My Gastric Bypass: The First Week

I think the thing most people are curious about, other than the surgery itself when they are thinking about it, is what happens afterwards.  What are those first few days and weeks like?   Well, I’ve heard every story under the sun from the woman who claims to have gone back to work only two days later, to people who were laid up and unable to do anything for weeks.  One thing you learn quite quickly is that this is an experience that is different for each person and there is no guarantee that while someone you know has had a good or bad experience, that yours will be the same.

This is the story of my experience during the recovery period, the good and the bad.  I want to try to be as honest about this as possible as I believe that knowledge is power when going into a surgery like this.

Fortunately for me, in my own experience, there honestly hasn’t really been all that much bad at all!  I’m going to break it up, starting now with week one.

WEEK ONE

You already know how the first few days of the first week went for me (see The Surgery and My Hospital Stay), but once I was home things got real.  Suddenly I was having to make all these decisions about what to eat, how much to eat and how much activity I could do… and even though I’d done so much research beforehand, I still felt a little bit lost.  Technically I knew what I was supposed to do but I still worried that I was going to do something wrong and ‘break myself’.  It’s an irrational fear that can’t really be explained but it was there and it was real. It didn’t have me like a basket case or anything, but it was definitely present in everything I did.

The Food

My diet for the first week consisted of thin fluids like strained chicken soup, tea, yogurt drinks and Jello (which pretty much turns to liquid in your mouth).  At that point I also feared food, a LOT.   I had heard so much about people having bad reactions to the most random foods (see Dumping Syndrome), that every time I put something in my mouth I would sit and wait a half hour to see if the pain would set in.   I knew it was possible, I was prepared to deal with it, but I was not looking forward to it.   Thankfully, it wasn’t something that happened for me on any of these foods.   I had my group of drinks, they had all been deemed safe within the first few days, so then I could relax about it for a while.

Above: A photo of one of my many, many… maaannnyy cups of chicken broth.

I admit, the fluids got old really quickly.  By the end of the first week I was sick and tired of the limited things I could drink.  It wasn’t totally terrible and the variety of yogurt drinks did help, but I’m glad that this phase lasted only a week.  I was also getting tired of having to strain everything.  Even the yogurt drinks had to be strained to remove and fruit fibers or seeds that were floating around in there.  I could probably have gone on longer with it but I was happy that I didn’t have to.

The Physical Bits

Physically I was still in a bit of pain.  It wasn’t excruciating, but it definitely had me slow moving.  In the first few days my upper belly felt quite tight, sort of like one sort of solid achy mass, which I assume was probably due to swelling.  Towards the end of the week the big plasters they had on my incisions really started to itch and get on my nerves.

I didn’t have much pain from the incisions themselves, just a general soreness if I moved too drastically in any way.  Kind of like if I did 1000 sit ups, or how I imagine I’d feel if I did 1000 sit ups, because I never have… obviously.

I had some back pain too because I had to still sleep on my back at this point and that’s not a position I ever sleep in.  I’d try to make it better by putting pillows behind my back and under my knees to try to replicate the position from the hospital bed, but after laying in the same position for the entire night, my back was quite sore.  I spent a fair bit of time sitting on my heating pad that week.

I still didn’t have a lot of feeling for my new pouch (my tiny stomach), so that made things a bit difficult.  When I’d eat (or drink, I should say) I never had a feeling of fullness.  I didn’t know if it was because I was carefully measuring out the things I had and made sure not to have too much, or if I just was never going to have any feeling from my stomach again.  I also realized that it was possible that the lack of feeling was due to being numb and swollen from the recent surgery.   Either way, it was strange and I didn’t like it too much.  I had a new anatomy and it wasn’t communicating with me, which made me confused and unsure of what to do with it.  I tried not to dwell on it too much, I followed the instructions laid out for me and went about my business.

The most amazing physical change was the utter and complete lack of hunger.  One day I was sitting here and realized that I hadn’t experienced hunger since I sat in the hospital the morning of my surgery.  I had no hunger at all, never, NONE!  It was freaking fantastic!

The Exercise

The first two days that I was home (days 2 and 3 after the surgery) I stuck around home. The weather wasn’t great and I was still quite ‘freshly operated’ so I limited my activity to just doing walks inside around our flat, back and forth across the living room, up and down the hall, a fair bit of pacing.  I probably would have ventured outside but the fact that we lived in a 3rd floor walk up was a bit intimidating. I had found the three flights of stairs to be a bit hard on the day I arrived home and I wanted to make sure I was up to it.

On the 4th day I went outside for the first time. I went outside, walked around our building and came back in, the short walk and the stairs was about all I could do at that point.

In the first week my walks were very short, only about 5-10 minutes at a time combined with the stairs.  I think that the lack of food, as well as just having been operated on, both played a part in my lack of stamina.  Even though I couldn’t do much, I tried to do something every day.  If I felt up to it, I went out for a walk. If the weather was bad or there was another reason I didn’t feel like going outside, I’d make sure to do the three flights of stairs to our flat at least once or twice a day.   As long as I was starting to move I knew I was doing ok.

The Out and About

In the first week I also went out for short periods with Xander, to the supermarket and things like that, which gave me a very strange feeling. I don’t know if it was the lack of food or some sort of weirdness left from the anesthesia (I’ve heard that it can make you feel strange for a while after) but I was VERY jumpy.  The entire time we were in the car and my husband would pull up behind another car I would gasp and jump thinking he was going to run into them.  He found this highly amusing but for me it was a real pain in the arse… or the stomach, rather.  Every time I’d have that second of panic, my muscles would tense and it was a bit uncomfortable.

Also, when I was in the supermarket I realized just how disoriented I was mentally.  The crowds of people in the supermarket made me quite uneasy and I felt somewhat like a zombie.  I kept feeling like people were sneaking up on me but what I think was actually happening was just a lack of brain power and awareness of my surroundings… so as people walked near me it felt like they were sneaking up on me.  It was all a very bizarre and slightly unpleasant feeling.   I didn’t care though, I thought that the sooner I got out and about, the better!

TMI Time!

Now for the TMI!  A post of mine just wouldn’t be the same unless I went to those really uncomfortable places we all love so much.  You have nobody to blame but yourself if you continue to read this section!

It’s time to talk about poo.

I learned very early in the game after this surgery that my bowels were not my friends.  Not that they ever were, mind you… but the surgery definitely wasn’t going to improve our relationship.  A friend of mine said that people who have had gastric bypass are “Excrementally Challenged” and I had no idea just how right she would be.

It was about a day after I got home from the hospital when the trots (the runs, the squirts… ) started.  Every morning like clockwork, and sometimes a bonus in the afternoon.  There was no real pain, just when I had to go I had goooooo, like GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY I GOTTA GO style.

Oh and the sounds… the gurgles, glugs and grumbles coming from my innards were like nothing you would ever believe.  There are no words…

Remember this, from the movie Dumb & Dumber?

[youtube id=”SIZU_NZRfjA” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Yeah, well that was me every morning.  Maybe not quite as animated but right down to the monster in my belly growls and all.  There were a few times that the sounds coming from my stomach even startled the dogs out of their sleep.  I do not lie.

Every.Single.Day this went on, and every single day I made a Dumb & Dumber reference, cuz what else can a girl do in that situation?

I eventually called my clinic to ask them about it, but they assured me it was normal and everything was fine.   All I could think was that there was nothing normal nor fine about the sounds coming out of my body, but they are the experts!

The Mental Bits

Like before and immediately after the surgery I tried to stay as upbeat, active and positive as possible.  Yes, I had some pain, yes… the liquid diet sucked, but it was my new beginning and I wanted to make the best of it.  Even though I was feeling the effects of the surgery and small intake of food, overall I felt really great mentally.

Well, that was until one of the last nights of the week, when I admit I did have a bit of a meltdown.  I almost hate to write about it because I know it had much more to do with my hormones at the moment than the surgery, but it happened all the same.  It was probably about 6 days after my surgery, I was sick to death of the liquid diet, I was tired, I was HORMONAL (ugh horrible timing) and I was just FED UP.  I laid in bed and I sobbed to Xander, ranting through my snot and tears about all my frustrations.  How did I get there? How did my life lead me to a place where I’d be having weight loss surgery??  Why couldn’t I make it work on my own??  What have I done to myself?!  What if I was going to be the one freakazoid who would have surgery and GAIN WEIGHT or something?!!  WAAAH!! On and on it went…. He was patient, he reminded me of all the reasons I did it, all the great things we hope to get out of it and again, that I was a bag of hormones and need to cut myself some slack.

To be honest, I knew he was right. I’m like that, I’m a PMS ranter, and I know that if I hadn’t had surgery I’d be crying and ranting about something else… like the weather, the weird smell in the washer or all the odd socks I can’t find matches for.  Basically, whatever would come to mind.

The meltdown was short lived, I recovered quickly and reminded myself that in only two days I could start on some thicker liquids… which meant more variety… and at that point, variety meant happiness and one more step towards normalcy.

Mentally the best part was the lack of hunger.  My body and mind weren’t going “FEED ME FEED ME FEED ME” all day the way they had been before. Suddenly I was eating because I should, because I knew I had to get nourishment, not because I really gave a toss about food or felt any hunger.  There were no cravings, no growling stomach and that thing… whatever it was, was GONE.   What an amazing feeling… what a relief!!

It was like I went into the surgery and they removed that part of me that thought about food and made me want to eat all day long. The voices in my head (no not literally but you know what I mean) were gone. It just wasn’t there anymore. I was able to think about other things, relax and just go about my day without those nagging thoughts about what delicious thing I could eat next, how long it would be until I could eat again, and that strange desire I had to not just rid myself of hunger but feel totally full at all times.

I can only explain it as… peace.  Experiencing complete and utter peace for the first time in as long as I can remember. I felt FREE and it was wonderful.

Maybe it would turn out to be a part of the “Honeymoon Period”, maybe it would all change in the coming weeks, or months or even days, but I didn’t care.  I was going to enjoy having that monkey off my back for as long as I possibly could and use that time to the best of my abilities.

The Weight Loss

In the first week after the surgery I lost 3.5 kilos (approximately 7.5 lbs)  which I was pretty happy with.  I got on the scale every single day, which was a habit I knew I had to break but had no success with yet.  I was still curious and jumped on every morning without fail.

The Long and Short of It All

All in all the first week wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected.  I had this image in my head of being hardly alive when I first came home, barely being able to get up out of a chair and take care of myself.  This was not the case at all.  I had what I think anyone would consider to be normal pain and lack of mobility after a surgery like this but I was able to get out of the house, get moving and felt much much better than I imagined I would.

The negative points were the lack of being able to chew and getting sick of the liquid diet towards the end of the week.  Also the itching and pulling of the bandages, having the trots every day, not understanding my body yet, the unfortunate hormonal phase (which is a story in itself that I’m still deciding if I want to tell or not) and having to sleep on my back, which was hardly the end of the world.

The positive points were fewer but still far outweigh the negative!!  First and foremost, the utter lack of hunger.  I also loved that I seemed to be healing so quickly, was able to get up and about sooner than expected and that mentally I was doing a million times better than I suspected I would.

My first week was most definitely a more positive experience than I ever could have imagined it would be!  I was eagerly awaiting the second week and all the new changes it would bring!