My Gastric Sleeve

The Power of "No!"

As I've mentioned before, I'm seeing a therapist to help me resolve some of my issues around eating and weight.

During my last appointment, she asked me if I would be interested in changing my appointment times to earlier in the day.

I didn't want to hurt her feelings or inconvenience her, but the time she suggested really wasn't convenient. I stumbled around, trying to explain why it wouldn't work.

Finally, mercifully, she stopped me. "It doesn't sound like you want to change your appointment time at all," she said.

I nodded that this was true.

Her next words floored me, "Deb, you don't have to make excuses or explain what you need. It's fine to just say, 'I don't want that.'"

"I don't want that." I repeated the words softly, then a little louder. Saying them felt a hundred times better than the mealy-mouthed excuses I'd been trying to give.

When They Say Don't Eat and Drink at the Same Time, They Mean It!

By now, you may have noticed that I'm a bit of a rebel. It's not that I refuse to obey any rules; I'm just not real big on arbitrary rules. For instance, I've always loved the combination of certain tastes, like milk and Oreos or a Diet Coke and a perfectly grilled cheeseburger. I wasn't happy when the rules of my new bariatric diet contained a prohibition against eating solid foods and drinking fluids at the same time.

I didn't say so to my surgeon, but I privately made up my mind that it was a silly rule and that I would not be following it.

Flash forward eight months. My weight loss has hit a long, steady plateau. I'm not gaining, but I'm not losing, either.

The day I had my second endoscopy, my surgeon came into the room to talk to me after the procedure and asked me nicely, but bluntly, whether I was combining fluids and solids. I admitted that I was because I had not been able to think of a good reason not to.

Three Hundred Dollars, Two Endoscopies, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the first day of Christmas, my bariatric surgeon gave to me...okay, enough with the cutesy Christmas carol stuff. Suffice it to say that the month of December was memorable because I had not one but two upper endoscopies.

As I mentioned in a previous post, scar tissue can form after weight loss surgery and cause a narrowing in the stomach or the esophagus. This stricture makes it very difficult to eat solid foods, so patients tend to gravitate to "sliders," foods that go down easily. Unfortunately, many sliders, like ice cream, are high in calories and fat.

This means that a stricture can actually lead to weight gain because people edge away from their bariatric diet of solid proteins. Luckily, the stricture can be fixed with an upper endoscopy or EGD. This involves the surgeon passing a tube down your throat and into your stomach. He or she can then dilate, or widen, the narrowing with a use of a small, inflatable balloon. Sometimes, as in my case, the procedure has to be repeated to fully open the blocked area.