Category: health

Off to an Exciting Start

Well, the four day weekend is off to a fun and exciting start, he said sarcastically.

I’m having myself a minor migraine. Isn’t that a treat? It’s not too bad but it is wiping me out a bit. I still need to clean out the car a bit, and I still need to put the clothes I put out for the weekend into a suitcase. Other than that and maybe putting my laptop and some various Apple product chargers into a backpack I think I am all set.

Hopefully I will be able to get some quality sleep tonight. Fingers crossed.

Happy four day weekend, everyone!

When Your Stomach is a Jerk but You’re a Bigger Jerk

Havin’ one of those days, I guess. One of those gastric bypass surgery recovery kind of days.

I woke up with a stomach ache this morning. It was bad but not too bad. I thought it was a sign that I was going to have a rough day but after a little time in the little boys room (TMI, sorry) I was a lot better. I still waited a while before I had anything to eat. When I did have breakfast it was free of any issues. I guess my problems worked themselves out, right?

Sometimes I have stomach pain when I am hungry. My stomach is empty and it lets me know by hurting a bit. I fix it by having a little something to eat and then the pain goes away. That happened today at around 11:30. That’s when I screwed up my whole day.

I had a snack. Unfortunately it was too big of a snack. It took a little too long to get through it, and it was too much. I have to wait 60 minutes after eating before I can have a drink, and I needed to have a drink to take my lunch time vitamins, and then I have to wait 15 minutes before I can eat again. The snack meant I wasn’t going to be able to have a drink before it was time to make lunch, which meant my lunch time vitamins were going to wait until late afternoon at least. It also meant that I wasn’t quite hungry when lunch time came. I managed to have something but it left me low on my protein count going into dinner.

Then what happened? I had something to drink, but not quite enough to hit my daily goal, and I had my afternoon vitamins, but by the time I punched out of work I had a hungry stomach ache again. Oh good. I had a small protein snack as I was cooking dinner, knowing it was going to mess up my dinner the same way I messed up my lunch. I had a tiny snack this time and my stomach ache was already inching back by the time I sat down to dinner. It still left me feeling super full really fast though and I couldn’t finish dinner.

The cherry on top? I paused dinner while I was feeling full because I really wanted to finish my chicken and mashed potatoes and broccoli but 10 minutes after I paused dinner I had myself a nasty dose of the foamies. I felt nauseous out of the blue but I didn’t throw up. That’s good, right?

So now it’s almost 8:00 and I am still behind on my liquid goal and my protein goal and I still have a dose of vitamins to get through tonight. I am 100% sure I am going to reach all three goals, but I am also really ticked off at myself for screwing up my whole schedule today. All because my stomach was bothering me when I woke up.

Nice work, red head.

Migraine Fun

It’s only been six days since my last migraine. I went upstairs to start making my lunch today and out of nowhere I got spanked with another one. Shit. Migraines during the work day are the worst of all. My vision was effected for about 50 minutes but it’s more or less recovered now. I don’t have much in the way of pain yet. I took some Tylenol just as things were starting to go wrong and that sometimes stops the pain. Fingers crossed it works today.

I took a candle pic for today’s photo a day. Mostly because I was afraid my defective head would get in the way so I took a picture of whatever was right in front of me when my eyes started coming back to normal.

338/365
338/365

Month 15 Weigh In

Today is the 4th of August. 15 months ago today I went under the knife and had my guts rearranged forever. It’s been a crazy 1.25 years, let me tell you.

The monthiversary is my weigh in day now. After a year of weeklies I cut back to just monthlies and today is the day. How did I do?

I did well, I think. I can say definitively that I am still maintaining. My weight is down quite a bit from last month but it is still above the lowest point. Last month I was at 213. Today I am at 207.4. I am down 5.6 pounds this month for a post-op total of 224, and a since-the-first-weigh-in total of 244.6 pounds. Glorious. My BMI is 25.2, which means that I am technically still overweight, but only by a couple of pounds. I can live with that.

I had given up on my vague goal of dropping below 200 pounds and reaching the mythical “onederland.” When I was over 210 last month it seemed like something that was unobtainable. Now? Today? Seven and four tenths pounds doesn’t seem like that much to lose, does it? Not really. If I dipped below 200 I think I would still be able to consider myself maintaining. It’s only four pounds and change below my lowest point.

Naw, let’s just stay the course and not be tempted by magic numbers. Until next months, friends. Happy weigh in day.

Spoke Too Soon

I got up this morning to watch the new episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds while doing my morning exercise and I found that there were two new episodes, not one. They released a Lower Decks cross over a few days ago and somehow I didn’t catch it. How the hell did that happen? That episode was fun. This week’s episode is dark. Woah, babie is it dark.

That’s not what this post is about though. Yesterday I wrote something about having a good day food-wise. I spoke too soon. Not that when things went bad it was that bad. It was not. It wasn’t even technically a problem. I was hungry when I left work. Really hungry. I had a protein bar on the drive, which put me over the 80 grams of protein goal for the day. I figured I’d have a little bit of supper with Jen and then I’d be set for the day. That was the plan.

When I got home though, she had dinner waiting for me. It was quinoa with chicken. She used taco sauce in the vegetable stir fry. It smelled like heaven. Amazing. I put a big spoonful onto a plate… then another big spoonful… then a smaller spoonful. I never thought I’d eat it all, and I didn’t. Not even close. What I did do was eat too much. WAY too much. I stopped when my stomach was feeling uncomfortably full. I should have finished 5-10 minutes earlier, but I didn’t. In the first few minutes after I stopped the uncomfortable full feeling started getting worse. I set a timer for one hour because I still had my evening vitamins to take even though I was already over my water goal for the day. I figured I’d have a few ounces of water with the two calcium pills and then I could move on with my life.

When the hour timer went off I was still painfully full. I set another timer for 30 minutes. I was still not good when that went off. I did it again, and again, and again. I had stopped eating at 7:22pm. At 10:20 I was still feeling too full to take the pills. I was also seriously exhausted so I just went to sleep. I wasn’t happy about missing a vitamin dose, but I could live with it given the circumstances.

At 2:00am I woke up needing to pee (TMI, sorry). My stomach felt normal again at that point, as I suspected it would. I took those two calcium pills with two ounces of water. Sure, they were taken on the wrong calendar date, and it was 9-10 hours later than I like to take them, but I got them in. I also did the dishes, which I was planning to do before I went to sleep but failed to. I felt pretty good.

There were a couple of weird things though. First, when I woke up I was dripping with sweat and my bed sheet was down right soggy. What the hell happened there? I have no idea. I didn’t feel hot at all, quite the opposite. Why was I sweating buckets during that 3.5 hours of sleep? On top of that, when I eventually laid down to sleep I couldn’t. What the hell, Robert? I was still feeling super tired. It just took me about half an hour to get back to sleep. Weird.

Okay, I just finished today’s Star Trek episode. It was really good. I mean, really good. I think next week will be a musical episode with songs written by two former members of Letter to Cleo. Boston music across the stars, babie! I am not sure that’s what’s going on, but that’s the rumor I’ve heard. Check Kay Hanley’s social media for details. I’ve been avoiding it out of fear of spoilers.

For now though, it’s time to get ready for work. Have a good day, everyone and if you’ve had gastric bypass surgery, don’t over do it with the taco flavored quinoa, no matter how spectacular it tastes.

Strategies

Daily writing prompt
What strategies do you use to maintain your health and well-being?
View all responses

I tell you what, one strategy I should start using to maintain health and well-being should be to stop using the WordPress.com MacOS app to write posts because it doesn’t have a built in spell checker like the browser app does and I am just not that skilled a speller to be flying without a safety net, you know what I mean?

But seriously folks…

I never really thought about strategies yadda yadda. I clearly have them but I just never spelled* it out like this.

There are two types of well-being in play here. Physical and mental. The physical health strategies are, like everything related to my physical health these days, come to me via the weight loss clinic and their instructions to keep me healthy post-gastric bypass. Exercise every day, at least 64 ounces of water every day, at least 80 grams of protein every day, no sugar, small bites of food, chew every bite until it’s obliterated, don’t eat too fast. Those are the big ones. There are also things like keeping in touch with the clinic and not blowing off my regularly scheduled follow up appointments.

So that is the physical question, what about the mental well-being situation? I don’t think I have any specific strategies. It’s more like things that make me feel like maybe I deserve to be thought of as a not-so-terrible human being. That combined with things that just make me feel good in general will have to suffice. I treat my wife with the love and respect that she deserves. When I do that my well-being feels pretty well. When I fail… everything about me fails. Same with the kids. Treat them the way they deserve to be treated. For me that includes loving my two step kids as if they were my own. I do, so that’s pretty easy.

My family is the biggest part of this, but what else is there? Doing a good job at work is important. Helping my staff be the best they can be is incredibly rewarding. I’m honestly surprised by how good that can make me feel. Playing guitar, writing shitty songs, playing with home recording projects. All of that is good for my mental health. Taking a lot of pictures, writing on this silly blog. Those are important too. They help me to keep my head on straight.

I’m sure if I took more time to think about this topic I could add one or two hundred more things to this list. What I have here will do for now though. Hopefully everyone is able to answer this one for themselves, and in doing so keep their heads on straight for another day. This is a good thing.

*See what I did there? Spelled it out? Spell check? Get it? Yeah, I’m so damn clever.

Long Day

Today is my first day back at work after a four day weekend. I’ve been punched in for about eight hours and 11 minutes but if feels like 2523972 hours and 237923603 minutes.

One bad thing happened at work today. I was prompted to reboot to take a Windows update. I had no idea (because I didn’t check before I rebooted) that the update in question was a full update to Windows 11. Ah, hell.

After a few less than perfect days in a row in terms of gastric bypass side effects and the like, I have now had two very good days. Well, yesterday was good and today has been good so far. I am really tired though. I only got four hours of sleep ahead of my sunrise jaunt yesterday. Last night I got six hours but I never put on my CPAP mask so maybe it wasn’t the most productive six hours. I am trying to remember why I didn’t put it on when I went to sleep last night and I can’t recall. I know there was a reason at the time, but what was it?

Did I mention I mailed off two rolls of film yesterday? I was hoping to maybe get an email saying the lab had received them today, but I didn’t really expect to. Maybe tomorrow? One roll was loaded into Dad’s camera on either Christmas day or Christmas eve, so there will be a few Christmas shots. There was also some snow in the back yard stuff, and then the first day of Bellana’s graduation weekend. The other roll was my first roll of Kodak Portra 800. Really my first use of a professional level film. I get shivers just thinking of that, and know that everything I took will likely suck because I am clueless. That roll has mostly graduation weekend stuff, and a few pics from yesterday’s stop at Plum Island.

We are going to see Harry this weekend. I expect a lot of Doctor Who discussions. Maybe I will make him watch an episode of the original show, just for laughs. Maybe I’ll Google something like “best forth doctor episodes” and see if there’s something we can watch out of sequence.

I just did exactly that and found that Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fame wrote three episodes of Doctor who in 1979. Only two aired as the third was derailed by a labor strike. I think we might have to investigate this further.

Okay, the work day is coming to a close. Time to start packing up. I hope you all had a good Wednesday, and I hope it didn’t feel like it was 941760497 hours long.

Monday is Okay: So Far

After a tough couple of days, it’s almost 10:00am on Monday morning and everything is okay.

Stomach issues are normal for gastric bypass patients. At least that’s what everyone tells me. Every once in a while I am going to zig when I shoulda zagged and my new little redesigned mini stomach is going to let me know about it. That’s all the last couple of days were.

I’m on vacation today and tomorrow so I slept about an hour late (ahhhh). When I went to sleep yesterday is was feeling okay. No pain but maybe a little gassy discomfort. I didn’t hit my water or protein goals until maybe half an hour before I fell asleep. I feel good about that. I thought I was going to fail on both counts. I did miss my exercise goal and I’m upset with myself over that, but given the circumstances it’s okay.

This morning I woke up without any pain or issues. I was a little nervous that something might crop up, but I did my 30 minute fake jogging in the cellar (pronounced “yogging” with a soft “j”) and I ate a normal protein bar breakfast. It’s been a couple of hours and all is still well.

Is that optimism I’m feeling? Maybe. It might just be me wanting a grilled hamburger and fries for lunch. it could be either one

Bad Stomach Evening

Remember that post from earlier where I was talking about bad stomach issues? They cleared up quickly enough back then, but they came roaring back after the little protein bar dinner I had.

It was really bad for a couple of hours but I think it’s clearing up again. My one question to my little re-wired stomach pouch is:

What the fuck, bro?

My evening is a pretty screwed up mess, you know? Here’s hoping it stays away and I can rejoin society. I was planning on sunrise-over-the-ocean photos tomorrow but now I’m afraid to even think about getting off the couch. It’s just me and Doctor Who season five for now.

Bad Stomach Morning

I wrote (twice) about having a tough day on the stomach front yesterday. By the time I got through lunch I was okay and everything seemed back to normal. It hasn’t quite stayed that way though.

Last night the gas started coming back not long before bedtime. I was drinking lemonade at that point, which more or less debunks my it-was-the-grape-juice theory. It felt different at first, but as the night wore on it revealed itself as more of the same. Fortunately it didn’t keep me awake and I was able to sleep.

This morning was when things started going sideways. When I woke up I had stomach pain. Real pain. Maybe a six or a seven on the scale from 1-10. Yesterday it was more like discomfort. Today was actual pain. There was nausea too. I felt pretty bad. I spent some time in the bathroom but that didn’t help. I was afraid to eat or drink anything. I grabbed a pillow and laid down on the couch. There was a part of me that was nervous that this would be my third experience with whatever it was that made me go fetal, groaning in pain, for hours at a time. It wasn’t though. I laid down for about 45 minutes. I think I dosed off.

When I came to the pain was gone. I won’t say I was 100% better. More like 95% better. Almost but not quite right. I had 12 ounces of water and my morning pills and I was still okay. I waited 15 minutes after drinking (doctors orders) and then had a small protein bar. Things were still good so I had one of my usual breakfast protein bars and things are still okay. That was 45 minutes ago and nothing has changed. In 15 minutes my one hour of waiting after eating (doctors orders) will be over and I will try to drink a little zero sugar gatorade.

So that means I had some trouble on Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, and now Sunday morning. Fun fun fun. Here’s hoping I’m through with it. I am probably going to stay with protein bars for lunch rather than make something complicated. Simple is the way to go today, I think. Let’s see if I change my mind over the next few hours.