After getting the bright idea I was going to hop on the gastric bypass blog ship and magically find the motivation to get healthy, things went...rather downhill. And by rather downhill, I of course mean tumbling wildly out of control with a force I'm quite certain broke the sound barrier. Yeah. It was that kind of crazy.

I have not been well since the end of August, wherein I had my first experience post-op with something "getting stuck." I was just into solid food, and ate a piece of spicy chicken in a matter of minutes. My pouch got severely aggravated after the resulting heave session, and my tolerance for anything gradually worsened. Long story short, I was in the hospital getting rehydrated by the first of September.

I would like to have said getting myself hydrated "cured" my ailments, as it had for some post-ops I knew personally, but it didn't. After that experience, I was left with a phobia of eating.

Let me explain. Before surgery, I didn't know what nausea was -- it just wasn't a problem for me. I was on a 12 year vomit-free streak I thought I was prepared to surgically end. When I learned what real nausea was, and I associated it with food, it threw me for a real loop. I would work myself up to panic before meals, and for weeks was literally paralyzed with fear at least an hour after eating. I didn't want to move for fear of vomiting. I didn't want to eat for fear of vomiting. I didn't want to do anything because I hated the sensation and resulting experience just that much.

So, I spent two months existing on nothing, and doing nothing. I'd maybe manage four ounces of milk a day, with a few pathetic nibbles of food in-between. And I most definitely was feeling the effects. I lost a ridiculous amount of muscle, which resulted in the constant feeling that every limb in my body was strained. My hair was falling out in clumps, and I just generally felt like crap. There was nothing pretty about it.

Flash-forward to the week following the start of this blog and things go from bad to worse. So much for motivation to get healthy! Suddenly I wasn't even getting in my bites of things or my sips of milk. My pouch started burning constantly (in rage from its neglect, most likely), but I always felt like I was hungry. It was miserable, and within several days I had managed to get myself where I wasn't able to even keep water down.

I made the decision, during a bout of the dry heaves in the middle of the night, that if I survived long enough to call my surgeon, I was going to do everything in my power not to get to this point again. I did, and spent a good three days in the hospital once again, getting a ridiculous amount of fluid pumped into me. Just long enough to miss Thanksgiving, which I had been dreading anyway.

And there began the process of making my stomach be friends with me again, haha. My dietitian had me taking little bites of something every hour for a bit there, just to keep it working. Now, I'm eating six times a day, religiously, and pushing my water intake. Let me tell you -- I already feel a thousand times better! I think I'd almost forgotten what having energy was like...

So, here's to a second shot at this whole shindig, ey? Food finally isn't some demon plaguing me, meaning I can eat the things a person at my stage should without being virtually "Out of Order" afterward. The dietitian's goals for me now are getting in at least one fruit or vegetable a day, sticking to healthy carbs, and low fat choices. I'm on it -- and hopefully I'll get a little better at it with each day.

Now, if I can just get this good about vitamins XD