Recovery

I thought it would be fun to share some of my experiences with the operation and aftermath. Now that I am home, it will start to get old pretty soon to hear how well I am doing, but for all of you who were not there, this is how I remember most of it.

 

Tuesday

For some reason more than a few people wanted to call me or see me “one last time” before the operation, because, hey you never know…. Never know what?! “Well, what if you don’t wake up from the anaesthetic?” WTH?..WHAT?! Well, thanks for putting that thought in my head, now I can worry about dying, much appreciated! 

Ehhm...., maybe next time?

Wednesday

Woke up nice and early (as always), no stress, but had the lingering sensation of “what if this is my last sunrise, etc..” Decided that all that fear stuff is not for me and got ready to go the clinic with Yumi. Arrived on time, got changed, picked my dinner (good advance planning guys!) and followed the doctor into the theatre. Last thing I remember him saying is, this will work within 1 minute. Might as well have been 1 second. Next thing I know I am awake. I kept my eyes closed and felt around under the blankets, but that creeped me out, so looked around and saw that I was in a room with orange walls with tubes sticking out of parts that had no tubes sticking out of them before and that there’s not really a hippo taking a nap on my lap, just a lot of pressure. Everybody was really nice to me and Yumi was there fairly soon to see that her BBQ cleaner was still in one piece. The physio wanted to see if I could be walking around by 16:00 but two near fainting spells later I was not going anywhere. All that changed by 20:00 when I was cruising the hallways with the nurse, my man bag of fluid bags. I did the Bellybuster shuffle for 2x25 meters in about 35 minutes, and was completely winded by then. Back to bed. Pffff.

 

 

 

Thursday

My Wednesday ended at 01:00 and my Thursday started at 03:00, who needs sleep anyway?! I read a great book “naked at work and other work related fears” and found out that laughing makes me cry and that I am a lucky devil to not feel ANY pain while that happens. Either those drugs were amazing, or I have the restorative capabilities of a starfish (yay, I could be superhero starfish man!). Early in the morning the nurses came to take the catheter out and that’s when I learnt that embarrassment is not stronger than pain, you just want the nurse to make it go away. Modesty? What modesty? Get your friends in here, take pictures for all I care, just GET.IT.OUT! The rest of the day I spent Facetiming, Skyping, going on walking dates with nurses, charming the socks off everyone and eating ice-cream. The reverse psychology of friends and family on me worked very well, I think they have never had a more well-behaved patient. I had enough energy left to make it to 20:30, do some physio work, eat some more and then give it a rest. I slept through the night almost completely

 

Could be worse, I could be Aquaman.....

 

Friday

I woke up at 5:00 and was so stoked about going home that sleeping was no longer an option. Took another shower, nurse came to take out the drains and that was not a fun experience, but not nearly as bad as I thought. Then the physio came and hurt me something fierce, stretching my skin back into place and then Yumi came to pick me up. I will take it as a good sign that all the nurses walked me to the car and made sure I was comfy. What a great experience. Getting home was equally great, with Yumi picking the most comfortable route and having everything at home ready to keep me comfortable and on the road to recovery. Extra bonus: our garage door got fixed super fancy and the heating works again right in time for the cold spell coming up. Finished the night on the couch with Yumi watching Black Sails before sleeping in my own bed and waking ready to take on the world after another good night’s sleep. (if the world can take it a bit slow for now, that would be great)

 

Awesomeness at 63%....

 

Thanks everyone for being so considerate, loving and supportive, it makes a big difference. I will do my best to recover like a good patient and be healthy (and awesome).

Cutting close to the bone

This will and will not be a story of my incredible weight loss and surgery journey, because as with our moving to Australia, we planned for it, so it wasn’t a real surprise. Just thought it would be nice to give a bit of background. Feel free to insert the world’s smallest violin or a tissue at any time. I am not looking for sympathy, maybe a bit of understanding would be nice.

Today I had plastic surgery. No fear, my name is not Wendy now and no, I did not get a boob-job even though some the things they showed me would have looked pretty good on me. It’s all being done at http://www.capsclinic.com.au/ and I cannot believe how amazingly good it has been.

This plan and my abdominoplasty (tummy tuck)has been in the making for at least 5 years. I hesitated soooo much, scheduled it, cancelled it, went to another specialist, and didn’t go through with it. For some people this step might still come as a bit of a surprise, so here we go with a bit of explanation. For those expecting pictures and other nastiness, nah, not just yet. This text is a naked as it will get. As personal as it gets, because its equal parts (lack of) self-worth and obtaining an outward appearance that matches how I feel inside, #onepictureawayfromawkward.

 

There will be no taking off of any shirt at any time, stop asking! Unless you're Ryan Gosling.

 

Other people’s opinions

I care what others think about my actions and expect the ones I hold dear to hold me to the highest standards because they deserve the best of me. I do not care about people who care about the outside more than the inside, who don’t want me to change so they don’t have to. You’d be amazed how many people told me: “Just exercise, you’ll get into shape, you do not need plastic surgery.” My reply would always be an explanation of how it came to be, never a snider (and somewhat deserved) comment like: “Oh wow, not only are you an accomplished <fill in random job>, you did the research and now know what is best for everybody AND you are an actual plastic surgeon and doctor!!” I have and always will believe that getting “work” done is a personal decision. Not all results are to my liking or done for reasons that I would choose for myself, but who cares, it’s your body and everyone should just let that be enough.

Please amaze and educate us all with your Google and Wikipedia opinions

My reasons

I wanted to look better to myself when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to look like a fighter, capable of protecting everything I hold dear. Thank goodness for all my Kung Fu Sifus who not only showed me that strength is not just in the muscle, but also in the mind. They do not look like NRL players, but I’d rather shoot myself than pick a fight with them (faster and less painful).

For the few out there who did not know. I left my parents’ house at 85.7 kg in 1997 and ate my way up to 140kg+. By 2001. No amount of taking me to the gym (thank you BP), talking to me (thank you mom), accepting me as I was (thank you them and everyone else) and sticking by my side (Thank you love of my life) got me to lose it until I found the motivation within myself. In 2003 I dropped 35 kilos in the deep freeze warehouse. I graduated at 103.7kg I struggled for the next four years to get below 100, but married at 104.3 kg in 2007. By 2010 I found the motivation and dropped to 85.7 and visited Australia for the first time at 86.7, stayed on that level for 2 years and slowly crept up to 90 while doing Kung Fu. Visiting Oz in 2012 I was still around 90 and during Kung Fu I kept it there, replacing fat with muscle, yay me, loving those muscles and the taught pain tolerance very much right now (pain score 1/10 while everyone else has 4-6/10). Moving to Australia in 2014 I let it go completely and arrived a clean 96.8 kg. This morning before the operation, I was 93.9 kg. There’s only so much your skin can take, at some point it will just sit there and be flabby and no amount of sit ups (had the time, did the numbers: about 75,000) Push ups (50,000) and crunches (billions)) can make that go away. It will just not happen, there’s no more connection to your body.

 

How I think Yumi's mind works. And I would agree.

How I completely lost it

I could launch into an inspirational bullsh*t story here, but it’s much simpler, I do not know, and trust me, that’s not for lack of trying to analyse. I could probably give Sonja Bakker (Dutch Dietician) a run for her money and actually write a book on it, but who’d read it?!  I surely talked enough to Yumi about it. (Sorry love, thank you for being so saintly patient and understanding) No life changing event or big happening seemed to make a difference. Sometimes I found the motivation, and sometimes I did not. Simple as that. I lost 35kg, gained 20, lost 25, gained 10, lost 25, gained another 10, lost another 5 and then gained another 10. You do the math, I lost as much weight as I weigh now. That’s insane! Well, no…. that’s what they call addiction.

Not that bad, but you get the idea

How I felt about it

Drugs, smokes and alcohol you can go without, food is a bit harder and being who I am, intense, energetic and an excessive personality, even harder. So I felt the whole spectrum. Anger for not being able to be like others, sadness for being an addict, resentment towards others who can eat whatever they want, frustration at having a mind that is so damn set on getting me back to where I was and still lets me feel like a 140kg person, fear of never being able to be happy with my body but most of all shame. Shame for having to by new clothes, Shame for not being a healthy husband and friend, Shame for not being stronger, shame for not being more disciplined, shame for not being able to resist the craving, shame for lying to myself, shame for being so grumpy and shame for doing this to myself. I am now at the point that food has no attraction to me, it is a way to sustain myself and stay healthy. Connecting food to pleasure is a very dangerous thing, because yes…my name is Gilbert Kruidenier and I am an addict. For life. Food is not fun, food is a problem for people like me. Don’t offer it to me to make you feel good, do not offer it to me so I can feel good. Thank you. I used to always be so angry all the time, like I had this monster inside of me that even with all my discipline and hard work  I could not control. Now I no longer fight it, I know it will be with me forever and that is okay, no need to get angry, it is part of who I am and always has been, just needs to be contained.

 

Without the green

 

The easy choice

All that being said, 100+ kilos of lost weight (what would I look like if I took the smartass advice and just trained 100kg of muscle on my frame?), 13 years of frustration for me and my surroundings fighting a battle without honour or mercy with myself, multiple changes of clothes and 1,000’s of hours at the gym and on home trainers. Not to speak of enough money spent to buy a prime gym membership for 22 years to pay for just the surgery, I would like to make the following deal with people who feel that plastic surgery is the easy way out: “I’ll go the gym and become more muscled so I can live up to your standards of what is right if you go back to school and be a bit smarter, so your ignorance is less offensive. (I’d pay for that).



Booyah!



Anybody, reading this, feel free to contact me and share your opinion, if you feel that you need help or just want to talk through your or my experience, you are not alone, but it is up to you to do something to feel better about yourself.

 

If it was meant to be hard, why make a sign that points in the right direction?