Tag: weight loss surgery

Sunday Morning

First:

Wordle 344 2/6

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Now that that’s out of the way, there are no lingering effects from last night’s nausea adventure. I had some scrambled eggs for breakfast and apart from feeling a little gun shy there were no issues. I’m about 20 minutes away from being able to have a drink. I’ll probably have a protein shake and get that puppy out of the way.

Music. What’s up with that? I have four songs I’m working on, all for the next round of re-recordings. I’m dumping the record every month song. It is too lame even for me. Two of the four songs are ready for vocals. Am I ready for car vocals? Are my innards ready? Am I going to be able to push enough air to hit the high notes? I don’t know.

What else? This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend. Tomorrow is Memorial Day. It’s also our 13th wedding anniversary. It’s going to be a pretty fantastic day. We are hoping to try a mini cookout for lunch. Jen wants to try turkey burgers. I’ll probably try to have half a patty without bread or condiments or anything, I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to everything,

My goal for today is simple. Take smaller portions when I eat, and take significantly smaller bites as I go. Let’s not have a repeat of the nausea adventure, m’kay?

Happy Sunday.

Well That Was Unpleasant

Jen made an excellent dinner tonight. Cod. It was fantastic. I had about four ounces of fish and a piece of potato and a couple of baby carrots. As instructed by the stage III diet class, I ate the protein source first.

About halfway through I had to stop for a few minutes. Either I was going too fast or taking too much in each bite. Same thing happened to me the other day. I took a little break and felt better and was able to keep going.

Not too long after that it hit me. I was taking smaller bites and being more diligent about waiting in between bites but it didn’t help. It happened really fast. My stomach started feeling off again, then it started creeping up higher until it was in my throat. Nausea babie. Lots of it. Everyone who goes through Gastric Bypass says it happens but in three weeks plus it hadn’t happened to me… but now it has. I basically had to dash to the bathroom.

I did not throw up. I thought I was going to. I was sure I was going to. After a few minutes of gazing longingly into the bowl the feeling started to pass. I stayed there for an extra few minutes before risking standing up straight. Then I stayed in the bathroom for another few minutes, just in case.

I have been keeping a food/drink journal since the first night in the hospital. The sheet has a column for levels of nausea. I’ve had a zero in that column for every entry in the log… until now. I gave it an eight because it was crazy intense but I didn’t actually spew.

I feel a ton better now, but I am totally gun shy. I’m not sure how I will react tomorrow. I’m thinking of significantly smaller bites to start with. I really don’t want to go through that again.

Milestone?

See this t-shirt?

I bought it shortly before the surgery. It didn’t really fit. It almost fit, but it was a smidge too small.

It still doesn’t fit all that well today, but it’s definitely better than it was.

So is that a weight loss milestone? Naw, probably not. Close, but not really.

Next time will be better.

A New Dinner Experience

We tried something new for dinner tonight. It was very exciting.

Jen stirred up some ground beef and boiled up some potatoes. I took three ounces of beef and two ounces of potato. It was a pretty amazing Irish moment for me.

There was a catch though. Even with that tiny meal, it took me an hour and 10 minutes to get through it.

Each tiny bite was chewed 32 times at least, and I waited at least 30 seconds before starting the next bite. It took a long time. I’m starting to foresee a time in the near future when I’m going to be reheating food in the microwave mid-meal. You heard it here first.

Despite the 70 minute epic event…. Oh it was so delicious. Thanks, Jen!

Tough Start Today

We were told to make sure we take small bites of food when we start learning to eat again. I think I just found out why.

I made scrambled eggs for breakfast. I’ve had scrambled eggs for breakfast more days than not over the last two weeks. I try to wait about a minute in between bites. That’s longer than they suggested to us, by a lot, but it’s worked for me so far so I keep doing it.

I’m not sure if I was going to fast or just eating too much at once or some combination of both, but after a while my insides just told me, in no uncertain terms, to stop. Cut the shit, man. Leave us alone.

I didn’t feel sick, per se. I didn’t feel full. I didn’t feel nauseous. It’s hard to describe. It was almost like there was a backup getting into my tiny new stomach. Like, imagine there was a traffic jam and there was a forkful of scrambled egg just waiting for it to clear so that it could pull into the stomach. It was sort of like that… I guess.

I put down my tiny little plate of eggs and just waited. I think it was about 15 minutes. That weird backed up feeling cleared and I started trying to eat again. This time taking much, much smaller bites. Everything went okay from that point, though I am feeling kinda full right now.

We’ll see how lunch goes. Wish me luck.

Hoping for a Quiet Day

The last couple of days were busier than what you might expect from a convalescent type situation. On Tuesday I had a doctors appointment followed by the long awaited city inspection of our new furnace. Then on Wednesday I went to get the car inspected and ended up putting it in for some work. Harry helped me out driving me there and back. It ended up being a lot of hurry up and wait, but it was stressful and it kept me off of my liquid intake schedule. I ended up hitting my protein goal with easy, but I was drastically under my liquid goal.

There is nothing on the agenda today other than righting the intake ship after the last two days. I am definitely feeling out of whack today. The real wrench in the works is having to wait an hour after eating before I can drink again. I’ve been feeling some dry mouth by the time that hour is up. It’s rough.

On the upside, I did actually eat some solid food yesterday. I had scrambled eggs for breakfast, which I was already having during the puree stage. I had tuna fish for lunch but I didn’t put it in the blender first. It’s still crazy soft so I didn’t really need to chew it much. By the time dinner came around I wasn’t terribly hungry but I figured I’d challenge myself a little.

I had already hit the 60 grams of protein goal so I went with something else. I boiled the shit out of a couple of ounces of baby carrots. It ended up soft enough to be just a bit tougher than pureed, but I still had to chew it. As instructed, I was taking tiny bites. They said think pea sized, or pencil eraser sized. I was then chewing every bite at least 25 times. That’s what they told us in the stage III diet class. My grandmother though used to always tell us to chew each bite 32 times, so that’s what I did. Some bites got a little more, but 32 is going to be the goal going forward. Thanks, Nana.

I’m not sure what I want to do for meals tonight. I still have a bowl full of left over tuna fish in the fridge. That will likely be lunch. No clue for dinner. I guess it depends on where I am with the protein intake and how hungry I am. I’m more interested in fixing the low fluid intake from the last two days. I don’t want to feel dehydrated like this anymore.

And that, friends, is the story for this morning.

Stage III

I am officially on the Stage III Diet. What does that mean?

To start with, things aren’t that much different. Now instead of x ounces of puréed food we can start having x+y ounces of soft foods. Think seriously boiled veggies or meatballs or canned chicken or tuna without the extra step in the blender. The values of x and y are dependent on the patient. For me, x was about two ounces. Y will eventually be about a cup.

For my first meal I stayed purée but I increased the amount. I scrambled two eggs. That came out to about four ounces or half a cup. It was by far the biggest meal I’ve had since two days before the surgery.

Going forward I will have to take very small bites, about the size of a pencil eraser, and chew each bite at least 25 times. I will also need to take short breaks between bites. A one cup sized meal needs to take about 40 minutes. Yikes.

I’m also back to the 60 minutes between eating and having a drink. That is going to suck for me getting my fluids in, but they did up the hourly fluid goal by two ounces. That should help.

Okay, my 60 minute post-scrambled eggs timer just went off. I need to go get myself a protein shake. Talk to you later.