Food

I just finished eating 2.8 ounces of scrambled eggs. I feel okay. My stomach is a little funny, but I think that might be due to hunger more than anything else. I only managed about 11 grams of protein and that’s not enough so I will supplement later. We’ll see how that goes.

In honor of going back to soft food/puree stage, for breakfast at least, I also brought out this old friend.

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Ah, the stopwatch. I remember you, old friend.

Feeling a Little Better

It’s 6:11am, I’ve been up for a little over an hour, no stomach pain or discomfort or anything like that. So far so good. I’ve had eight ounces of water and my morning vitamins. That’s close to equaling my intake from all of yesterday. All I managed over the whole day was eight ounces of protein shake and five ounces of sugar free Gatorade. That’s it. No food at all.

I went to bed at about 7:30 last night. I was exhausted all day, probably from not eating and stressing out over feeling sick. Who knows. I fell asleep on the couch after I punched out of work too, but only for about 30 minutes. Whatever was going wrong in my tiny little rewired, redesigned stomach just wouldn’t go away. I don’t know if it was something I did or if it was the bug Harry had over the weekend, and I don’t care. I just want it to be over. It feels like it might be, but I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have to eat today. I have to hit my goals. 60 ounces of liquid (eight down, 52 to go) and 80 grams of protein (zero down and 80 to go), and I think I want to eat real food, not protein bars… though I will probably need to supplement the actual food because I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to handle and the protein shakes require milk and my half gallon of skim milk expired yesterday and I think this might be the rare case where the expiration date actually matches the day it starts going bad. Just a hunch, ya know? I think I am going to try some scrambled eggs for breakfast. What do you think? Yesterday I reverted back to liquid stage, today I will revert back to soft/puree stage? Sounds like a plan.

Various Updates

We just got off the call with Dad’s rehab facility. Good news all around. There are a couple of things they will follow up on and get back to us. He’s not ready to go home yet, but he is at a point where they can bring his assisted living facility staff into the discussion to see if they can handle his needs.

My stomach still feels like sh-sh-sh-shite. I haven’t eaten anything today and it’s not the kind of thing where I am wondering if I am sick or just hungry. Nope, I’m just sick. Harry had a stomach bug on Sunday. I’m wondering if that’s what I have now. Not so much a couple of meals gone wrong, but just a bug.

I left work at 2:00pm. I wanted to try to stick it out for the day but my boss let me off the hook. I probably should have left earlier. I was no good to anyone. I’m already questioning whether I will be able to pull off work tomorrow. It’s starting to look like a good thing we cancelled the New York plans. I need to be over this before Sunday when we go to Bellana’s concert in Vermont.

I would say I am starting to get into the first season of Pennyworth. I am still not sure though. The whole Aleister Crowley storyline… Crowley died in 1947 so if this takes place in some weird version of 60’s London, then he would have been in his 90’s. There’s a new episode of Titans today that I haven’t watched yet. That’s the better show, I think, but I’m having trouble getting into the new season. Oh, DC on HBO… how you vex me.

In closing, Penguins:

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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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Another Bad Day in the Making?

Last night I managed to hit both of my food goals, despite all of the difficulties I mentioned in the previous post. Unfortunately it required me drinking a 32 ounce bottle of water starting at a little before 10:00pm. It went down without a problem, and I felt really good after it was done, but I did it in about an hour and a half and that is just too fast. 15 minutes later I ate some protein and that topped me over both goals.

It also had the side effect that I expected. I woke up today half an hour ago with a seriously gassy and upset stomach. I’m going to run for a while and re-watch episode three of Yellowjackets (buzz buzz buzz and all that) without having anything to eat or drink first. We’ll see how I feel about an hour from now. Hopefully all the trottin’ and joggin’ in place helps to clear things up rather than make it worse.

Yesterday’s last minute success may lead to today being another rough one, tiny-little-rewired-stomach-wise.

Wish me luck.

Bad Day All Around

I think today might be the most difficult day I’ve had since the gastric bypass surgery nearly seven months ago. Every time I eat or drink anything it’s upset my stomach. Not nausea per se, just feeling uncomfortably full. Actually, dinner has made me a little nauseous. I made it through 2.6 ounces of left over chicken before it set in. I think it’s starting to pass, but I am screwed as far as my food goals are concerned. I still need 15 grams of protein and a whopping 28 ounces of liquids before I sleep tonight. I have to pause an hour between eating and drinking though and it’s already quarter past eight. At least today’s weekly weigh in went well. I’ve got that going for me today

Other than that, today has just been the worst day.

I Am So Tired of This

Just found out that two staff members at the rehab facility my father is currently stuck in have tested positive for Covid-19.

I am so sick of this shit. Not just the Covid, but the whole situation. I just want my parents to be healthy again and I want them to go home. My mother never will, but my father could. Ugh. I just want them both to be better.

We have a call with the facility tomorrow. That was booked before the Covid scare. I don’t know if my father was exposed or not. If he was they will be testing him right now.

I just want this shit to end. I want our world back again.

My Stomach is Having a Weird Day

I was finished with breakfast by about 7:30am. I have felt uncomfortably full ever since. I haven’t even hit 20 ounces of liquid yet today but I just don’t feel like I can drink anything because my stomach has felt so full. I took my two calcium pills at just after noon and just that little bit of intake made me feel a little sick. Huh.

That was half an hour ago and I am starting to feel a smidge better, but it’s weird. Just weird.

On an unrelated note, the ant kingdom was slaughtered by an exterminator a few months ago. Dead ants galore. Today the final termination is happening. There is a contractor upstairs ripping up our bathroom. The walk in shower is gone. It will be replaced by a closet or some shelves or some shit. The toilet and the sink have been removed, temporarily, and the floor tiles are coming up as we speak. The tiles will be replaced by something that doesn’t need grout and the sink and the toilet will be put back. There should be some cleanup on the back wall too. No clue how long this is going to take, but I will miss our shower. I won’t miss the leak that caused the rot that ruined the wall and lead to the ant invasion though.

Back to the original point of this post… not sure what to do for lunch today. Not sure if I can handle food. I’ll probably just go the protein bar route again (that’s what I did for breakfast though so maybe that’s bad luck today?). We’ll see.

Week 30 Weigh In

So close. So close to having milestones in every category that my stats obsessed brain looks at. I mean, so close.

Hello and welcome to the week 30 weigh in. Wednesday is weigh in day and today is Wednesday. Are you ready?

I am down 3.6 pounds. That’s fantastic. I am very happy with this week’s results. The app our bluetooth scale works with didn’t capture my weight this time. I’m not sure what’s up with that. I had to add it to my iPhone’s Health app manually, like the old days and when I say old days I mean like three weeks ago. I did not move the 10’s column for my total weight, but I came ridiculously close. My weight this morning was exactly 260 pounds. Come on! 1/10th of a pound lower and I would have flipped that six to a five. Oh well. We’ll have an early weigh in this week as Sunday is the monthiversary, and hopefully (barring any catastrophes) I should be in the two-fifties by then. Fingers crossed.

Everything else hit a milestone. My BMI dropped below 32. It is 31.6. 1.7 points away from not being obese anymore, in the BMI sense. My weight loss since the surgery moved the 10’s column and reached 171.4 pounds. My weight loss since the first weigh in also flipped the 10’s column to hit 192 pounds on the nose. Two items of note here. One “bad” one good. First the “bad.” I used the quotes because it’s not actually bad at all, it’s just a sort of warning. When I was going through the pre-surgery process I was told I could expect to lose a certain percentage of my excess weight. They gave me a range between blah and blahblah. When I calculated it out it was between 130 and 170 pounds. Now that I have hit 170 pounds I feel like I am on borrowed weight-loss-time. That’s all. Not bad, just noteworthy. It might be time to slightly alter my expectations, even though I don’t really expect to suddenly stop losing weight, you know?

Now for the good note…….

ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY POUNDS, BABIE! LET’S FREAKIN’ GOOOOOOO!!!!

Okay, so the next weigh in is Sunday December 4th. The numbers should be small, Robert. Don’t freak out. Next Wednesday will also be low numbers so don’t freak out then either, Robert. All weight loss is positive for now. The goal is to get to a healthy weight and you still have quite a ways to go before you get there. Keep up the good work.