Honest Answers!

How many of you cheated on your pre op liquid diet? I want to eat a hard pretzel so bad right now. But I won't!

These are the times that try mens souls!

I didn't cheat. Knowing that the pre op diet made my surgery safer by shrinking my liver was enough incentive not to cheat.

I'll be honest....I cheated.  I went to 2 Christmas parties....early in my pre-op.  I also didn't always have clear liquids.  I did strained veggie soup.  I also did strained chicken Fajita soup.

I had no issues and the surgeon didn't say a word.

The pretzel totally isn't worth it.  The processed white flour will spike your insulin something fierce, which in turn will trigger cravings and hunger and make staying the course exponentially harder.  With that said, about mid way through my pre op diet I went to Five Guys and had a cheeseburger.  Weird thing is- I don't like cheeseburgers, but that day it was a huge craving.  Not proud of it, and spent a lot of time reflecting on why it happened and what I needed to do to improve future situations.  

I didn't have a pre-op diet for my revision, but I will tell you that right now you are experiencing the famous Carb Monster.  It wants you so badly to eat some processed flour, sugar, or something you're not supposed to have so that it can kick your cravings into high gear!  Turn around and run the other way!  

If you want the salt, maybe try a dill pickle instead?

If your liver doesn't shrink, they cut you open, but then close you up without doing the VSG.  You wake up hours later, hospitalized just the same, but you wasted everyone's time and got nothing to shown for it except scars and hospital bills.

Still think that pretzel is worth it?

No, I did not cheat in anyway. And I'm going to be real blunt here, it's incredibly stupid to do so.

 

Do you know anyone this has happened to or is it just an old wives tale.  It would be so irresponsible for a surgeon to open someone up.  The risk of infection and other complications...

Yes, I know of actual cases where this happened, but I don't know the people personally.  I should perhaps point out that I work in a hospital system that does bariactric surgery so I receive more information than is normally available.

There's no way to test for the situation prior to opening and it would be much more irresponsible to proceed under dangerous conditions.  The risk of infections are present whether any further step is taken or not, so nothing has changed there or it's less because nothing was done inside.  The risk of complications are minimum just for opening and closing.  They are far less than if a procedure were done.  In either case, a well run surgery center is working to eliminate both of those situations for all patients.

Bottom line, eating a pretzel now isn't worth the risk.  Pay the price now for the reward later.

 

 

It was hard but I didn't cheat.  By the time I really wanted to cheat, I was close to surgery date, and I didn't want to do anything that would add risk to the surgery.  Keep your focus on the goal, and tough it out.  You can do it, and you'll be so glad you did.

Carol