Saturday, November 30, 2013

holiday meals and gp'ers...






This is my favorite time of year. I have been doing a lot of reading from fellow GP'ers about their struggle with the holiday season and the food that comes along with it. When I was first going through the process of learning that I could have this food but I could not have that food unless I wanted to drastically pay for it, holidays were especially hard. It was hard to go to events and see tons and tons of food that I couldn't have and yet my body was still going through the process of craving those foods. It took a long time for me to learn and accept that I could no longer have those foods. It was a lot of one step forward, two steps back with me. My eating was all over the place. I just dealt with the repercussions of eating because regardless to what I ate, I lost it along with nausea and pain. I lost over thirty pounds dealing with my GP during that time. Since then, my diet has drastically changed within the GP diet and I've added in my ileostomy diet as well. My body doesn't crave things like it use to. Holiday meals like Thanksgiving don't bother me anymore. Whenever I come off of a clean out or a liquid diet, I crave things like pickles, olives or boiled eggs. Things like that aren't good for my ostomy because I don't digest them but it's what I crave. I sat down the other day with some pickles and olives and just told Jacob to look away. 
Over the past two years since my cleaning out increased to every other day, I fell into a habit of binge eating. I don't binge eat three "normal" sized adult meals or anything but I'll eat my GP sized meal and go back later for a snack. It isn't too long before the distention, nausea and pain accompanied by guilt are factored in. The only positive thing I have learned and do is my liquid intake during a meal. The more liquids, the better. The other night at dinner, I drank five glasses of liquid. I start before my meal and continue after. Since my ileostomy surgery, I have found that if I keep things hydrated, it helps keep my tract moving better (ostomies are a whole different ball game and I need all the hydration I can get). I talked to my GI about my binge eating and he said that it was perfectly normal for someone like myself with GP who cleans out often and deals with malnourishment issues to binge eat. It is just something that I personally don't like to do and struggle with.

The month of November has been a little rocky. I mean if someone comes up and ask me how I'm doing, I am going to say good because honestly, I don't want to bore you and I'd much rather know what is going on with you. It's just how I am. I had a hydrogen breath test earlier in the month that luckily came back negative. I really wasn't looking forward to paying hundreds of dollars for antibiotics that may work for a little while. It is always a toss up. I however hated the prep. I had to go fourteen days without cleaning out or taking any of my Linzess which is for constipation but I don't have but eight inches of colon that isn't connected or functional so I don't deal with constipation. We just use the medication to help get my tract going in the morning basically. I take 290mcg and get about four hours out of get. If I don't take it however, it is as if someone flipped a light switch and nothing works. I start to panic if I don't have it. Hello possible bowel obstruction. 

After the hydrogen breath test, my weight dropped about eight pounds leaving me very weak after clean outs. Me being a stubborn person one Sunday morning thought that I could make it to the eleven o'clock Sunday worship service. My Linzess medication always starts working about ten o'clock. I can't make it through service without having to empty my ostomy. It drives me insane because I am interrupting people and it's inconvenient but it is way better than a busted ostomy bag - been there, done that. Whenever I finally made it to back to my seat from emptying it having just got to church, I knew it was going to be a rough service. During the praise and worship time, I got that jello/weak feeling along with being hot. I knew I was in trouble. I lost my hearing that morning as we were singing. It is always the last thing before I pass out. I was so stubborn and stupid for going that morning. Thankfully I was able to pull it together after that. I don't know how but I did. Jacob and I talked about it later. I am learning about letting go of some of my stubbornness as well as my ignorant ways - if you only knew them. I learned a lesson that day. I honestly would have died of embarrassment had something happened that day. Since then, I have been much more careful on my outings.

I have been talking back and forth with my surgeon over the past month or so regarding a type of colon spasm that I have been having. Whenever I first started having them, I didn't know what to think. It was so odd to experience pain in an organ that I no longer use. I knew the type of pain for I had had it before when my colon had the colon spasms before it was removed. The spasms were horrible. Whenever food or even liquids would hit my colon, my colon would begin to spasm causing me to experience increased pain and nausea. Now the pain is totally random. 

For the month that I didn't have to clean out after my ileostomy surgery, I didn't have any headaches which was wonderful. During and after a clean out, I will dehydrate regardless to how much liquids I consume often leaving me with a headache sometimes a migraine. I had one earlier this week that was terrible. I went to bed cleaning out with a headache and woke up the following morning with a migraine. I was barely able to leave the couch that day. I am the type that will lay and debate whether or not if I need to go to the hospital regardless of the issue. I told Jacob later that night if I have another migraine like this that was completely drug resistant, nothing I took worked, to make me go to the hospital for a shot. It would have been so much better than laying there all day in pain, dehydrated and nauseous. 

We are settled into our apartment which is nice. I love being married. I struggle using up all of my "spoons" too early in the day so that is one of my goals in the upcoming month. I try to tackle too much in a day causing myself to over do it creating more trouble with fellow GP'ers know and understand.