Tag: gastric bypass

All is Well So Far

It’s 7:43am. My exercise goal has been nearly doubled. My calorie goal is almost reached. My liquid goal is at 50%. My protein goal is at a smidge over 25%. No stomach issues so far. Also, much less importantly, I am up to date on season two of Yellowjackets. As with the previous 13 episodes, I need to ask: WTF???

I have a doctors appointment this morning. I had that MRI on Easter Sunday (I posted about it once or 100 times) and there’s something in the image that requires some investigating. The radiologist and my primary care physician both expect that it’s nuttin, honey, but I’m going to see a neurosurgeon today to get another opinion.

Am I nervous? No. Not at all. I won’t be unless this doc gives me something to be nervous about, but I’m confident that he or she won’t. I’m hoping we might get a hint on how to stop the migraines. That would be nice, right?

Anyway, I gotta go feed the cats and get ready for my appointment. Here’s hoping that all continues to go well today, both in my tiny little brain and in my tiny little redesigned stomach. Wish me luck!

Oh yeah, and even though it’s Friday and not Wednesday I stepped on the scale this morning. I figured it was worth a shot given that I barely ate anything last night. 209.8. Back under 210 Can I stay there for a while? Not likely.

No Weigh In Today

It’s Wednesday. I stepped on the scale this morning and immediately made the command decision that I am not going to log the weight today. I was way up. Something like three pounds. That’s okay, but if I am no longer seeing any real progress, and it’s been over a month since I’ve seen any change in any direction that was consistent, then why bother. I think I will skip this week and try again next week. I mean, it’s been 11 months… let’s take a breather, right? I was never intending to do this forever, after all.

11 Month Weigh In

11 months ago today I went under the knife and had my guts rearranged, gastric bypass style. As with every monthiversary, I used it as an excuse to step on the scale, even though my regular scale stepping is scheduled for tomorrow. Now I am going to share some numbers but you have to take them with a grain of salt. 11 months on, these figures are borderline spectacular. They are also almost surely a lie that will be uncovered when I do my weekly weigh in tomorrow. Okay? Let’s not get too excited.

All of my numbers except BMI hit milestones.

Oh wow, Bradley Whitford is in this episode of The X-Files! Season two episode nine. That would be 1994, maybe? 1995? Sorry… I got distracted by the television. I’ll stay focused from now on.

Where was I? Oh yeah, milestones galor. All lies, but still milestones everywhere you look. Last Wednesday the scale read 213.4. Today? 209.6. I broke 210, babie! Holy Shit Burgers! Under 210! Amazing! Granted, I was sick with stomach pain all day yesterday and barely ate or drank anything all day. I didn’t come remotely close to any of my food goals. Not even a tiny bit close. Assuming I hit all of my goals today, I will be back over 210 tomorrow. Pretty much guaranteed.

Along with flipping the 10’s column from a one to a zero, losing 3.8 pounds over the last six days also flipped the 10’s column on my total since surgery. I am up to 221.8 pounds since May 4, 2022. My grand total since the first appointment is the final milestone of the day as that has a new 10’s column too. That number is up to 242.4 and suddenly the possibility of hitting 250 pounds sounds like a remote possibility rather than a fantasy.

The last number to check in on is the BMI. It’s not a big moment, but it is a big change. Last week I hit 26. Today it’s 25.5. Half way to the magical 25, you-are-not-overweight-anymore moment. Crazy.

Now, what about all of the other crap that went down since yesterday? The stomach pain and the gas pain and the mild nausea never went away yesterday. It ebbed and flowed a bit as the day went on but it was always there to varying degrees. Fortunately it’s gone today. I have a bit of a headache, but that’s down to dehydration, I think. I only had about 20 ounces of water over the whole day. Drinking made my stomach feel worse, while eating made it a little better. I didn’t hit my protein goal either, but I was a little better than halfway there. I have had eight ounces of water already this morning (it is 7:41am) and I am about to have a little breakfast to see how that goes.

I will weigh in again tomorrow and I will be up, probably a lot. That is okay. I will get down below 210 for really reals at some point. When I do I will celebrate properly and it will be glorious. Until then, let’s just enjoy this while it lasts. The next check in is the weekly check in tomorrow. Until then… 209.6, babie! WOOHOOO!

Interesting View

The scenery on the drive home tonight was interesting.

I hit my protein and liquid goals before I left work. I decided to have some french fries (salt delivery units) as a tiny dinner-like-entity when I got home. Five minutes later I was gagging up saliva with something stuck. I’m at almost two hours and counting now. I should have given it a miss tonight and just gone without.

Overslept

I set my alarm for 5:00am and didn’t get out of bed until about 6:40. Oh well, after a rough few days I think I needed it. I still do, I am feeling super tired still.

I was planning on getting my exercise in for the day, then getting ready for work, then (assuming Jen was awake and not in an early meeting) I was going to add the final guitar parts to the two songs I’ve been working on. Nope. It’s after 8:00 now and I just closed my exercise ring and had a protein supplement breakfast. My stomach is okay so far, though not really 100%. I’m still feeling a little beat up after the rough week, but yesterday was 99% fine and I am hoping for a trend. I’ll use the stop watch at lunch and dinner and see if it keeps me on track. It doesn’t always work, there are other ways to fuck up apart from just going too fast, but it worked for me all day yesterday. I still don’t know what went wrong with the late night pudding cup snack last night. I was really shocked at how that one turned out.

I am planning to go food shopping after dinner tonight. Once I get home I will try to add the last guitar parts to the two songs so that I can start mixing and get them in before the end of the month.

We did a lot of planning for Bellana’s college graduation weekend last night. Once we get through all of the logistics I am going to start obsessing over the photography options. I’m hyper focusing on lens options (yes, the pun was intended… focusing… get it?). I was thinking about trying to get a long zoom so that I could get close up shots of the stage from our cheap seats. Now I’m not so sure. Now I think I might want to go for something super wide so that I can get the whole scene when the family is all together. Like, what if we go to dinner to celebrate afterwards. If I have a 40mm lens on the digital camera and a 50mm lens on the film I’m not going to be able to get multiple people into a shot unless I stand up and walk away. Maybe I want to look into getting a 28mm, or even an 18mm lens so that I can grab nice wide group shots.

Oh to be able to actually know what I’m doing. Heh heh.

Okay, time to go get showered and dressed and get ready for work. Happy Monday, he said with biting, dripping sarcasm.

So Close, Yet So Far

I had to pause for blocked stomach after I took this evening’s pills, just like the lunch time. It cleared while I was cooking dinner. I blocked again while eating dinner. I only took 2.3 ounces of chicken but I couldn’t eat the last 0.3 ounces. So close, yet so far.

I was taking tiny bites and chewing each one to oblivion. I guess I was going to fast? I don’t know. I felt like I was doing everything right and being super careful. I am really getting annoyed.

I still need to drink 20 ounces of water and I still need 14 grams of protein. I will definitely hit both goals before the end of the day, but it’s just pissing me off that I still have so much to do. I’ve been stuck waiting for the blocked stomach and the foamies to clear for over half an hour. If I wasn’t stuck like this I would have hit the protein goal by now and would be pausing for an hour before finishing the liquid goal.

I’m really frustrated. Am I regretting my weight loss surgery decision? HELL NO. I don’t care how hard this gets, it’s still better than weighing 450 pounds and feeling like breathing was too much exertion to survive. This is frustrating but it’s 10000000000000 times better than it used to be.

Just so there are no questions about that.

Okay, I need to go get rid of a couple of pounds of saliva. Ugh.

Emptiness Hurts

It’s weird how often I go through this problem when I am working in the office.

Sometimes when my tiny little redesigned stomach is causing me problems, I fear that there is something wrong and that I am on the brink of big troubles when in fact I’m just hungry. I’ll be dealing with all kinds of stomach pains and gas pains and discomfort and unhappiness, then I’ll have a small bite to eat and I’ll feel better for a little while. Then the pain will come back and I’ll be afraid there is something wrong again until I make myself have some lunch. Then I feel fine for a while. It’s weird.

I used to know what hunger felt like. I mean, don’t we all? It is a sort of human thing, right? My stomach feels funny, rumble rumble, oh I’m hungry. That’s not what this feels like though. This feels more like when you eat something that’s gone bad and it just sits like a rock in your stomach. I would hope that having something to drink would alleviate the symptoms the way having food does, but it just doesn’t work the same way. I tried drinking water today between 10:00am or so and 11:30 and it didn’t help. The pain and discomfort just kept getting worse. I had a small protein bar snack and felt 80% better. By the time I broke for lunch at about 1:15 it was all back again, full force. I had some chicken tenders and some peanuts. Less than five ounces of food combined, but probably 24 grams of protein or so. Now my stomach feels 95% better.

I’m guessing that by the time the clock strikes 4:00 I am going to be uncomfortable again. This is going to dog me back and forth for the rest of the day. If history has taught me anything, I will be fine tomorrow after a half decent night’s sleep.

The weird thing about this is how often it happens when I am in the office. I don’t know if it’s the traveling to get here, or if it’s the day of the week (office days are Wednesdays), or if it’s some other connection that I haven’t made yet. I don’t know. It’s weird.

I think I am just going to enjoy the brief reprieve while I can and try to get some work done. Here’s hoping I don’t feel like this tomorrow. Fingers crossed, folks.

Gun Shy: Dietarily Speaking

I mentioned yesterday that taking a couple of vitamin pills before lunch was enough to set my stomach into a spiraling abyss for a couple of hours. Wouldn’t you know it, it happened again this morning. It wasn’t as bad, but it was bad enough. I take four pills in the morning. Three vitamin supplements and one over the counter medication.

Those four pills plus eight ounces of water sent me right into gastric bypass hell. I took in eight ounces of water but probably spit out a pound of saliva. It just kept coming. Foamies like a boss. I tried to get my jogging in place (yogging in place) in while in the midst of it and I had to stop for a while to concentrate on spitting. What the hell? I can see it if it’s a food issue, but pills? Tiny little pills? I took a minute or two in between each pill too but clearly that wasn’t enough.

Once it started calming down a little, I got back to the yogging and was able to finish my exercise goal. I was then able to eat some protein supplements for breakfast without getting sick again. I was definitely gun shy though. I took my sweet time and wasted a ton of time. Enough that I was almost late for work, which is crazy seeing as I was sitting at my work desk for almost all of this.

Here’s hoping I’m through all of this today. I don’t want any issues at lunch time. I don’t want to be distracted from work at all. Wish me and my new stomach luck.

Foamies

The Foamies. I first heard that term from one of the bariatric surgery facebook groups. Sometimes when you eat too fast, or take too big a bite, or don’t chew enough, your food gets caught up trying to get into your newly redesigned stomach. Your body tries to help out by creating a ton of extra saliva. For some of us though, because our stomach is partially blocked, the swallowing reflex temporarily shuts itself off. That means all of that extra saliva sits in your mouth and just stays there. If you force yourself to swallow it your stomach starts to hurt a lot and you cough it all back up. The result is that you’re stuck with a face full of foam. Hence, The Foamies.

I sometimes get The Foamies just by taking vitamin pills. I end up standing over the toilet, or the sink, or a trash barrel, or whatever, just spitting out all of that crap. I just spit, and spit, and spit. Eventually it stops and you can move on with your life. Today I had two lunchtime plans. First, we have a big pile of chicken breasts that are going to go bad soon. I wanted to cook them in the air fryer and then store them in the fridge to have as leftovers for the next couple of days. I snuck upstairs and put them into the air fryer and set a timer for the first half of the cooking time with the intention of flipping them over and then putting them back in for the second half of the cook time.

The flip time coincided with when I needed to take my two afternoon calcium citrate pills. When the timer went off I grabbed my water bottle and my pill caddie for the day and went upstairs to the kitchen. I took the first of the two pills with a gulp of water and then went to the cookin’. When the chicken breasts were flipped over I gulped the second pill and went to work cooking my lunch in the toaster oven. It was a little piece of Purdue frozen chicken patty and some french fries, cooked in the toaster oven on the air fryer setting.

Two seconds after gulping the second calcium pill it hit me. Pain in my stomach and lots of saliva. Shit. The Foamies were hitting me. The toaster oven was supposed to run for 15 minutes and the air fryer was going to finish a couple of minutes before then. While I waited, I spit a ton of foamie into the trash barrel and the sink. It was very unpleasant and thankfully no one was in the kitchen with me. The air fryer finished and I cut open a chicken breast to make sure it was done. It was. I wrapped it all up and put it into the fridge. Project , complete. I spit up some more and then the timer for the toaster oven went off. I took out my lunch and measured everything so I could track it on my food spreadsheet. The Foamies persisted for another minute or two but it ended right on time and I started eating lunch.

I ate the chicken patty without incident. I was halfway through my 2.5 ounces of french fries when it hit me again. The Foamies Part Two: Electric Foamie-Boogaloo. Shit. It was a little before 2:00pm. It didn’t stop for an hour. It just kicked my ass. It wiped the floor with my digestive system. It was awful. I would work for a few seconds, cough up some crap for a few seconds, wash/rinse/repeat. Come on, stomach. Cut the shit!

I did eventually finish my lunch. Just a few minutes ago, in fact. The fries were really good. Nice and crispy. I just wish I could have had them while they were still sort of warm. I can understand when it hits me because of a mistake I make while eating. I don’t get why it hits me when I am taking something tiny like a calcium pill. I had a mild case of it this morning due to my morning vitamins too. What the hell? Should I be switching all of my vitamin pills to chewables? I was in my mid teens before I was able to swallow a pill without crushing it up first. I considered it a failure at being a grown up. Now that I may be faced with something like that shame again? I just don’t wanna! I’m almost 52 years old. I should be able to swallow a god damned pill!

The Foamies. The struggle is real, friends. The struggle is real.

Tough Pill to Swallow

I just had an interesting discussion with the cats about unusual behavior.

I took my calcium pills between 12:35 and 12:50. I took a pause between the two pills because sometimes calcium pills screw up my stomach. The first pill went fine. The second… well… the second blew things up in a huge way. I spent a solid 10 minutes leaning over the toilet hacking and spitting and foaming up like an insane person. The whole time I’m gagging up a single, tiny, little pill, Lily is sitting in the doorway watching me.

I told her that my behavior was not normal for a human. It is just something that happens to me. Mom and the kids are never going to exhibit symptoms like this. That’s when Lily jumped into the tub. I told her that behavior was also unusual for a cat, and that we’re both behaving strangely. Right on queue, Robin walked into the room and wouldn’t you know it, she jumped into the tub too.

See kitties? We’re learning so much about abnormal psychology right now. We could practically teach a college level course on it. Fascinating!