I have an anecdote there: I got this medication that didn't help so much, so one of the nurses (bless her) switched me to something else, and that worked great. This after exclaiming:

But this stuff relaxes your stomach! You don't have that anymore, I will give you something else.

The stuff I got after that worked great. The next time they wanted to give me that other stuff again, but I and TG protested heavily and I got the other stuff again. They also turned down the epidural (took away one of the opiates) to help with the nausea.

It never went away completely.

Now that I've removed certain foods from my diet (wheat-products and milk) and have stopped taking the Plaquenil I have a lot less nausea. It hasn't gone away completely (yet), however, it has gone away a lot. Instead of mostly nauseous with some nausea-free hours, the reverse happens most of the time. I only have the last week or two to look at, so I won't yet do a little victory dance. It looks good, though, and that makes me happy.

And when something annoys me, I go fix it.

So, the food-plan! I've probably said it before and tried it before, but I'll just do it all again, because one of these days it'll stick.

In Perfect Diet Tracker¹ I can track my caloric intake, as well as protein, carbs, sugars, sodium, fat and fibers. I mostly care about the caloric intake, the protein and the fibers, and I make sure to keep an eye on the rest as well.
Because of the surgery I don't absorb protein (and some vitamins and minerals) as well as before. Some people do, however, I don't.
This means that I have to take in more protein than other people with my age, weight, lifestyle and gender. I aim for 60 grams per day, I have a fairly slow life.
I also like to eat enough fiber, because I noticed my tummy gets very happy with that, so I aim for 35 grams of fiber.
My total caloric intake currently doesn't do it. I want to get around 1600 kcal per day, which still doesn't qualify as 'good' in my book, but I have to start somewhere, and seeing how now on most days I float around 1000-1200 with an occasional 1600+ day in between, I'd say I better not overdo it. I might explode.

I eat about 6 times per day, sometimes a little more.
I've done some calculations and decided that I need to go for meals that contain roughly 150 - 250 kcal per meal. I'll come in too short, but I do also drink and can add (mostly) kcal with that, yay!
Chopping the Big Plan into smaller pieces makes it all less daunting. Also, I do really have to eat about 6 times per day, so it makes a lot of sense to approach each meal somewhat separately.

I say somewhat, because with tracking my meals the way I do now (logging everything right after I eat / drink it) I can adjust the following meals. If I notice after three meals that I come in short on the protein side, I can toss in an egg or some extra cheese. If I notice I need more fiber, I'll toss in some more vegetables. This does mean a near constant adjusting but it also allows for some more flexibility per meal.

Right now I mostly track my meals to see what things I eat, what I like, what goes easy and what stays in and / or causes no issues.
I had to eliminate all bread, pizza, cookies, pasta etc (wheat) and that does provide me with yet another challenge. However, since I did, I feel much better and have had a lot less tummy issues than before.

From tracking I've discovered that the following already obeys my 'rules':

• one portion of mashed potatoes (instant), with a little grated cheese and a hard boiled egg
  this qualifies as a pretty serious meal to me, and clocks in around 260 kcal, score!
• two rice-crackers with black-olive tapenade (or peanut-butter)
  pretty salty (not the pb), so can't have it too much (makes me thirsty), but tasty, and around 150 / 160 kcal. as an extra bonus, easy to make, woohoo!
• one portion of Quaker's oatmeal, prepared with water, no extra additions
  around 150 kcal, so if I add some dried fruit, it'll go even higher, yay!
• one portion of yoghurt and one high fiber OJ drink
  around 160 kcal, added bonus of extra protein and extra fiber, good breakfast :D
• one glass of Soya macchiato (drink)
  around 150 kcal, has protein and I can spread drinking it easily
• one hand of mixed nuts and dried fruits (about 1oz)
  around 120 kcal, so not entirely sufficient but it does really well on the fiber and protein part

I've only got a handful so far, so I want to spend more time trying out things and looking for easy snacks on the internet. When I find something that works, I'll experiment with it some more so I'll have variation and add a bit more oomph to it. For now I make the instant mashed potatoes with water, adding some cream to it will boost the kcal and the protein (and hopefully not the bad fats too much because I don't want to clog up my arteries...)

It feels like juggling most of the time, keeping everything tracked and in the right amounts and seeing what works and finding out it doesn't. Food high in calories usually also as either a lot of fat or a lot of sugar, and both make me ill in large enough amounts (not so very large, really).
I don't think this will ever really become routine, though I do hope that eventually I don't have to track as much and check as much and try as much. I'd like to do more on a day than 'dealing with food'. For now, I'll stick with it though.

If all else fails I do have few recipes for that Christmas dinner...

¹ Last year I got a license for Perfect Diet Tracker which, apart from running on multiple OSs (woohoo!), helps track food-intake. I briefly flirted with HealthNut and though I still like that program too, it didn't offer me enough data / settings / feedback. At least, not now, I need all the info I can get basically.

While sitting in the grass I thought about Michael's post about routines. Like Michael I have worked on a drawing routine and routines in general. My life in general got pretty thrown upside down with the surgery and I still feel I haven't quite got my life back in order. Ever since surgery everything revolves around food and eating, or as my boyfriend recently said 'You're either preparing food, or trying to get and keep it in.'. I had little choice but to just do exactly that, as part of recovery. I make food, I eat, I drink, and I try to do things around that. Any type of routine I have, revolves around food.

Recently I've had this itch. I want to do more and especially do more drawing. Despite having a bit of trouble getting it into my daily routine, I want to, I have to do more drawing, more creative stuff. I want to get back to that situation where my schedule and routines don't revolve around food and eating, but the eating becomes a part of the routine itself, without being the routine itself. I do try to make food-preparation as creative as possible, by trying new recipes and making a nice lunch for the days I go to work. But it's still about food and eating.
I need working routines, I'd love some inspiring rituals and I want some meaningful purpose in my life.

I need more than just food.

Today I read a blogpost by Priscilla Gilman that hit home. I feel pretty exhausted today, which may exlpain why I cried, but it's not just that.
The same thing happened when I read Michael Nobbs' Beany (#1, 2 and 3). On page 13 of #1 Michael writes about that story with the frog in cold water, slowly heating it up so the frog doesn't notice it gets boiled alive. I had used the same example only days before, and he then wrote about his life getting smaller and smaller. I cried there too.

I've been ill for much longer than I've had my diagnosis. About two years ago I got the rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis. A little over a year ago I learned about my genetic defect, resulting in the removal of my stomach. Six months ago, after they took it out, I learned I already had cancer in my stomach (I had it taken out as a prevention, damnit). Yesterday I learned that my terrible attacks of pain in my big toes probably mean I also have gout.
Tomorrow my doctor will call me with some bloodtest-results, because I just keep feeling so bad. The never ending fatigue has to come from somewhere, as does the hairloss, the flaky skin, the fuzzy head, the insomnia. Most easily shove it towards 'stress' or 'mental issues', but I don't buy that.

Most days I feel I'm running on sheer willpower, not human energy.

And it's getting harder to summon up that will.

And people keep on telling me I look great...

Today I made a most excellent discovery. Gordita's (small, thicker tortilla wraps) work really well as a pizza-bottom. I tossed on some tomato sauce, chopped up veggies and mushrooms, added shredded cheese and popped the whole thing in the oven for 15 minutes.

Best pizza I ever had.

So I made another one just now. Two pizza's in one day. I like to spoil myself.

If all goes well I get to go home tomorrow.

Ofcourse, I don't know for sure until a couple of hours from now. But it sure tasted good :)

To make sure I've healed well, they'll have a contrast-photo taken this friday after which I can start eating again (provided it did indeed heal). My sister, who had her chats in her hospital today, told me they don't do the photo in the other hospital. Not all leaks show up on the photo and they want to prevent wrong-diagnosis. Personally I think you can just keep the info of 'it doesn't always show' in the back of your mind, but maybe they lost the key to the backdoor, you never know.

This morning the catheter finally got removed (piece of cake) and due to my IV breaking again (clogging up) they removed that temporarily and unhooked me from the feeding-tube. And then... I could shower!
I washed my hair and cleaning the wound with water. I have ripped a little skin at the bottom, probably due to the vomiting due to the nose-tube and such. I noticed the area burning a bit the days before. It looks all good now, still swollen. My whole abdomen seems very swollen in general, but this will go away in while.

Apart from the recurring nausea, I feel pretty good. The painmeds work and last night I got a sleeping pill, slept a few hours in a row.
Today I walked around the 'block' (the floor) a bit, and it went fine. Very tired afterwards though.

I'll try to post an update tomorrow or friday again, in general, in all looks really good.

However, as the title suggests, yes, she's offline a bit again; and voluntarily (*gasp*!) aswell. The truth of it is that it's more of a practical nature than anything else: tomorrow she'll be having a few exams and photographs taken to determine the function of her digestive tracts and such which will leave her belongings un-attended for at least a large part of the day. Now, apparently, of all the stuff in her bedside drawers so far, her EeePC getting stolen by hospital goblins is her most acute concern. It's so pretty and shiny and ... ... my precioussssss...

cough erm; well, in any case; I'll be keeping it safely here at home for the moment until returning it to her tomorrow , safe and sound (I promise!... No, really !).

So far on the hi-tech side of things; the bio-tech side of things seems to be progessing aswel, though not without a few side-effects. The epidural had been turned off and with an NaCL flushing of the system , things seemed to be safe enough to remove it entirely. Things were allright up to a few hours later when she started having side-pains that she can't really identify with anything in particular (yet). On another note; she's identified which of the many different anti-nauseousness medications seems to actually work and has gotten the resident nurse to supply that kind again (though not without difficulty - it really feels at times that without doctor-prescriptions and regular fresh batteries stuck inside them they have no autonomous functions in them whatsoever.. though , to be fair, there's a number of 'cluefull' exceptions, I'm sure. Darn, I didnt mean to have a period right in the middle of a parenthesized comment which is now becoming so long that it really warrants having been made into it's own sentence in the first place.. Just by continuing to type I of course am just making the problem worse so here it is.. ).

There, made it into the next paragraph. So, to continue the story: she hopes to be finding out what might be giving her those side-pains sooner, rather than later. They might be connected with the light pneumonia that she's been diagnosed with earlier and from what she told me her mother told her (still with me?), a side-pain that high up seems to correspond with pains that a pneumonia can be the cause of. It seems (though i forgot to actually ask) that her fever hasnt been bothering her as much as it did earlier or might even have subsided; as she didnt look as tired as before even tough she said she hadn't slept much over the last two days. And then there's the fact that at least one rather unhandy piece of tubing will be removed somewhere tomorrow aswel which should improve both her comfort and her mobility quite a bit.

Well, that's it for now. Expect some more tomorrow; perhaps even by the lady herself!
Till then; keep commenting!