Wait..you've had HOW many surgeries?

I made a video for today, but my videographer is out of town ;), and I'm having a little bit of trouble with it, so I decided to write a post. I mentioned before that I have an abdominal hernia, or two. I wanted to give a brief description of my health challenges right now. Some are related to my weight problem, and some are not. The first time I got a hernia was about 9 years ago. It was right in the middle, above my belly button. I know I had it when I was pregnant with Lizzie, but I don't remember how long I had it before that. Anyway, after she was born, I had a surgery and had it sewn shut, no mesh patch. It wasn't long before it poked through again. I thought about having it repaired then, but for some reason, I decided against it. I lived with it for about 5 years. Then I decided to get it fixed. About that time, I also noticed some other somewhat alarming things going on, which included some blood when I went poop. After too long, really, I went to the doctor and she said we'd get a scope done and check it out. Anybody out there ever had a colonoscopy? Well, the prep is horrible, but the procedure is no big deal. My colon was squeaky clean except for one very large polyp in my sigmoid colon (near the bottom end). They biopsied it and discovered it was pre-cancerous. So it needed to come out. It was too big to remove the usual way of snipping it off. I needed to have a section of my colon removed. Long story short, I couldn't have my hernia repaired with mesh at that time. I had the colon surgery, and they sewed my hernia shut again. After a few months, it was clear that it had opened up again. So I had another surgery to close it up, and put a mesh in this time. It was probably about three months after that surgery that I noticed I was getting another hernia. That was about 15 months ago. About a year ago, I went back to my surgeon. He said that there was just too much fat in my tummy to keep the hernia from recurring. He said I should lose about 50 pounds, or get down to a BMI of 33, before we perform the surgery again. I didn't blame him. He was trying to help me be healthier and have a successful surgery. But I've really only lost about 10 pounds since then. Actually, I've lost five pounds about 10 times, but put it back on over and over again. I'm really good at gaining weight, but not so good at losing it. So the current hernia is my intestines pushing out under the mesh, which has come loose on the side. The hole is about three inches long. I am also contending with some unfortunate problems related to my colon surgery. Some of you may know what stenosis is and what an anastomosis is, but for the rest of us, I'll explain. The spot where they removed a section of my colon has become scarred and shrunken, so my colon is inflexible and only about a centimeter in diameter at that spot, a few inches from the end of the line. In order to keep from being in severe pain, I have to use lots of Benefiber and Miralax to keep things moving through. So that it a daily struggle. Sometimes I eat things that just don't want to cooperate, and it causes me pain for a day or so. I've learned to be more disciplined about what I eat and how much, but it's a challenge. One of my primary motivations for losing the weight is so that I can get my surgery and fix my tummy, and maybe even my colon. I'm sure there will be some fun posts at that time. Well, that is enough about my digestive tract. More excitement tomorrow! :)