I think my pouch is f'ed up!!!

I am making an emergency appointment with my WLS, cause I am just gaining wieght and not eating just drinking coffee (5 cups a day) and I drink water, green tea, Crystal Light all the time. 

     Lately  I have been throwing up and my WL just stopped at 8 months, and I may joke around about my cracker addiction but I really dont eat that many and I was really working hard at the gym( Ihave slowed down a lot because of O.T). Yesterday I sat down for dinner and ate like 8 wings. So I think that something really wrong with me, the last few times I met with my WLS he said that I was fine and he refused to check my pouch. I also told them that it feels like food stays just above the pouch, then I get bloated and after taking like 4 laxitives I feel normal.

  So I am just here pulling out my last few strands of hair trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with my pouch. 

    Has this happened to anyone on the board???

DX Where are you????

I bet he's on the Quixotic WLS site and that he'll be back here, too.

He'll tell you the same things, but in a more articulate fashion.

Bro, The fact that you are gaining weight and not eating is puzzeling. There is a web site called my daily plate: http://www.thedailyplate.com/  It's free and  with it you can track exactly what you have eaten and the calories that go with it. When i started gaining weight someone told me about the site and I discovered I had started some bad habits without really knowing it. Now I seem to have my weight stabelizied, which is better, but I'm still struggling to loose that last 20 pounds. Anyway, I'd start there, at least it will give you more information to take to the Dr. I struggled with constipation badly for a long time. I found that apples and oatmeal really helped. Also use some Metamuscle or something like it. Get off the laxatives as soon as possible. Your colon gets"addicted" to them and pretty soon you can't have a BM without useing them first.  Do you throw up after you eat? If so, it could be a stricture. I had that happen and needed to get that taken care of. I'll describe more on that if you want. Keep me posted. I'm no Dx but I'll help all I can. Good luck. Doug

I don't understand; how can you be "not eating" in one paragraph and "ate like 8 wings" in the next paragraph?  I'm not claiming that 8 wings is too much (it would be a lot for me right now, but who knows in a year or more?) but claims that you're only taking in fluids but are still gaining weight either indicates something that needs medical attention right away, or that your record keeping of your food intake is faulty.  Try keeping a food diary for a few days, and write down everything you eat as soon as you eat it.  This can often reveal eating habits that may need to be improved. How many crackers do you eat during the day?  If you limit yourself to one serving (read the label) per day, I can't imagine that would be bad.  But if you just graze all day from an open box of crackers (or chips or anything high fat/high carb), you're going to be defeating the purpose of the pouch, and end up taking in more calories and the wrong kind of calories than you should.  At my surgeon's practice, we were EXPLICITLY warned about developing a "cracker" habit: it's one of the "Rules of Highly-Ineffective Post-op RNY Non-Losers"!!! Maybe what you're describing as "food stays just above the pouch" is different from what comes to my mind when I read it, but I though you were describing the often long-lasting full feeling that I get when I eat solid foods, especially meats.  Maybe you're describing a stricture (it may not be a complete stricture since you appear to be able to drink fluids).  It might be that the stoma of your pouch has become smaller than is optimal, and that makes solid foods sit in your pouch even longer than they should.  That would also explain the nausea you experience after eating real food.  Soft foods like crackers can still slide through.  Enlarging the stoma is a relatively simple endoscopic procedure. It's probably a good idea to share what you're written here with your surgeon. /Steve

Bro,

I've always read your mails and it seems like you may need to

1) change doctors,  and if that doesn't work...

2) go extreme - cut out all simple carbs like flour and sugar AND even cut sugar free stuff. The news now is saying that even people who take in the sugar free stuff are getting fat too.

3) exercise extreme and local - you're probably a group person and love the gym environment. That is great, but this is an emergency. Exercise when you first get up in your own house or your neighborhood.

Hope this helps,

Dave

 

I would also like to venture a guess. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're family and friends probably think you're not eating a lot now. Right?

They may have you fooled into thinking you have a low calorie intake, when it reality it may be pretty high.

At any rate, this is not business as usual. This will take cutting food and increasing exercise maybe as much as 30% beyond what you've done since you stopped losing. And if you get off this plan for more than 1-2 days, consider it blown.

Do not get off the plan!

Hello My brother... I hate to say it....but I think you need to do a Fitday, or some other calorie counter....and be brutally honest about what goes in you.... You would be suprised at how the calories add up... And reexamine you choices....wings are a high fat food....they taste good....but they are really not a good choice...you know that skin is just loaded with fat... Ok now that was one issue, lets talk about the bloating.... If I offend you please forgive me,.... but I hate that bloated feeling, and I can not stand to feel like i'm constipated,....it will ruin my ******g day... You seem to be really energetic....but for me that gets in the way at the table....I have to clam down, and have no conversation, no distraction, and in a good seated position.... Ok, If I go to a resturant...I do not east as well...if I sit in a booth..forget it...the food does not settle....if i'm with friends, and they wanna talk while eating....I will swallow air, and it hurt me....1 teaspoon of any dairy, and I blowup....If I have to eat in the car....I will be miserable... So, check yourself...decrease the activity at the dinner table....and watch if you are swallowing air....talking and eating, does not do well for me.... this is a big thing with the family around....if I had family around the table at dinned every night....i would suck the barrell of a gun.... Ok chat back... russ

I agree with ND on methods for getting your weight loss back under control.  We all know RNY doesn't do it all by itself, it still takes a large degree of will power to get the weight off and keep it that way.  Re-analyse your daily food intakes, exercise and other environmental factors like family and friends that might misdirect you into going back to old habits. That aside... I don't know what you're eating each day... but if you're eating chicken wings, It's not at all surprising you're throwing it up.  Sounds like you're not getting the dumping syndrome that most people experience and get cramps, sweat and feel like ****  Instead, you're tossing it back up  because all the fat content in chicken wings.  Theres no acids to break down the fat and/or sugars (if they're coated wings), then it lands in your small intestine and your body goes "hell no" and you blow chunks.  Lean proteins are the key... lean chicken breast, lean fish/tuna, lean beefs (in moderation), lean turkey breast.   Also stop drinking so much coffee *smack*... 5 cups of dripped coffee is about 750mg of caffeine...holy cow.  Caffeine is a diaretic and dehydrates you!!! If your weight loss surgeon doesn't want to work with you, time to change... I'd recommend you get a second opinion and have your stoma checked out.  It definately doesn't sound like you have a stricture, because it sounds like you have the opposite... your stoma got stretched and now theres no restriction from the food hitting your intestine... so its making your throw up quickly because it has no time to digest with your saliva and probably not chewing well enough if it sits there in the pouch and doesn't move without the aid of laxitives.  If this is the case, you can get a revision done to fix the stoma.  But, your surgeon needs to determine this...

Excellent points, but since you mentioned coffee, I wanted to mention the following: > Caffeine is a diaretic and dehydrates you!!! There's an interesting article in today's NY Times Health Section "Really? The claim: caffeine causes dehydration".  I always knew that the line "caffeine dehydrates you" was bogus, just from my knowledge of pharmacology (caffeine's diuretic actions are so weak as to be virtually NIL), and this column cites two of the many recent empirical studies that have refuted this.  Of course, like all old-wives'-tales, this favorite factoid is never going to die, because many women--er, I mean "people"-- feel they've achieved a moral victory by quitting caffeine. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/nutrition/04real.html /Steve