Category: weight loss surgery

Hiccups

I used to get the hiccups all the time. I mean all the time. Not only that, but they were never ending. I tried all the things you’re supposed to try to get your hiccups to stop and nothing ever worked. Nothing. Ever.

Eventually the problem was solved by the great Bill Nye the Science Guy. He had a video… somewhere… that I watched that said to get your hiccups to stop you have to get your brain to stop waffling between the am-I-breathing and am-I-swallowing states and force it to do one or the other. He said to take a drink, but instead of drinking normally, take five small gulps in quick succession. Gulp-gulp-gulp-gulp-gulp.

I tried it. Lo and Behold, it worked.

Oh the gloriousness, it worked.

Then I had the Gastric Bypass Surgery. Fast forward a little over two years and I was talking about something with my wife and it occurred to me that I had not had the hiccups once since the surgery. Not once. That was lucky, as Bill Nye the Science Guy’s cure would have been tough for me because I couldn’t drink fast anymore. I had to pause between sips, and the sips had to be small. As time continues to pass, that is less and less of an issue. I can’t gulp drinks like I used to, but it is not as difficult as it was in the early post-surgery days.

Which is lucky, because tonight after dinner… for the first time in two years and almost six months…

I had the hiccups.

Bill Nye’s trick still works, thank goodness.

So Far, So Awful

Well, looks like Friday is going to be one seriously shitty day for ol’ Robbie and his rebuilt guts.

I had more sleep last night than any day for about a week. I should have awoken feeling right and spiffy and good. Nope. I woke up with stomach pain. Lots of it. I never wake up with the hunger pains I get when I haven’t eaten for a few hours. I don’t know why that is, but this morning that was exactly what I thought happened. I got up, went down cellar to do my exercise for the day and have a bottle of water. I thought that would alleviate things, at least for a little while. After the exercise was done I could have breakfast and I fully expected that would be the end of that.

Nope. Exercise made it worse and I only got a few ounces of water down before I decided to stop and have breakfast. Unfortunately, eating didn’t help at all. Nope, this is not hunger pain. This is something else. Shit.

I sat there, staring at the walls for a while and then tried to power through these aches and pains. I played some guitar and did some laundry and then went upstairs. In the past, when these out-of-the-blue stomach pain issues hit me (I think there have been five since having the gastric bypass surgery on May 4, 2022… maybe six. I’m losing count) the only thing that gives me any relief is laying down on the floor on my side, curled up in a ball. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Today has not been nearly as bad as the really bad times, but I tried it anyway. I went fetal on the floor in front of my desk and just stayed like that for about an hour. It helped and by 9:00 I was able to get up and punch into work.

That was an hour ago. I’m starting to feel worse again, but is that because I have been up for four hours and have only had four ounces of water? Is it because it’s been almost three hours since I had anything to eat? My water bottle is staring at me. I think I am going to try to have a drink and see how it affects things. Wish me luck, oh my readers and only friends.

I was able to take some pictures in an effort to crank out the photo a day thing. Here’s one that I did not add to the photo a day photo album on Flickr…

Here’s another that I did not add to the photo album. The record is The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, side one, by Genesis…

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Here’s the one I added to the Flickr album. This is the winner. Robin, of course. Photo a day 27/365.

27/365

Random Lunchtime Thoughts

Just some random things going through my tiny little brain right now.

I don’t get hungry anymore. In this post-gastric bypass universe I go from feeling comfortably satisfied, skip right past normal hungry feelings, and catapult straight to oh my god I am so hungry it hurts why does my stomach hurt so much?

Normally that isn’t a big deal. I have something to eat and I feel better. Some days though, like the last couple of days, it gets a bit annoying. Some days I just can’t get out in front of the problem. I eat something, then an hour or so later I feel the hunger pains coming back. Normally I can go about three hours without any issues. Sometimes, like when I was visiting my father in the hospital and had other things on my mind, I could go twice that without my stomach perking up at all.

Today I finished breakfast at around 8:00am. I started feeling it at a little before 11:00am. I was drinking water at the time and had to pause for 15 minutes before I could eat again so I didn’t get any food into my empty stomach until 11:20. I had a quick snack. I was done at 11:26. The hunger pains were back in full force by 12:11pm. What the hell, bro? I went on lunch at 1:00pm so I made myself wait to eat anything more. I didn’t want to fill my new little stomach pouch before lunch and then throw off my schedule even more. I was able to sneak in a little water which helped a little but come on, stomach… you have to do better than 45 minutes, right?

Change of subject. Television shows that are currently being worked through.

  • Mindhunter on Netflix. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the first of two seasons. It’s creeping me out. Good stuff.
  • Only Murders in the Building on Hulu. I think I am an episode behind. The new season is good. I was nervous when I heard it was moving to Los Angeles, but so far it’s firmly grounded in New York where it belongs. It is also nice to have Paul Rudd back again.
  • Agatha All Along on Disney+. Episode three is out today, I think. I’ll watch it tonight. I’m enjoying it so far.
  • Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. The last couple of episodes feel like a small step back in terms of quality. Word on the street is the next two (the last two episodes of season two) are going to be spectacular. I’m all in.
  • Dark on Netflix. I liked the first season. I’m halfway through the second season and it is struggling to hold my attention.
  • The Orville on Hulu. Season three is a bit of a slog. The episodes are WAY too long and not good enough to justify the time commitment. It’s not bad, it’s just not that good.
  • Futurama on Hulu. Gold. Absolute gold.
  • Exploding Kittens on Netflix. It’s not bad, but I’m having a hard time staying invested in it.
  • Coming Soon: Penguin on Max. The first couple of episodes are out but I haven’t watched them yet. I’ll get to them soon.
  • Coming Soon: Daryl Dixon season two on AMC. The new season kicks off this coming Sunday. I’ll be there.

Dude… that’s a shit load of TV. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a couple of shows too.

I have some linens that I took from my father’s apartment. The plan is to donate them somewhere. My sister suggested the MSPCA at Nevins Farm in Methuen. It’s right around the corner from my house. I wasn’t sure if that was something they’d take so I Googled it today. Sure enough, they take bedding. They don’t take pillows or knitted blankets though. If I have any of those I’ll have to bring them somewhere else.

I also took a combination turn table, AM/FM radio, CD player, cassette player from his apartment. I haven’t found a home for it yet. I am thinking that tomorrow I’ll plug it in next to my desk and listen to old Rush records on vinyl while I work. That sounds like a good plan to me.

Okay then. Here’s hoping the hunger pains are taken care of for a few hours at least. I’m crossing my fingers… and symbolically crossing my bypassed digestive system too… whatever that means.

Stomach Dance

Me and my stomach have been doing that gastric bypass patient dance all day today. We’re having trouble getting along. We need to work together but today we’re causing problems for each other.

I have eaten three meals. Each meal came with a stomach problem of varying degrees.

I had a protein bar for breakfast. I went a little too fast and felt that blocked/stuck feeling. It wasn’t bad enough to become nausea or to produce large amounts of extra saliva that I have to spit out. I tried gagging it up but nothing came. I had to pause eating for about half an hour before the blockage was gone and then I was able to finish.

I had a burger (cooked on the grill) and some french fries for lunch. The burger went down without any issues. The fries though. I only had about four of them and I should have stopped at three. I felt a little blocked again. I think I was going too fast this time as well. It was never bad enough to require any spitting up. I don’t know how long it took to pass, but it wasn’t long. As soon as I declared myself done with lunch I was off to my father’s so it was probably a couple of hours before I even thought about eating or drinking anything else.

I had a big piece of chicken and a little bit of white rice for dinner. Well, it was big for me. about three ounces. The chicken went down fine. The rice felt a little off. I only had two small fork fulls. I was okay afterward though. I stopped in time to avoid any problems. When I finished dinner I was a smidge below my daily protein goal. I waited about 20 minutes and then had a little tiny protein bar snack. It went bad. I think this time I took too big a bite and it got stuck for real. I gagged up a tiny bit of it and have been spitting out saliva for about half an hour now.

So there we have it. All summed up. Three meals, three stomach issues. Yippee. My doctor told me that in almost every case when there is a stomach problem after eating it’s really the patient’s fault. In all three cases this was my fault. It actually makes me feel better knowing that. If it’s something I did rather than something going on with my new stomach, then it’s something I can control.

220 pounds lost since the surgery. Yeah, these sort of things are 100% worth it. Absolutely.

Sugar Crash

My last two check ins with my weight loss surgery surgeon included a lot of talk about low blood sugar incidents. What triggers it, how to fix it, what it feels like.

Just the other day I was thinking about that subject and how it feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve had a low blood sugar episode. I pondered, what is it that I am doing now that is preventing the issue that I wasn’t doing six months ago? Whatever it is, I am happy about it because going a long time without that particular side effect was making me happy.

Fast forward to today. I’m in the grocery store, grocery shopping and I started feeling a little foggy headed. My hands started shaking. I felt weak. Aw, damn it. I thought about it the other day and jinxed myself. My days-without-a-low-blood-sugar-incident streak is officially over.

I sat in the car and had something to eat and felt a little better. I still feel a little beat up but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is I jinxed myself and that makes me sad. Maybe I’ll work on some music to cheer myself up. That would be both fun and productive.

Fun with Gastric Bypass Life

Fun with Gastric Bypass Life. I had a nice dinner. Chicken curry, a little white rice, and a little sweet potato. Nice. Maybe 5-6 ounces of food in total. No problems. My stomach was happy. No foamies, no discomfort, all was right with the world.

20 minutes later, without warning, I puked up the whole thing.

Sure I lost 220 pounds and I wouldn’t change a thing and it was 100% absolutely worth every side effect I have to deal with, but… the fuck?

So what do I put on the no fly list? The chicken curry and the sweet potatoes were the same color (approximately) so which one caused the problem? I don’t know.

Another Weird Morning

I wrote about some stomach weirdness yesterday. I am pretty sure I know what it was, and it was not gastric bypass related. I am not going to say specifically because it goes big time into TMI territory. Suffice to say it happened again today and it has thrown off my whole daily routine.

I got up, felt a little off, but started my day as normal. I was trying to drink a water bottle while doing my daily exercise but after about 10 minutes and 12 ounces of water I was hit with a mild case of The Foamies. Something was trying to get into my stomach but was having trouble along the route and must have gotten stuck. I didn’t feel like anything was stuck, but I got into saliva over-production mode and had to stop exercising and take care of it. It was involved enough that I had to go upstairs and ride it out for a while.

Once I felt better I ate breakfast, which I never do before I finish my exercise for the day. At that point, the whole morning workflow is down the toilet. I still had 35 minutes of exercise left to do so I restarted. I ended up doing the whole daily goal instead of just finishing the first attempt. Due to that I managed to hit all of my Apple Watch activity goals for the day. Well, not the 12 stand-hours goal, but the exercise and move (calorie) goals. That’s nice.

Now that I’m punched into work for the day I think I am back on schedule. I just hate it when the routine goes south like this, even a little bit. I feel pretty normal now. Whatever it was seems to have passed. I felt that way yesterday too and then it came back before lunch. Let’s see how things progress today.

Good luck, Robbie.

I Miss It So Much

I’m having a weird stomach day. Not a bad day, just a weird day. That’s not what this post is about though. This post is about caffeine.

I used to consume caffeine by the truck load. I took it in caramel colored, carbonated form. Soda. Decades of Coca~Cola followed by a few years of Diet Pepsi. I just couldn’t get enough of that sweet, sweet, bubbly caffeine.

Then I signed up for elective weight loss surgery. I met with a dietitian at one of my first consultation appointments and was given a list of things that I had to say goodbye to forever. Both caffeine and carbonated beverages were on the list. I knew it was going to be tough but I also knew I was up for the challenge. I had my last ever soda that day.

Now here we are, about two and a half years later, and I would KILL for some caffeine right now. I have had a moderately decent night’s sleep each of the last three nights. I should be feeling fine in the exhausted department right now but I am not. Quite the opposite. I’m really tired. Back in the days prior to February 2022 I had so much caffeine each day that it barely affected me. Now? After over two years cold turkey? I bet even the tiniest sip of a caffeinated drink would leave me wired for hours on end. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Ah, for the good old days (he said sarcastically because the good old days included weighing over 400 pounds and he never ever wants to go back to that again).

Yeah, as nice as it would be to have a little caffeinated pick me up right now, I wouldn’t. No, I like the way I feel these days and I don’t want to do anything that will make me sick. Nope, while I miss it today I do not miss it enough to start thinking about how things used to be. No nostalgia here, my friends. I’ll trade a sleepy afternoon for being able to walk up a flight of stairs without feeling like I am going to die. That’s a trade that I win easily.

As for my stomach being weird today, I don’t think it’s diet or bypass surgery related though what else could it be? I woke up at 4:00am this morning (bladder: I’m old, it happens) and my stomach was pretty upset. I actually said out loud, “uh oh.” I whispered it. My wife was asleep and I didn’t want to wake her. I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately. When I woke up at 5:15 I felt better. Half an hour later I was doing my morning exercise and drinking some water and I felt off again. I paused on the water for a while and felt better again. I ate breakfast in the car on the way to work and it went fine. A little before lunch I felt a little queasy. I thought I was hungry and I think I was. I had some chicken for lunch and felt a little better at first, but then started feeling off again. I stopped eating for a while and eventually felt a little better. I had a snack and it went fine. That was about 90 minutes ago. Now I am drinking some water. In about five minutes I am going to have my last round of daily vitamins for the day. Here’s hoping things continue to feel okay through that. I expect I am going to have to have something to eat before I leave work today. There will be too long a gap between my after-lunch snack and dinner. My stomach is scheduled to be empty and angry starting around 5:30 tonight. I’ll have something small and then I should be okay for dinner.

Until then… dreams of that sweet, sweet caffeine. Sigh.

What’s the Verdict?

Here’s my third post about my lunch-in-the-office food experiment. What’s the verdict? Are peanuts at lunch time causing me to have moderately annoying gas pains by dinner time? Did skipping the peanut course of today’s lunch allow me to be gas free after work?

Nope.

I’m feeling about the same tonight as I usually feel after a day in the office. Gassy to the point of uncomfortable.

Well… shit.

No, not really. This is good. This implies that I can still have peanuts without worrying about my stomach acting badly afterwards. The bad news is that I still don’t have an answer to why I feel different on days I work in the office compared to days I work at home.

I will figure this out eventually. I’ll crack the code.

And Now We Wait and See

In reference to the post from earlier today where I discussed my silly food experiment, I have finished my lunch. I had a little bit of chicken, a protein cookie, a little sugar free chocolate, and a handful of Ritz crackers. No peanuts for me.

Now we wait and see how I feel this afternoon including if my stomach requires me to eat on the drive home, and how I feel when it’s time for dinner, probably around 6:45-7:00pm. Will there be gassy pain in my stomach like there often is when I work in the office and have peanuts with my lunch? Or will I be pain and discomfort (and brutal, violent farts) free (please excuse the TMI, but I included it for the benefit of scientific research, you understand)?

In other health-ish news, I used my CPAP machine again last night. It went well. No issues. More importantly, the SleepWatch app on my Apple Watch tells me that the ratio of restful sleep vs light sleep increased. Yesterday it was 67% restful, which wasn’t bad, I don’t think, but today it was 79% which is pretty wonderful. I like seeing that number in the 70’s, but when it pushes 80 it’s extra special. It had my sleeping heart rate dip at 21% too. Anything above 20% is excellent. Unfortunately, I failed to get six hours of sleep in total (only by a few minutes though) and the older I get the less functional I am when the total is less than six hours. Oh well.

So as far as medical experiments go, we need to see how my stomach feels by the time dinner rolls around, 4-5 hours from now, and how tonight’s sleep goes. There is just so much data to collect. The statistics nerd typing this post is giddy with antici…

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…pation.