Who knew you could shrink your liver!...or even need to! The liver sits in front of the upper stomach area and, when doing this laproscopic surgery, the surgeon needs to be able to retract the liver. The smaller the liver is, the easier it is for him to wrestle it out of the way! This is accomplished by a low-fat, sugar-free diet.
So...on to shrinking my liver.
Truly, medical advances are amazing! It has been about 12 years since I've had an echo and stress test. Much to my surprise, they now consider it necessary to use a piece of velcro-like sandpaper to literally scrub the top layer of skin off your chest. My chest now looks like I've been in a cat-fight with long red scratches down the front! This is to provide "tooth" for the electrodes to stick to you and not slide around. It wasn't too uncomfortable...until I was on the treadmill working up a sweat and then my chest starts stinging like blazes!! Think salt in fresh wound! ouch! Anyway, I "passed" the stress-test...thank God for that!
I met with the surgeon (who was not happy that I'd gained weight this past year--I told him I was practically chained to a desk all day!), had all my pre-op tests done, and had a 2 hr. nutrition class. All that's left is another meeting with the surgeon 3 days prior to the surgery and then the surgery!
1 comment:
Liver shrinkage! Who knew! So did they measure it? How are they gonna know it shrank?
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