDULLILAH I AM FINALLY OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. Car ride was rough and bumpy and hurts but it was fine CUZ I AM GOING HOME BABY. The smell of air outside has never been so fresh and beautiful to me.  I'm telling you, just being able to take shower and sleep in my own bed, made me feel at least 30% better.

Into the third week, I have lost around 10kg since the pre-op and feeling a bit lighter on my feet. It doesn't hurt much unless I put a lot of pressure on it. Like lifting heavy stuff etc. Kinda got used to the new diet too. Given my original weight, it takes a lot moar to see any big changes on my body size I guess. Internally I feel better. It really is impossibru fo rme to eat a lot. I read that my stomach capacity is around 150ml, and my appetite inducing hormones are somewhat majorly lessened so I don't feel any craving to eat anything much. My stomach also can't expand much as the lining that usually expands is the one removed in the surgery. So, I really can't eat much. Downside is I am not used to the low amount of calories per day so my energy runs out pretty fast. I get pretty tired and groggy after walking around for half an hour maybe.

For example my diet as I move to the second phase are,

• Breakfast - 1 cup of soup or yogurt drink or milk or milo
• Lunch - soft egg tofu (around 100g) with thai sauce or smoothies
• Dinner - a glass of milk 

Will be having a follow up appointment with the doctor this Friday and gosh I kinda cannot wait to get back to my daily life. Tho I am considering if I need to order food from the kids menu now since I can't even finish a plate of food these days. I miss bread tho. Kept thinking about croissants and sourdough. Am also out and about these days to build up my stamina. Tried to drive today and it was okay too. I felt jolts of pain sometimes but not hurting like super hurting. If I have to compare, the first week of surgery I felt like I kept being stabbed deeply and as the days go its as if he stabber got gentle and stabbed me less deeply haha.

Or at least what I imagine being stabbed by a knife feels like. 

XD

All Milk and No Rice

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My pre-operation checkup went fine. Doc said I had signs of early diabetes but it will be okay along side the operation. So, now I am into 3 days of pre-op diet...and I am starting to feel the struggle.

Pre-op diet consists of drinking protein milk 4 times a day and this supposedly sums up my calorie count for the whole day to be 800kcal. While it was no issue for me to take up drinking the milk and no issues in term of food temptations, I was starting to become quite sick of the drink. So....I took it upon myself to have a cheat meal this weekend. (Doc and the dietitian would not like to hear that I bet) But then starting Monday I will be back on the protein diet...until the surgery, which is in another 7 days or so.

I dunno what to expect though. I had my first experience of being 'asleep' while they were doing the endoscopy and it was kinda surreal. One moment I was awake and trying to get used to the mouth gag thingy they had on me so I won't bite on the endoscopy camera, the next moment I was waking up to these 2 nurses wheeling me away to another room. I did vaguely remember some sensations of things being poked into my mouth and my saliva running out from the side of my mouth but it felt like a dream, cuz I can't totally remember anything happening. Just weird sensations here and there.

It was pretty surreal.

I wondered if the operation is gonna be like that too.

I dunno. Wish me well peeps.

Work has been meh. I am starting to feel more useless at work because there's too many things to do, and things gotta be done fast, and not all of us (i.e. me) have the skills or knowledge for stuffs, and it always ended up the seniors doing all the work. So I felt useless and kinda unmotivated, plus I felt like I'm not learning much, so yeah. I wanted to get out of this job soon, hopefully. I jut need a bit more money in my savings so I can go in peace.

Bleh. 

Wrapping up 2017

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It's currently the first of January 2018, andddd around 38 minutes to the second of January of 2018 and I just couldn't sleep cuz I had a power nap of sorts in the evening and that usually screws up my night sleeping schedule, but I will be able to wake up normally in the morning, so, yeah.

Unimportant opening.

Anyway I couldn't go to sleep without verbally summarizing my year, which I think is the most epic year to-date in my life so far. As I kept saying on my instagram, 2017 was LIT.

Okay to start it off, let's go back to the last quarter of 2016 - when I was going thru a major shitty time. I was about to be engaged to this guy, let's name him K, but then shit happens and we broke-up and went our separate ways. Then Owen died, bitten by a stray dog. Owen, was probably the last cat of my current life. I loved him, we slept together everyday, we prayed together everyday and he was somehow always there when I was down. Seriously. I could be sad or stressed out and was lying on the bed and he would suddenly march in and jumped on me as if telling me, its ok human, I'm here, I love you. So when he died, I was just....crazy heartbroken.

I was in a very bad state of mind, and kinda just threw myself into work at the time. Thankfully there was a shitload to do (until now tho) and it took my mind off of things and helped me slowly recover and get back on my feet. It was around after my birthday I guess (my birthday is on the last day of the year, so go figure) and I decided 2017 is going to be the year where I focus on ME. I wasn't going to hold back and the first thing I did was book me a flight to Osaka, Japan, with mom and sis.

Fast forward a few months and the three of us was on the plane to Japan! It was damn exhilarating, I'm telling you. Even though I can say I've lived in Japan when I was small, there was a limit to what I wanted and can do. Heck, I didn't even know what I can do at the time, because I feel in love with Japan AFTER I came back. I was around 10 years old at the time, so what did you expect this 10 year old to do in life? She just went to school, made friends, had family time, eat and enjoyed life day by day. We were in Osaka for 3 days, and then took the Shinkansen to Kyoto. I am telling you now, it was not enough. 3 days each in each region was NOT enough for me to cover everything. I wish to go again this year, and spend a lot more time.

This was where I bought my first NMD's and just fell in love and went YOLO-ed and ended up with 3 pairs just this year. (Don't ask me how much it all encompasses to)

Came back, and within weeks, managed to plan out another trip to Yogyakarta with Jie, Zera, Mel and Sangeeta. Bam, that WAS not in my year itinerary but heck, I wanted to just travel everywhere  that year and I went YOLO and leggo. It was another epic journey. We went during Wesak and Jogja being a region where most of the people are Buddhist, so the holiday was a huge deal. Our supir (driver) managed to get us tickets to join the lantern releasing at THE Borobudur Temple. The crowd was crazy packed and gosh we were stuck in a damn human tsunami but it was worth it to see what I felt one of the most beautiful rituals in the world. As people release the countless of lanterns laced with their earnest wishes, the lights float up and gradually become what seemed likes small fireflies in the darkened sky. I climbed the Borobudur later the next day, and even went on a crazy gondola ride across the raging sea at Timang Beach. Leap of faith much? YES. I was half - thinking, if I died here, it was my fate to do so. Food, was amazing and what more can I say about my travel companions but not the best I've had. Fucking love these girls to bits. Oh yeah, and that epic jeep ride up Mt. Merapi? Priceless.

Then it was Ramadhan, and Syawal. We had the celebration in Kedah this year, and...well, I'd be honest with you and say I never really got along well with them Kedah peeps, and I have my reasons I guess. It was a kinda a non-event thing for me. Mostly me and my siblings hung out at malls or cafes ( as if we didn't hang out at enuff back home ) or I took one of my other cousins who was into photography as me and we kinda just went for a photowalk. I had tons of the pretty street of Alor Star which I never posted anywhere cuz the timing was never right. So, yeah.

Then, somehow on a whim after talking with my sis (on how break-ups doesn't have to mean you can't contact each other again, or hate the other person and we parted ways with mutual feelings anyway so yeah why don't you contact him again sis since you always felt that it was a shit thing that I had to lose a friend over this) I will admit, even after all the shit, K is someone I truly love and cherish. Partly because back in high school and early uni-days I was really depressed and was prone to self-harm and he helped me a lot in overcoming my depression (tho he might not know this in detail) so I just couldn't hate him or not have him in my life. It's just this feeling I have. I don't know about him though. He might have different thoughts, but it's okay. Another part is maybe just because we shared a lot of ourselves after all these years, that it became ingrained in both of us. I read a saying once, how once you truly have someone's heart, they never really go away.

Anyway I called him up and we're friends again. It started off awkwardly but it's a bit better now. So if you see a Malay guy in my social feed sometimes, he's probably one of them.

Sometime in the middle here before I went to Korea I sprained my left ankle playing at JumpStreet.

Moving forward, I think it was around May or June, me and Aleea made plans to go to Korea. Bam, September came and we flew and WE HAD A BLAST. My first time staying at a guesthouse (it was cool as heck)  and found out I'm not that scared of dogs after all. There was this cute doggie named Jelly at the guesthouse and he was the gentlest animal ever and well, I think I will be okay around dogs. Korea was lit, and we went literally everywhere we could. Had major delish foods,  saw amazing architecture, hung out like a local, wore a damn hanbok around and acted as if we were princesses and fueled our kpop love HAHAHAHA. Still think there are tons of places we couldn't cover and have to come back sometime in he future.

All that travelling kinda went by in a flash.

Rewind back to earlier in the year, I was part of the support team at work, which was when I had to deal with clients and system issues directly and when I came back from Korea they told me I'll be transferred to the project team. Well, to be honest my working schedule was pretty much....bad. When there are issues, we have to come to work a bit earlier than usual, perhaps around 8 or 830, but then we go back super late almost everyday - around 10PM on average - which by that time were are hungry and always ate late. Of course when I'm stress I eat sweets and desserts so that did not help. Basically to protect my mental health I sort of forgot about my physical health. So after around a year plus...I ended up with a few health problems i.e. hypertension, sleep apnea, acid reflux just to name a few.

Which leads to tomorrow where I am going for pre-operation for a sleeve gastrectomy on my stomach - which hopefully will help to reduce a ton of my health complications. Mom is helping me to pay my way through as the surgery and hospital bills won't be cheap. So I guess I won't be travelling much this year. Perhaps one place will be okay. I hope to move forward in life too, maybe get a new job which allows me to take care of myself better, or maybe other things. I do have to start planning things though. There is no harm in planning. If God allows it, then my plans will go through InsyaAllah.

AM SUPER GRATEFUL FOR MY FAMILY AND MY FRIENDS WHO WAS ALWAYS THERE WITH ME, LIFTING ME UP WHEN I'M DOWN, AND PARTIED WITH ME WHEN I'M UP

I MUCHO LOVE ALL OF YOU <3

To wrap it up, 2017 was the year where I focused on my mental health but physically I'm pretty screwed up. I have no regrets though. This year, I need to be more balanced. Yep, the theme will have to be BALANCE.

I will try to start blogging more this year. XD

Mucho love,

Roro X