Attention New-ops, how to get your fluids in right after surgery!

Resurrecting one of my old old threads, this was written by someone who used to give a lot of her time to everyone on the DS and main board, very wise straight-shooter!

 
Another one borrowed from Elizabeth N.. 

This is something I want all you preops to practice a bit until you really KNOW what it is to sip. It will stand you in good stead in those early postop weeks when you are thinking you'll barf yourself to death on more than 16 oz. of fluids.

Get the following: a measuring teaspoon, a measuring tablespoon, a single size shot glass. Sit down with them and a glass of fluid of choice. Oh, and get a stopwatch or digital timer. 

I shall divide this exercise into three parts. Please try all three. 

1. Let us begin with the shot glass. Pour out a shot of water and down it by sucking it through pursed lips--sipping, not chugging--in one swallow. Feel how big that swallow is? Practice it several times until you KNOW how it feels. 

Once you KNOW this feeling, take out that timer and take a full minute to ingest that jigger of water. TIME YOURSELF and make yourself do it over a full minute, NOT in one swallow. 

64 oz. per day means doing one of those shot glasses 64 times. If you take a full minute to empty that shot glass, you will spend a total of 64 minutes of your whole entire day drinking. 

2. If you fear this will be too much water to ingest in one minute, take the tablespoon and repeat the exercise. A tablespoon is 1/2 oz. So, by drinking a tablespoon of fluid in one minute (USE THE TIMER AND TAKE THE FULL MINUTE TO DO THIS), you will spend two hours and 8 minutes of your day drinking. 

3. Think this is impossible? Repeat the exercise using a teaspoon. Doing a teaspoon per minute (TAKE  THE FULL MINUTE!!) will take you six hours and 24 minutes of your day. 

Okay? Don't tell me 64 ounces is an impossible amount of fluid to ingest in a day. You can do it and still have LOTS of time to sleep, poop, walk etc. Yes, you will feel it. It might be uncomfortable. You might have nausea. If you do, get it medicated. Use your acid reducer and your antiemetic. If you can't keep down a teaspoon of water per minute, you are in trouble and belong in your doc's office or in the ER. It might feel like pure **** to keep it down, but that's basically tough bananas. Keeping it DOWN is what counts. Feeling good while you keep it down does NOT. 

It might take this kind of work to hydrate yourself early postop. Get your head around it NOW

I'll admit, I read this when I was preop and thought "whatever, that's so extreme"

Yeah, this is some GREAT ADVICE!

Get a watch and find you a shot glass that makes you happy then pretend you are back in college!

*LIKE*
thank you for posting this for us...very helpful indeed.

Jo
This is one of those great posts that should be either added to the FAQs (if those could ever be made a sticky note) or posted on a regular basis for new folks.

I asked about that way back when, and OH said they just can't do stickies on the forums.. that I should make my own group if I want to :(

I wanted to sticky this one and the one about stalls written by Diana Cox.

They can't do stickies on the forums? Then what the heck is that post that's ALWAYS at the top of the first page about the OH get-together in Atlanta? What are those three posts in blue at the top of the Main Forum?

(Nothing on you, IMgirl, just on them doing us a disservice.)

They will create their own stickies to promote events that they put on, or surveys they want us to take.. but will not allow helpful info to be stuck up there, it "clutters" things, and everyone would want a sticky.. so they say..

I think they should put a survey up and see what WE think. Or allow us to build our own FAQ pages with links to posts that are particularly helpful and informative.

And then they'll say...but who determines what is helpful or informative? Bleh.

So I guess I'll just have to start marking some of these and adding them to my own blog and hope that what I miss gets reposted at some point. :)

Not right now though. I REALLY need to get out of the house and get moving (and running errands).

Lol. I am the worst when it comes to dehydration. I've been 6+ times to urgent care for fluids. If this didn't make me feel like a 'tard I don't know what does! And I've never had nausea or anything. I just hate drinking water. It's disgusting and I hate all artificial sweeteners. I did a *face palm* when it said you'll spend a total of 64 min a day drinking and still have plenty of time to poop. Whateverrrr... let me go get my DAMNNNN water bottle!!!