Tag: gas pain

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.

Food Experiment

This is one of those he-had-gastric-bypass-surgery posts. You’ve been warned.

I am doing a small food experiment today. I am hoping I do not get the results that I expect I will get.

I work in the office twice a week. Over the last couple of months I have noticed a trend. When I leave work I am dealing with some major gas pain. I thought it had to do with me having something to eat on the drive home and then being too stuffed for dinner, but the last couple of office days I have cut way down on the food I eat in the afternoon before dinner, and the gas pain has still been a thing.

I had a (very minor) epiphany on Monday. I think I know what’s going on. I bring the same lunch every time I go to the office. One serving of Purdue Chicken Bites (12 little mini chicken nuggets) that I heat up in the microwave, and then one serving (either 2.0 oz or 2.6 oz, depending on the brand) of peanuts. Combined it works out to 22 grams of protein, which is pretty good for that small a meal. Sometimes I’ll have some crackers or some sugar free candy with my lunch as well.

I have Purdue chicken, in various shapes and sizes, all the time. I have the sugar free candy and crackers all the time too. Peanuts though… in the early days of post-surgery solid foods I had peanuts all the time. Over the last year or so I have sort of lost interest in them and have only been eating them with lunch in the office. My question to myself then is this: Why didn’t that set off a red flag sooner?

Are the peanuts causing the afternoon/evening gas issues? It seems likely, doesn’t it? Today’s experiment then is to not have peanuts with lunch and then see what happens. I like peanuts. They are a good source of protein and they are tasty and while it’s true I have grown a little tired of eating them lately, I don’t want to have to stop. If peanuts turn out to be a problem… well that just sucks. I haven’t thought of an alternative yet. I will. Today I’ll just have a small protein bar with lunch to make up the difference, but going forward I’ll find something else.

We’ll see how today’s experiment goes, and then one day next week we’ll do it again and see if we get the same results. Then I’ll decide what to do going forward.

Until then… here’s an airplane for today’s photo a day challenge pic.

307/365

Weird Stomach Day

It’s been a long time since I have had a bad stomach day that couldn’t be chalked up to some clear mistake I made while eating. It happened off and on yesterday. Sometimes I get a minor stomach ache that turns out to be caused by my tiny little redesigned stomach just being empty. I eat something and it goes away. That happened once or twice yesterday, but by dinner time it wasn’t empty anymore but it was still aching.

In the end I chalked it up to gas. At bedtime I was worried it would keep me awake, but I was optimistic it would pass by morning. I was wrong on both counts. I slept okay but it’s almost 1:00pm and I am still really gassy. Not debilitatingly gassy, but enough to feel a little uncomfortable.

Have I been doing anything different over the last few days? I changed my go-to drink two days ago. I had been drinking Chrystal Light lemonade, but I switched to the grape flavor stuff (I forget which brand) I had been drinking for years and years. I’ve never had a problem with it before, is that the problem now? I doubt it, but I switched back to the lemonade. We’ll see.

I am hungry though, so I think I am going to try to have that hamburger that I really wanted yesterday but couldn’t have because of the rain. I’m sure I will let you know how it goes.

Courteous Bad Stomach Fun

I’m having another unhappy stomach day today. It’s not bad. I won’t have any problem working or anything like that. The stomach pain feels like bad gas so far so maybe I will try to take a Gas-X pill and see if it clears it up.

The pain is nothing but courteous this time as it waited until morning to start bothering me. I didn’t wake up with it at 1:30am or anything like that. I woke up with it at 5:30am, which was when my alarm went off. Nice of my stomach, eh?

Change of subject, I think I just did something I’ve never been able to pull off before. I think I just saved an external hard drive. Sort of, at least. The drive I had been using for my Time Machine backups corrupted itself somehow recently and went into read only mode. I tried fixing it with Mac Disk Utility but didn’t have any luck.

I replaced the drive with a new 2tb drive over the weekend and yesterday I had my first successful backups. This morning, in between powerful burps and even more powerful farts (sorry) I tried fixing the first drive again but it wasn’t happening. I reformatted the drive instead and remounted it and whatdayaknow, I can write to it again. It’s now my music files backup disc and maybe it might be my Flickr backup disc too if I ever get the energy to back up the zillion photos I have stored there. Yeah, I should do that soon. There’s so much to lose on that account. Now is the time.

My stomach has made me late to get started for work. It’s 8:21 now and I still need to take a shower and get dressed and all, so I will do that now. Happy burping, everyone.

Not Bad, Just Weird

So last night. It wasn’t bad, it was just weird. Weird in that I haven’t experienced anything quite like it before, but also in the way that it mirrored the bad time from the night before without actually being all that bad.

I went to bed at around 10:30 and dropped off to sleep pretty much instantly. After the mess that was Wednesday night, that was all I had hoped for. I woke up around 1:00am feeling a bit nauseous. I actually spit up into my CPAP mask, just a little bit. I guess my fears about wearing it the night before we justified? I got to the bathroom, spit up a little more, and felt better. I never vomited and the nausea passed quickly. In it’s wake was some gas pain. That scared me. Any pain in the stomach would, after all of the crap from Wednesday. Unlike Wednesday though I was able to lay back down without getting worse and I actually went back to sleep for half an hour or so.

I woke up again and the pain in my stomach was worse, but still not like the night before. It felt like gas still, but it also felt like hunger. I got up for a tiny little snack and brought it back to the bedroom and had it. When I did that on Wednesday I immediately knew that it wasn’t going to help. Last night I didn’t have that feeling. It may have helped a little, but really burping helped more.

I sat up in bed for a little while, then went back to the bathroom, which I also did on Wednesday night, but that didn’t help. The pain was there, but it was never even remotely as bad as the night before. Wednesday was probably a 6-7 on the pain scale from 1-10. Thursday was maybe a 3-4. I was still burping and farting a lot and I was afraid I was going to wake Jen with all the racket so, like Wednesday, I went out to the living room.

This was the point where things went out of control on Wednesday. I was a little afraid of a repeat, but pretty sure it wasn’t going to happen. I was able to lay down on the couch, which I couldn’t do the night before, and I actually fell asleep again. I didn’t have my CPAP machine so I would sleep for a little while then wake up then repeat. At 4:30 or so Jen came out looking for me and I reassured her that apart from some gas I was fine. She asked if I could go back to bed and I did. I changed my alarm from 5:00am (for yogging purposes) to 7:00am to help with the exhaustion a little. I didn’t put my CPAP machine on because of the drool factor. I need to clean that sucker tonight. I slept until about 6:00 and then just drifted between dozing and awake until 7:00.

So all in all it wasn’t a bad night, just weird. I could have stayed in bed the whole time but I was afraid I would make too much noise and wake up my dearest. I really wanted her to have a good night’s sleep. I messed her sleep up the night before and I absolutely did not want to do that again.

Tonight? I guess we’ll have to see. I am thinking about sunrise photos at Salisbury Beach tomorrow so hopefully I’ll get a good sleep before waking up stupidly early in the morning. We’ll see how it goes, I guess. I am sure it will be fine.

Sick

I woke up sick this morning. Major stomach pain, gas, and nausea. I feel really bad. I called in sick to work. I have a couple of meetings I still want to sit in on, but outside of that I’m sitting on the couch feeling gross.

I’ve only managed eight ounces of liquid so far today (it’s 12:40pm) but it hasn’t helped settle my stomach. I haven’t managed any food yet but I’m going to try a tiny little protein bar and see what happens.

Wish me luck.

Feeling Sick Again

I took the morning off today because we were at one point considering staying over in Burlington last night. We didn’t, but I kept the time off request in place in case something came up. Turns out it did.

I woke up feeling about the same sort of gas pain that I had when I woke up on Thursday. In that instance it got steadily worse as the day went on and I wasn’t able to feel better until I slept it off over night. Today started the same but quickly got much worse. Gas pain like never before coupled with some nausea. It was awful. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink yet today because the pain feels like my stomach telling me in no uncertain terms to not even try. I extended my time off request to the full day so I can just curl up in a ball on the couch and hope it passes.

The questions I have are as follows:

  • Is it the same bug Harry had last weekend and Jen had yesterday?
    • Is it possible for me to have had that bug, then been fine for three days, then have it again?
  • Did I eat something yesterday that set this off? Also, did I eat the same thing on Wednesday night that would have set it off on Thursday?
    • I have a theory. I tried some Atkins brand protein potato chips. They don’t have any sugar in them so they should be okay, but I think I had a small bag on Wednesday and I know I had a couple of small bags at various times yesterday. If it was something I ate, I bet it was those chips. That sucks because they are really, really good.
  • Is it dumping syndrome?
    • I really don’t think so. Dumping is when your stomach gets too much sugar and literally rejects it in both directions (TMI?). I haven’t experienced that specifically, but could this be related somehow?

I haven’t had any liquids since about 10:30 last night when I had a sugar free popsicle. I am feeling crazy dehydration right now. I might have to force myself to drink something soon but I want to give the pain a little time to see if it lessens at all.

This sucks.

I Feel Like Garbage

I don’t feel any better at all. I might actually feel a little worse, but that’s probably just me being overdramatic. I’m leaving work sick in about nine minutes. I’m also exhausted, sort of all of a sudden. I’ve just run out of gas (figuratively) while dealing with gas (literally) pain. What a screwed up day.

I have to join a conference call at 3:30. We’re going to get an update on Dad’s rehab and I need to listen in. I would very much like to take a nap for the 90 minutes between now and then, but our bedroom suite is still under construction. Although having said that, I haven’t heard any noise coming from that part of the house for quite a while. I wonder if they are putting down floor tile… or if they left for the day. I’ll go check when I punch out.

I had eight ounces of protein shake between 9:00 and 9:30. I opened a bottle of sugar free Gatorade at 11:00 and over the course of three hours I’ve probably managed four ounces of it. If that. I am feeling pretty dehydrated, but it’s not bad enough to outdo the stomach ache.

Today blows, though I did see a critical issue come to one of my staff members and I figured it out without even looking at the data. I told him what I thought the problem would be and I was totally right. I feel smaht… even with a stomach ache screwing up my entire brain. Ugh.

Liquid Diet Day?

I’ve been up and about for almost four hours and I haven’t had anything to eat yet. My stomach is still pretty unhappy with me. It might be a little better than it was when I wrote the last post, but it’s still not good. Gas. Pain. Not nauseous at this point but probably not far off.

I haven’t eaten anything yet and I haven’t had my morning vitamins. I did chew up a couple of Gas X pills in the hopes that would help. It hasn’t. Not really at least. The only other time I took Gas X was during the first couple of weeks post-surgery and it eliminated all of my stomach discomfort almost instantly. I was hoping for more of that. Nope.

I am thinking that today is a liquid diet day. Back when we went from the stage one (liquid) diet to the stage two (puree) diet they told us if we have a bad day to just go back to stage one. Well, I am at stage… infinity? Whatever, and I am thinking of reverting back to stage one until my guts stop bitching. I have half a protein shake on a coaster on my desk next to me. I’ve had a few small sips. So far so good.

Wish your humble narrator luck.

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