I wish you the best of luck with your surgery. My husband has had abdominal surgery twice in the past couple of years and while it wasn't fun, he recovered just fine with no complications.

Two pieces of advice (based on my husband's experience):

1. Ask the doctor at your appointment before the surgery if he or she is planning to give you a prescription for a painkiller after surgery and if so, see if you can get it in advance and fill it before the surgery. The first time my husband had surgery we did not do this and after bringing him home from the hospital, I had to leave him home with the kids while I went and filled the prescription and waited for it. He was in a lot of pain (it was not laporoscopic and he had a large incision -- although they did it out-patient as they do almost everything these days), plus he had just been diagnosed with cancer and was trying to deal with that diagnoses while still recovering from general anesthesia, and he wanted me to be with him, not off at the drug store getting his medicine. The second time we asked for the prescription in advance and the surgeon thought it was a great idea and said she was going to start doing that with her other patients as well.

2. Take it easy after the surgery! I think that doctors minimize the amount of discomfort you will have and the length of time it will take you to recover. After his second abdominal surgery, my husband did too much and the incision swelled up (it was also not laparoscopic), which caused him a lot of discomfort for about 24 hours. In retrospect, he wishes he had just stayed in bed for a few days -- he thinks doing so would have speeded up his whole recovery. You don't want to totally stay in bed because of the risk of blood clots, but you do want to take it easy.

I have a question for you. Is the doctor planning to do laparoscopic surgery and if so has s/he raised any questions about your weight? About 10 years ago, when I weighed somewhere around 275, I discussed having my tubes tied with my gynecologist and he said that I had too much abdominal fat for laparoscopic surgery and therefore he advised against the tube tying. I decided for other reasons not to do it, so I never got a second opinion. However, I've always wondered if other doctors also refuse to do laparoscopic surgery when they think the patient is too fat.