Why I’ve been offline this month.

I’ve not been online much since Christmas – mostly because a few weeks ago I went under the knife to have my gallbladder removed. The pesky organ was full of stones and causing me all sorts of problems. Hopefully once my recovery is complete I will feel so much better than how I felt for much of last year. I can already see an improvement to how I react to different foods.

I had to be on a pretty strict pre-op diet for four weeks before my operation, which covered the whole of the Christmas break. I admit… I did cheat for Christmas Day, and then again for “second Christmas” at my parent’s house when we visited for a few days after Christmas. I also – and this is truly rebellious behaviour – had my advent calendar chocolate each day in the lead up to Christmas, and (even worse) snuck the odd chocolate coin during the school holiday!

The pre-op diet sheet had a few options – the aim being for me to stick to an “as close to zero fat as possible” diet. My options were either:

• half a dozen diet yoghurts & a few glasses of milk a day… and nothing else
• 300 calorie meals, keeping an eye on fat content (for perspective, most low calorie diet ready meals are over this limit
• meal replacement bars or milkshakes

I did a bit of a mix, opting for a yoghurt and/or a clementine for breakfast, and then having milkshakes (the bars were universally disgusting) for lunch and dinner. Occasionally I had “real food,” but not very often.

The aim of the pre-op diet isn’t just to lose weight; in fact it is primarily to shrink your liver to make it easier to access and operate on the gallbladder. Even patients at their ideal weight are recommended to follow the diet, just for a shorter period of time.

Anyway, I lost about two stone over the last month or two, and they were able to stick with a keyhole operation, so it did the trick. I was in and out in a day, and tucked up in bed at home by late afternoon. My incisions are (mostly) healing well, and I am over the exhaustion I was feeling during the first few weeks.

The good thing about working for myself is that I can be as flexible as I want to be about my hours and how long I took off. Unfortunately, it also means I don’t get sick pay! we are just poor… but as I didn’t work much last year due to my health, we are pretty used to that at the moment!

Other than my operation, and subsequent quiet recovery period, we had a nice Christmas break & peaceful start to 2020. I wanted to have a break from blogging, working, and social media in the weeks leading up to the op and just relax and have some quality family time.

We had a relaxed Christmas Day at home, then a lovely stay with my parents in Cornwall before the girls went back to school. James and I went to see the new Star Wars, and the girls even did some fishing with nets in a local pond.

We also had a lovely visit from Mrs D & her daughters, which also gave me an excellent opportunity to off-load several bags of outgrown clothes for Poppy & Isla.

I’m hoping to sort out my office this weekend – it has been a bit of a dumping ground over Christmas – so that I can get back to work properly next week.