Category: weight loss surgery

One Wacky Day

As weird, crazy, wacky days go… that was one.

My stomach was in and out of gastric bypass weirdness all day, including a legitimate yacking during dinner. Fun.

As mentioned in a prior post, I was also exhausted all day. I had six uninterrupted hours of sleep last night, but the way I felt through the day you’d think I was awake the whole night. Of course it’s 10:00pm now and I’m not tired at all. I’m just sitting up in bed watching Deep Space Nine ( my binge watch reached season five today) and wondering if I’ll be tired enough to sleep sometime soon.

Tomorrow is this week’s in-the-office day. The company is giving out the annual holiday gift. This year I passed on the turkey and went with the ham. When will we eat it? No clue. I offered it up to my sister and her husband for Xmas dinner but I think they are passing on it.

I have a doctor’s appointment on Thursday morning. It’s my 1.5 year check in with my gastric bypass surgeon. I’m compiling a list of questions. Today’s wacky-weirdness will lead to a few, I’m sure.

Until then… get some sleep, Trekkie-nerd-boy.

Am I Sick, Tired, or Sick and Tired?

I’ve felt off all day today. I mentioned in a post not long ago that I am having occasional weird episodes that feel exactly like what my type one diabetic step son says low blood sugar episodes feel like. Today is different though.

I can’t tell if I feel like I am having low blood sugar moments, or if I am just really, really tired, or… somehow both? I had a decent night’s sleep last night, but not great. The previous two days have been better than most over the last couple of months, but still not great. Good sleep is an issue for me, no doubt.

Today though… is the fuzzy head feeling due to low blood sugar, or am I just really tired. I can’t tell. That’s why I think it might be a little of both. Every time it starts ramping up I have something to eat, but it doesn’t go away the way it usually does. Does the blood sugar problem go away and leave the exhaustion behind?

Does this post make any sense at all? I can’t tell because I am too tired to proof read. I’ll check this one over in a day or two and laugh at how bad it is. 

Until then…

Ouch

I woke up at 2:30am with a bad stomach ache. Not one of those killers that leave me in a fetal position on the cellar floor, but a normal you-ate-too-much stomach aches.

It’s 3:10am now and it’s starting to lighten up a little now. Here’s hoping I’ll get another 2+ hours of sleep tonight.

In summary though… ouch.

How Was Your Thanksgiving?

It’s about 8:30pm here in Eastern Massachusetts. Thanksgiving Day is fast coming to its close. How was your day, USA? Did you feast like it’s going out of style, surrounded by family and loved ones? I hope so.

We didn’t have a Thanksgiving today, at least not in the traditional celebration’s sense. Jen and I slept late, which was glorious, and then hung some cool new ambient lights in her office before cleaning up a bit. We then hung out for a while. She played World of Warcraft while I watched an episode of Invasion on AppleTV+. After that we went to visit my father. He had his Thanksgiving dinner at his assisted living place. My sister and her family joined him. They have had a super rough week so I am happy they got to share that with him. I hope it lifted their spirits a little.

Jen and I hung out with him for a couple of hours and then went home and made dinner for ourselves. After dinner we watched the last episode of JFK: One Day in America. It was pretty powerful and moving, even if it did not add anything new to what we know about the assassination. It happened nine years before I was born and yet it’s still tough to watch sometimes.

Now we are just hanging out in the living room listening to The Beatles on vinyl because it’s still the 1960’s, right? Look at me with my vinyl records and film cameras. Dead technologies live forever ’round these parts.

After writing a novel or two about stomach pain yesterday, how am I doing today? I woke up feeling a little sick still, and I have not been 100% at all today, but I have been okay. No real issues. There were a few instances of stomach aches but I think they stemmed from my tiny little rewired, redesigned, rebuilt stomach being empty. Once I ate something I was okay. I’m still a little gun shy today though. I should be over it by tomorrow. I still have to do today’s exercise, which is disappointing, and I still have 12 ounces of water to go before I hit today’s goal. I’ll get it all done. I’ll probably wait until Jen is asleep later then I’ll go down cellar and jog in place (pronounced “yog, with a soft J”) for about half an hour and that should close all of my activity rings on my Apple Watch.

Did you know that the US version of The Beatles Help album includes excerpts from the film score? I sure didn’t know that. I know the UK version of Yellow Submarine has film score, but Help does not. Interesting. Does the US version of A Hard Day’s Night have anything like that? Maybe I’ll visit the used record store in downtown Methuen tomorrow and see if they have a copy.

Okay then, that’s my summary of Thanksgiving Day 2023. I loved every second of it, despite not having the kids here. We’ll make up for their absence on Saturday when we do our official family Thanksgiving celebration. We should have a full house for all of that.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the USA. Everyone outside of the USA, here’s hoping you just accidentally had an extra special good day today.

Happy Thanksgiving

Do you live in the U.S.A.? If you do then Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday but it’s been pretty screwed this year. The kids are at their father’s house for the day. He just moved into a new house so this is the first holiday, so it makes sense to spend the day there. We will do our family Thanksgiving on Saturday. We’re actually boycotting the Macy’s parade as I type this (it started 10 minutes ago) in the hopes that we’ll watch it Saturday. Jen and I were supposed to go to my sister’s house but they have a real estate issue going on and they had to cancel. Now we’re mostly staying home. I want to go visit my dad (he was supposed to go to my sister’s too) but I haven’t figured out the timing yet. Mostly because of my stomach fun from yesterday.

I woke up a little after 6:00am today and felt pretty nauseous. I moved from the bed to the couch along with a big bucket to puke in if needed and slept a couple more hours. Vomit-free. Thankfully. Now I am feeling okay. I just drank 12 ounces of water over a span of about half an hour. I had my morning vitamins too. So far so good, but I think I said that yesterday too, didn’t I? In about 10 minutes I will be clear to eat something. I’ll have a protein bar and see how it goes. Fingers crossed my stomach is done with whatever hell it tortured me with yesterday. I don’t want to be sick on Thanksgiving, you know? I don’t want to be sick when I visit my father.

So again, to all of my American friends out there, Happy Thanksgiving! And may your gastric-bypass-rewired stomach not give you any shit today! HoHoHo and all that stuff!

Goals

Despite the fact that I’ve spent the last 10 hours feeling seriously sick with stomach pain and gas and all sorts of badness, I still managed to hit my daily water goal (64 ounces) and my daily protein goal (80 grams) as well as closing all three activity rings (calories, exercise, and standing) on my AppleWatch.

I just hit the water goal a minute ago. I’m going to wait 30 minutes and see how I feel. There is a little part of me that wants to try to eat a little something before I sleep. I probably won’t, but let’s see how I feel in half an hour, yeah?

Bad Day Continues

My stomach is still a mess. Is it better than it was when I last posted? Maybe a little bit. I had a very small protein snack an hour ago and while it initially made me feel worse, maybe it opened the door to some minor improvement. Who knows.

Again, if the occasional day like this is the price I have to pay for the weight loss success that gastric bypass surgery gave me, then I absolutely will pay it. No hesitation.

That doesn’t mean today hasn’t sucked though. Oh, it has.

So Far, So Good

I have made it to lunch time and nothing disastrous has happened yet. My feeling that today is going to be a bad day has not yet come true, but I still have half the work day to go. Fingers crossed that everything stays quiet.

I have been having a couple of issues. My stomach is not having a good day. The frequency of gastric bypass side effects does seem to be getting smaller with time, but today has been noteworthy. I was feeling a little off this morning while drinking water and doing my exercise. By the time I had my protein bar breakfast in the car on the way to work I was okay. Three hours later though I started having that empty-stomach-ache feeling. I had a small snack and felt better, but it only alleviated things for about an hour. Now the stomach ache is back, but I just started eating lunch so hopefully that will put an end to it.

The other issue I am having today is one that I hinted at in a post last night. I am completely exhausted. I got about 6.5 hours of sleep last night, which is a little less than I was hoping for. I still wear my Apple Watch to sleep to keep track of various sleep related data. One data point that seems really important to how rested I feel is called Sleeping Heart Rate Dip. The SleepWatch app says that a dip between 10% and 20% is average. Over 20% is excellent. Under 10% is not good. The last two nights I have been under 10%. I don’t know why. The app recommends exercise as a way to encourage your heart rate to dip more while you sleep, and I have exercised a lot the last couple of days. I’m not sure what to do about this, but I am so tired today that hopefully my body won’t have a choice but to have a good night’s sleep tonight. I guess we’ll see how things look in the morning.

Until then… fingers crossed that my sense of impending doom is not warranted. Here’s hoping!

Personal Time

My company gives us all 16 hours of personal time each year. They also give us weeks upon weeks of vacation time. The difference is that the personal time is meant to be used in small chunks at short notice, while the vacation time, which they don’t actually call vacation time, can only be used in four or eight hour chunks per day and is supposed to be booked in advance. The other difference is that vacation time can be carried over from this year to next year if needed while the personal time disappears on January 1st.

What does all of this mean? I had five hours of personal time left in the bank and I used it all up today. Robbie will not be having any time vanish on January 1st this year. I started my weekend five hours early, babie!

How did I celebrate this happy surprise of a half day? I ate my lunch too fast and made myself gastric bypass sick, that’s how! Yes! Well played, Robert the putz! I had a hamburger again to have another test of the sugar free ketchup. Yes, it does taste like ketchup and no, it is not disgusting! What a treat! It was such a treat that I ate way too much per bite and plowed through it all way too fast and got something stuck in my stomach tract and had a full on case of the foamies.

I am better now that a couple of hours have gone past. I’m okay!

Happy weekend plus five hours of personal time, everyone! WOOHOO!

18 Month Weigh In

Today is the 1.5 year anniversary of my gastric bypass surgery. In celebration I stepped on the scale and I surely wish I had given it a miss this month.

My exercise routine has been greatly reduced over the last couple of months, partly thanks to Covid, partly thanks to travel, and partly thanks to hurting my back. There have been a lot of days where I should have exercised but did not. The result? I went up 10.8 pounds since last month’s weigh in. Yikes! I am at 215.8, which is still miraculous. I am not complaining here, not even a little bit. I just want to get back onto the exercise track and get back down to around 210 or maybe a little less.

Better luck next month, right? See you again on December 4th! I’m going to a hockey game in Vermont on Sunday December 3rd and I took Monday the 4th off of work. I can celebrate my 19th monthiversary with a day off! Sweet!