I hear voices in my head.

Our bodies generally know how they’re supposed to be, how they’re supposed to operate, and when something isn’t quite right with them… they tell us.

We just need to be willing to listen.

Ok, fine… they’re not literal voices like when we think to ourselves, but everything from a twinge of pain when we lift something wrong to that constant pain in our knee because we’re carrying around a couple hundred extra pounds are messages from our body that something just ain’t right.

Some messages require an interpreter in the form of a medical diagnoses, maybe for high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. But they’re all messages that our body is trying to get us to pay attention to.

And all too often we ignore them… or maybe worse yet we pop pills, get shots, or do other things that simply drown out that voice instead of taking the time to listen to what it’s trying to tell us.

I was that way. Advil for the knee pain. Sure, I could blame genetics for a bit of it, but being 380 pounds sure didn’t that chronic condition any better. Then there was Rolaids for the heartburn. And I was on meds for the hypertension. And some messages are easy to just plain ignore. Sleep apnea; I knew I had it. But heck, it only happened when I was asleep… so I didn’t have to deal with it.

These were all things I knew would at least get better, if not go away entirely if I just lost some weight.

I know that because every time I did lose some weight things would get a bit better. But those pounds I lost would find me again, bringing back buddies with them and all those things I knew where wrong but had been trying my hardest to ignore would get worse again.

Pre-op I lost over 50 pounds and by the time I had my surgery I had stopped taking the meds for acid-reflux. Just after surgery I took my last pill for my blood pressure. And while I haven’t been tested yet, I believe my sleep apnea is all but gone. Know how I know this? I listened to my body… and it was dreaming. I rarely hit that deep REM sleep before surgery, but within a few months after I was having vivid dreams again… which means I was sleeping… and sleeping pretty damn good.

Yea, I got pretty damn good at ignoring that voice in my head, but just because I’m a former fat dude now doesn’t mean I can continue to ignore it. Post-op it’s probably even more important to really listen.

In the weeks and months after surgery you really, really, really need to pay attention. You just had major surgery, a traumatizing event for your body. It’s going to be giving you constant messages about how you’re doing.

Try to do too much too soon, don’t get your fluids in, ignore your protein needs, try to eat something you probably shouldn’t; these are all things your body will be keenly aware of and it will let you know about in no uncertain terms. Dizziness, nausea, weird pains, acute tiredness, bloating, fevers and more. These are messages from your body that you’ve got to listen to.

A week after surgery I was just plain wiped out, and spent most the day in bed sleeping. By mid-afternoon I was running a fever of 101, and still I slept. By evening it was nearing 103. After paging my surgeon and letting him know what’s up… I got a bit of a chastising. Yea, my body was needing rest. I listened that message. But the fever… well, that was likely another message telling me…

“Hey! You can’t drink while you sleep dummy! Now I’m kinda parched here!”

I spent most the night taking sips of water every 10 minutes trying to get my body re-hydrated. By the next afternoon I was out walking again and even took my first post-op trip to the store and later made it to a support group meeting.

And as you progress further and further from surgery, there are other important messages you have to learn to listen for… feelings of hunger and fullness. As you start eating more (or less in the case of bandsters), you need to do like they all say… chew your food well, don’t drink, take your time, and pay attention to what you eat.

Just remember, your body knows you pretty well… learn to listen to it and work with it, it’ll thank you in the long run.

image credit: wake apparel

I found this article in the Washington Post, Super-size equipment helps D.C. area EMTs move the obese, thanks to a twitter post from Zombar, another post-op dude.

Basically it talks about the increasing need to upgrade and super-size ambulances and other medical equipment to handle the growing trend of a growing girth in the American populace, and as he put it, Thoughts of EMTs dragging me out of the house on a tarp is one of the myriad reasons I chose to have WLS.