Health Update: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Quite a few of you have expressed concern over my current state of health - so I thought an update was in order.


The Good:
As we get farther and farther away from my partial bowel obstruction with no similar problems, it is rather unlikely that I will need a follow up surgery to deal with an obstruction.
I don't have sleep apnea anymore, so that's great.
I had some hormonal issues that put me at risk for diabetes and they are correcting themselves.
My doctors are happy with my muscle tone. Also, b12 and iron levels are fine. (These are the two most common deficiencies with gastric bypass.) So, I can only be but so malnourished.
While I do have issues, they are getting better as well, so on the whole I feel really good about how things are going.


The Bad:
I just had my second ER visit. We are currently in NC visiting my god-parents. We flew into C'ville and were able to catch up with a few people over the weekend, but it would appear that I over did it. It was hot and I wasn't as careful as I should have been. I've been flirting with dehydration for a while (more on that later) and I crossed a line. I got a kidney stone and my potassium levels were really low. I recovered quickly, which is good. I had hoped, however, that my previous ER visit would be my last. And, it was rather disconcerting to strike out for an ER in the middle of the night in a town that isn't your own. Luckily, Michael did a rotation in this area while he was in med school, so he knew where to go. I'm still working on the kidney stone, but hopefully it will work its way out soon.


The Ugly:
This is the TMI section of this post - so if you don't want the gorey details - you may want to stop reading here.

The big problem that I have now is that I get sick whenever I eat. I get cramps, diarrhea and sometimes, I throw up. When this first started, I thought I had a stomach flu but it has been a couple of months now and I'm still dealing with it. I'm tried food experiments (like cutting out dairy) but I can't find particular foods that are and are not problematic. What I eat doesn't seem to mater - just the fact that I have eaten. As not fun as all this is, the real problem is that all the diarrhea is leaving me dehydrated. I'm drinking as much as I'm supposed to, but I can tell from how I feel that it isn't enough. I'm also not eating enough (so I'm losing some muscle mass due to protein deficiency) and I recently tried to add in an extra meal, but the extra diarrhea got me notably dehydrated so I had to drop that idea.

At first, I could eat breakfast and I would be sick all day (without eating anything else) and into the night. Now, I'm down to only a few hours of being sick. This is a very significant improvement. For one, now I eat breakfast and by the time I need to eat lunch - I'm no longer feeling sick. As you can imagine, this makes it much easier to make myself eat. Also, I have this little break between meals where I'm ok and can get things done. For a long time, I'm just been spending all day in the bathroom. Now, I can emerge from the bathroom and I have a little time to do some ironing - or write a blog post - before I eat lunch and make myself sick again. This little break has been a huge sanity boost and I look forward to it getting longer. I also have learned a couple of ways to control it. For one - I can just not eat. Now, obviously, I can't do this much (as tempting as it is) but used judiciously it can enable things like flying back to the east coast. I also respond to Imodium. More than getting rid of the issues, it more slows them down. The diarrhea isn't as crazy, the cramps aren't as bad, but food seems to stay in my stomach longer making it more likely that I'll throw up. And, if I take too much I become very nauseated. I also don't want my body to adjust to a constant presence of Imodium. In general, I use it just once a week - but I can make exceptions for special occasions like my cousin Emily's visit.


Well, that's about it. I hope you all are doing well.