Tag: gastric bypass

It is Friday

It is Friday at last. It’s also raining. Son of a…

On May 4th I wrote this big gastric bypass surgery update where I said that I am having far fewer side effects then I did a year ago. The bad experiences are less and less common with each new day.

Then last night I had a piece of toast with my dinner. I took a bite, no problem. I took another bite, no problem. I took another bite… uh oh. I knew instantly that I had taken one bite too many. It took about an hour for all the fun to end. The moral of the story being, don’t be over confident. That thing that passes for your stomach these days can still kick you in the nards, Robert. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Here’s a cat to remind you of your place in the universe.

251/365

Three Year Anniversary Weigh In

Happy anniversary! Three years ago today I went under the knife and had my insides rewired. Gastric Bypass. Weight loss surgery. Most of my stomach was tied off and a big chunk of my intestine was skipped. It was a brutal experience that required all sorts of lifestyle and diet changes and had all sorts of icky side effects but it was oh so worth it. Health care wise it is the single best move I’ve ever made. Overall it doesn’t quite measure up to marrying Jen and being a step father, but it tops just about everything else.

I weighed myself this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see I was down a little since the last time I stepped on a scale. That’s nice, huh? My first appointment at the weight loss clinic was January 19, 2022 and I weighed 452 pounds. Yup. The day of the surgery I did not weigh myself. The most recent number I had was from April 29, 2022 when I weighed 431.4 pounds. On the one year anniversary, May 4, 2023, I weighed 204.8 pounds. Suck it, morbid obesity! The lowest weight I ever recorded was the magical day of September 22, 2023 when I weighed in at 198.4 pounds. Sub-200! Glorious! We were told to expect our post-surgery weight to bottom out at some crazy number and then start climbing up again to a more reasonable, sustainable value. That’s been the case for the last year and a half or so. At my two year anniversary I was 211.2. The last time I weighed myself was the three year anniversary of the first check in, January 19, 2025, and I was 222.6. This morning, the first thing I did when I got out of bed was step on the scale. I was expecting something between 220 and 230 and I got 218.6! Down four pounds since January and back in the teens, babie! Currently I am down 212.8 since the surgery and 233.4 since the start of the process.

I still have problems with food getting stuck on the way into my new digestive system but not nearly as often as before. I can have trouble if I don’t chew enough, or eat too fast, or eat too much in one bite, but these days I can go faster and more per bite than I could have two years ago. Eating is easier now than it was before. When it goes bad it still goes bad. If a bite of food can’t get into my stomach (it’s actually technically called a pouch now) then it has to go somewhere. Either it just hangs out and blocks the path so that nothing else can get in (until it breaks down enough to enter) or it comes back up to say hello again. That’s life these days, but it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it used to.

In closing, here’s my selfie a day video from the first year. Enjoy watching me melt away.

This Blows

It is 3:20am. I have been up for an hour now. I had to take a pre-medical appointment dose of awful meds last night after work, and I had to take a second dose in the middle of the night. It took me a long time to get through it and now I have to be sick for a couple of hours. Are any of my current problems gastric bypass related, or is it just the prep-meds? I don’t know. Hooray. This sucks.

My appointment is at 7:30 so I still have four hours to go until the actual start of this garbage. Hopefully a few hours later I will be back home and able to eat food and able to sleep the last of this thing off.

Hooray.

This sucks.

Seven Hours Later

My last post was published seven hours ago. I’m hanging in there but really can’t wait for this crap to be over. I’m fasting ahead of a medical test and I am hungry. I barely have a stomach left after gastric bypass surgery, but what I have is really jonzin’ for a snack, know what I mean? No hunger pains yet, which is odd given that I get hunger pains all the time. Maybe my brain is trying to protect my stomach? Who knows.

I can’t eat today, but the birds can.

240/365

That is today’s photo a day challenge pic. Blurry backgrounds are fun. Bokeh.

The cats are in a state of hyper vigilance right now. There is a mouse in the house. It was in my home office earlier but it got away. In was later seen in our bedroom but I think it got away again. Both cats are on the hunt so it’s days are numbered. I will catch it and bring it outside if I can, but the feline avengers might not give me the opportunity.

Here’s a picture of Robin from before the mouse presented itself.

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Here’s one of Lily. Robin was already stalking the rodent invader at this point, but Lily wasn’t in on it yet. She was blissfully unaware.

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Today is Going to Absolutely Suck

I have something scheduled for tomorrow. It’s a medical thing. A test. It requires some heavy duty prep-work over the 24 hour period before the test.

The side effect of the preparations is going to be me having one seriously awful day today. Like, grade A suck. Its the sort of thing that would suck for a normal human, but the stomach is involved so people like me who have had gastric bypass surgery (three years ago this coming weekend)… I wonder if it will be worse for me. Probably not, but maybe? We’ll have to wait and see.

Clearly I am not going to share what’s going on until it’s over, if then. 24 hours from now (it is 7:15am) I will be at the clinic, hopefully getting ready to get it over with. I just have to deal with some awful today and a small chunk of tomorrow.

Shit.

Four Days in a Row

It has happened four days in a row. I break for lunch at around 1:00 pm. Shortly after my break ends I get hit with a headache. Some days have been worse than others (Tuesday was the worst) but every day this week it has happened.

Usually when something like this comes up, my glasses are the culprit. Tomorrow I am going to zoom my browser in a little. If I make the text bigger it should be easier on my eyes and that will probably solve the problem. We’ll see.

After gastric bypass surgery my first instinct is to blame anything going weird health-wise on my stomach. I think in this case I can rule that out though. It does happen shortly after I eat (which could be a red flag) but it’s only lunch. It doesn’t happen any other time. I often read the news during lunch break, so I’m guessing that is stressing my eyes out a bit. Pretty sure that’s going to be the root cause. We’ll see.

Headaches suck. You heard it here first.

Is Something Wrong?

I’ve written this 100 times before over the three years (almost) since I had my gastric bypass surgery. There are times when I will be feeling real pain in my stomach and I cannot tell if it’s because something is wrong or because I am just hungry.

The last couple of days have taken that to a pretty obnoxious extreme. It’s always hunger, but it’s just ridiculous now. When things are going according to the normal routine I can have something to eat and then be okay for a few hours. Breakfast at 7:00, a snack at around 11:00, lunch at 1:00, a snack at 4:00, dinner at 7:00, a snack before bed. Perfect. Hunger pains avoided.

Today? Breakfast is over at 8:00, hunger pains at 9:45. Snack at 10:00, hunger pains at 11:15. What the hell? It’s 11:50 right now and I am slowly making my way through a little package of crackers. At this rate I’ll be finished by noon and then hurting a little before lunch at 1:00. I need to wait 60 minutes after eating before I can take a drink (and having a drink usually doesn’t help the hunger pain the way having something to eat does) which means the pain is back before I am clear to drink.

What the hell, bro? Is there something wrong AND I’m hungry? No, I don’t think so. I think I am unable to keep my surgically altered stomach from getting too empty. If I try to have a big lunch I am going to be full and have to stop, and (assuming this continues today) I still won’t get three pain-free hours.

To add the usual caveat, I am not complaining at all. I lost 220 pounds and if dealing with this now and then is the price I have to pay then I pay it with a great big smile on my face. Still… looking at my stomach and asking, what the hell, bro??

Radio Cat

160/365

Just look at that furry little diva being all bad ass.

Today has been better than yesterday on the healthy front, but I’m not up to 100% yet. Let’s call it 80-85% and assume I’ll be through whatever is bothering me by tomorrow.

Today I managed to completely screw up my daily routine but I’m okay with it. We got snow yesterday, so this morning at 5:30am or so instead of going down to the cellar and getting my exercise in for the day I went outside and shoveled. We didn’t get a lot of snow, but we got enough. Within an hour it was all gone. Not long after finishing up outside I went out and ran some errands. Today is a very important day, after all*.

I didn’t get to breakfast until I was starting work at 9:00am. The hunger pains that I wrote about yesterday were definitely a thing and the eating struggles I also mentioned yesterday were also a thing, but not as bad as last night. Since breakfast was so late I didn’t have time to eat a snack mid-way between breakfast and lunch. I ended up going four hours without eating and wouldn’t you know it, when lunch time started approaching those mean old hunger pains were back again. I’m eating lunch now and feeling a little better, though that weird queasiness that has been slowing me down the last couple of days is still there. It is definitely better than it was, but it’s still there. It hasn’t been enough to stop me the way it was yesterday, so that’s a big plus. Maybe I can eat enough lunch so that I won’t be hurting in the lead up to dinner. That would be nice.

*Why is today a very important day. you ask? Because today is my beloved wife Jen’s birthday! It’s not just any old birthday either. It’s a big enough milestone birthday that her present this year was a week at Disney World. Yeah, it’s a big deal. She’s the love of my life and the woman of my dreams and my beautiful bride and it’s her birthday! Wish her a happy birthday!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Jen,
Happy birthday to you!!!!

Tough Day

My stomach and I have not been seeing eye to eye today. I had some problems yesterday that seem to have cleared up by this morning, but there has been a backlash that is trying my patience.

All day today I have been dealing with literal hunger pains. My stomach is empty enough that it hurts. When I try to eat though, it gets rid of the pain but makes me queasy and bloated and uncomfortable. So much so that I have to stop eating. That means that about an hour and a half to two hours after I eat the hunger pain comes back.

I made a small chicken patty and a handful of french fries for lunch. I finished the chicken but could only manage a couple of fries before I had to stop. For dinner I made a hamburger and some tater tots (my wife loves tater tots so I made them for her because she’s amazing and I like making things for her) and I only managed about half of the burger. I just had to stop. Almost exactly an hour after dinner I started feeling the empty stomach blues starting up again so I managed a small snack. Maybe that will hold me over for another hour.

I know that this is going to clear itself up in a day or two (it always does) so I will be fine either tomorrow or the next day. It’s just going to be a long night tonight. I think my stomach is going to make sleeping difficult.

Also, I just want to note this for my own mental health… not that it affects anything or anything… I didn’t write about it yesterday but I thought about it a lot. Yesterday was the second anniversary of my mother’s passing. Maybe my stomach is just manifesting feeling sad about missing my mom. Maybe my stomach knows, you know? I really can’t believe it’s been two years already.

Is This a Thing Now?

I wonder… did I learn something new about me and my post-gastric bypass digestive system? I went on vacation for a week and my daily routine and diet both went straight down the crapper. I turned everything upside down for seven days. Then I came home and turned it all upside down again in an attempt to get back to normal.

The result? Cramping, discomfort, being unable to eat much, being unable to… ya know… do that thing that normal humans do after they eat… wink wink nudge nudge, you know what I mean? More than that, when my stomach is empty it hurts. Not eating as much as I usually do (what little I can usually eat thanks to my rewired innards) means my stomach is empty sooner and more often and I can’t tell if the pain I am feeling is because there is something wrong or I am just hungry again. I seriously can’t tell.

I think I went through something similar the last time we went away for a full week’s vacation, and I think it’s happened once since then when I was for some reason living off protein supplements instead of actual meals for a few days (why was that? I don’t remember). So I ask myself, is this a thing now? Am I learning something new about my newly rewired body? Maybe. If so I will just need to be ready for it when it happens. Consistency is kind of the key to my mental health these days and if I see this coming when I mess up my diet for an extended period then I will be better able to deal with it. Knowledge is power and stuff.

Today has been tough. It’s about 3:30pm right now and my guts have been quietly pissed off at me all day. They are rebelling, but only a little and pretty subtly. Mild pain, more like discomfort. Stuff like that. I am going to hit my daily protein goal (80 grams) with ease (I’m at 69 right now, wink wink nudge nudge say no more!). My water goal is probably also going to be hit easily (64 ounces per day) though I am way behind my usual pace at the moment. I’m at 40 right now while usually by this time of day I am somewhere in the mid-50’s. I’ll catch up. I’ve also had some persistent back pain the last few days. I suspect it is a kidney stone in the making, thought it might just be the result of the massive amount of exercise I got in Florida followed immediately by a couple of rounds of shoveling once we got home. Who knows. I have been taking Tylenol for it, which helps, but I wonder if that is affecting my stomach as well? Again, who knows.

I had 50 something years to figure out how my body worked and then three years ago I went under the knife and nuked the entire thing. Now I just have to relearn everything. I figured I would be a pro at this new life by now, but every so often post-surgical reality throws me a curve ball. It can be a pain in the ass, but I also have to admit that it’s all still a little exciting. I think I might just be a serious weirdo. Who knows.

PS: In case anyone thinks that this is me complaining about my new reality, it is not. It’s just me talking to the void and writing it down so that some hypothetical future me might accidently stumble across it someday in some hypothetical future and say, “oh yeah, I remember feeling like that.” I would go through the Gastric Bypass Surgery again in a heartbeat with absolutely zero hesitation. It was totally worth it. Totally.