Tag: gastric bypass

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.

Good Progress

I feel like I have made good progress on a couple of fronts today. First, my stomach is still okay. I had a protein bar for lunch and I have some french fries in the air fryer right now. Not the Golden Crispers from the comfort food post from earlier this morning, but a different type of Ore-Ida frozen french fries. Not as good, but close. We’ll see how we feel after eating a little bit of actual food.

The second progress front is guitar! The 50/90 Challenge and all that stuff. I put rhythm guitars onto two songs, and lead guitars onto two different songs. I played my Les Paul. If I get a chance later I will do some more and play my SG. Variety is the spice of life, after all. I’m also hoping to mix a tune or two before the day comes to an end. We’ll see about that. For now, season five episode two of the new Doctor Who series. Hey, check it out! Prince Daemon Targaryen from House of the Dragon is The Doctor and Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy is the companion. This might end up being my favorite cast.

Guitar pictures!

DSC_1529
DSC_1530
DSC_1531
DSC_1532
DSC_1533
DSC_1534
326/365

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.

Weird Stomach Day: Part 2: The Squeakual

Well that sucked out loud.

I had fun outside while grilling up my one hamburger. Then I came inside and started eating. I got maybe a third of the way through it when I started feeling queasy and stopped. A few minutes later that one third of a burger came back for another visit.

Shit. Now what do I do?

I set a 15 minute timer. When that runs out I will reassess. Today might be a tough day. It might be a protein bar only kinda day. It’s been months since I’ve had a day like this. Here’s hoping they continue to get rarer and rarer.

Gastric bypass is most definitely not a short cut around weight loss. Definitely, definitively not a short cut.

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.

Stressing

I am stressing out in a major way today. I’m in the office again (like every Wednesday) and I have meetings on top of meetings on top of meetings and even have to building hop for a couple of them. I’m sitting in the cafe trying to sneak in some lunch before the next meeting and I think I tried to eat too fast. My stomach is protesting a little. Hopefully I stopped in time or else I am going to have a really bad afternoon.

Wish me luck!

Month 14 Weigh In

Happy 4th of July! You know what happens around here on the 4th of each month? It’s weigh in day! Boy are we going in the wrong direction now!

They told me I would level off. They told me after I level off I would start creeping back up. Last month was a clear leveling off. Today is a clear creeping back up. I’ve gone from 205.4 to 213.0. I’m up 7.6 pounds. I am very much happy with that. My BMI is up to 25.9 so I guess I am officially overweight again.

I knew I was going to be up this month. Not just because that’s how it goes, but because I have clearly been eating more and more at each meal, and equally important, more and more between each meal. I told the surgeon that last week and she said, paraphrasing, yup that’s good. So even with a significant jump in the wrong direction I am still somehow on track.

So that’s the story at month number 14. Until month number 15, happy weight loss and stuff.

Screwy Day

Let’s recap all of the things that have been weird today…

  • Crappy night’s sleep (less than six hours total)
  • Difficult exercise routine that legitimately kicked my ass
  • Super thirsty all morning, finished 75% (48 of 64 ounces) of my water goal before I even left for work
  • Migraine while driving. Boy did that ever suck
  • Lingering foggy brain to start the work day. Didn’t cause any issues but was very unpleasant.
  • Upset stomach while driving between office buildings. It had been three hours since I’d eaten anything so I had a snack. I probably had too much of a snack. I brought this up to the doctor yesterday (not being able to tell if I am hungry or sick). Her response was (paraphrasing), it’s been three hours since you ate so it makes sense that you’re just hungry
  • Destroyed my water goal before lunch and nearly hit my protein goal as well but felt uncomfortably full before I could actually finish eating and therefore still slightly under the goal
  • Unhappy stomach after lunch including really bad gas, which is especially rough given that I am in the office surrounded by other people
  • Still super thirsty. Water goal is 64 ounces. I have had 72 and will probably be close to 100 by the time I leave work two hours from now. This happened two days ago after a morning run as well. I mentioned it to my doctor yesterday and her response was (paraphrasing), yeah that makes sense. So not something to worry about, just something new

All in all, none of this is bad. None of it is even all that unusual, it’s just that all of them hitting at about the same time… Yeah, what a day, right? Right.

Two Hours to Go

The weekend is about two hours away. 123 minutes, to be exact. I’m finding motivation a little tough to come by this afternoon but I will get everything that needs to be done today done today as far as work goes.

Jen is planning on spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. How good does that sound, right? I will go grocery shopping afterward. I’m a little behind on my protein intake for today so I may need to eat something substantial after I get home. I am ahead of the game on hydration though. My post-lunch one hour pause before having anything to drink will end in about three minutes and I’ve got a 20 ounce bottle of Gatorade Zero upstairs in the fridge with my name on it. After that my daily liquid intake goal will be obliterated nicely.

I put out four mouse traps in the cellar. The cats don’t come down here so it should be okay. Let me rephrase, the cats are not allowed down cellar. They very much want to come down here, I just don’t let them. One trap went off but I think that was due to a ghost, or an Earthquake or something. No mice were involved. I did see one running past the base of the stairs. I was upstairs and opened the door to come down and there it was. Asshole. Was it the same mouse I saw earlier? How the hell should I know, it was a mouse. I wasn’t checking for identifying details. Sheesh.

Reminder to myself: Write lyrics tonight. Record vocals in some random empty parking lot tomorrow morning. Maybe take the cameras to the ocean for sunrise on Sunday. The forecast at Salisbury Beach looks promising. We’ll see. Sunrise would be great, but music is what’s important. I also need to clean the kitchen and do a little work straightening out the kids rooms this weekend. That’s important too, but a different kind of important, you know? Health and well being and happiness vs musical mental health. Simple. Speaking of, when’s the next band practice?

Okay, Robert. Go get that Gatorade Zero and finish your work projects. You’ve got this, red head. No problem. 110 minutes until the weekend.

Post script: There was just a blast of thunder outside that was loud enough to shake the walls a little. It didn’t set off any of the mouse traps though. That’s good.

Sleep and Stomach Stuff

I wanted to go to bed early last night but I ended up staying awake until almost midnight. Dumb ass. The numbers my Apple Watch collected were pretty weak. I didn’t have a lot of restful sleep and my heart rate didn’t drop very much. I managed to keep the CPAP mask on all night. That’s been a trial for me lately. I have to put it on super tight to keep the seal from letting go. I’ve had two days in a row without problems, but the previous four or five days all had me taking the mask off at some point in the night because the bad seal kept waking me up.

I woke up with some stomach fun this morning too. Yesterday I had a big lunch. It was way more food than I can handle post-bypass. Then at dinner I did it again. I had way more food than I could handle. It resulted in me feeling uncomfortably stuffed for hours last night. Eventually it passed and I was able to have some water and a snack before bed. It did result in me waking with a stomach ache. Not one of those really bad curled-up-in-a-ball-on-the-floor type stomach aches, just a normal bad stomach ache. I tried to work through it while exercising but I had to stop. I spent some time in the bathroom (TMI) and eventually it passed. I had some breakfast and it didn’t come back. I feel a little worn out this morning, but I don’t feel any pain now.

And that’s the health update for today. I’m going to have lunch about an hour from now. I don’t expect any problems, but I should probably make sure I don’t overdo it again, right?