Tales of the unexpected

Well, it's been an interesting day. On Thursday last week I posted about the patterns emerging in my eating and drinking since the last fill. Well, I have a change to make. I said that I had been finding it difficult to drink, but eating is OK. I also said that drinking was a little easier AFTER eating. Now, I know I am not supposed to drink very soon after eating, but lately I have been finding this is the only way to successfully get much fluid down. Today, I experienced the down side of drinking after eating.....

I'd drunk half a litre of Ribena by about mid-morning. This sounds impressive, but it had taken me two hours or so of very slow sipping to get it down. I then managed some breakfast mid-morning - All Bran with milk. Around lunch time I tried some more liquid but found it really hard to get down. I had loads of gurgling in the back of my throat, burping and bubbling and general noisiness! It also felt as though the liquid was getting 'stuck' in the back of my throat and not really progressing down to my stomach (either of them!) like it should be. I tried several times more but gave up. Around 1pm this afternoon I ate a whole sandwich (slowly, of course), and was quite pleased. I then made the mistake of trying to have a little dink immediately afterwards. On a few attempts at doing this recently it has been moderately successful. I sipped my way through about 0.1 litres of Ribena (about half a small glass) - and then felt the slime coming on.......

I tried to suppress it and kept swallowing - but it was having none of it. Slime kept building up in my mouth and as fast as I swallowed it, more arrived. I left it too late to make a dash for the toilets but fortunately my office mate had left for the day and I had the room to myself. I locked the door from the inside in case anyone walked in, and proceeded to spit this saliva out into my used plastic breakfast tub!!! It was horrible, but worse was to come. After about five solid minutes of spitting saliva into my pastic tub I started to feel really sick. Next thing I knew, I was vomiting masses of Ribena into the dangerously full plastic tub!! This is the first occasion that I have actually regurgitated anything I have swallowed since getting banded and it was not an experience I want to repeat.

After settling down, wiping my mouth and generally composing myself, I headed off to a meeting. When I returned I decided to telephone my nurse at Healthier Weight to get her advice on what to do. She wasn't there but I left a message. Later on, Healthier Weight got back to me and made an appointment for me to see the nurse at the clinic tomorrow morning. I am so pleased and relieved that I am going to be able to explain all this to her and hopefully make some progress. I expect she will suggest a small aspiration and I will be happy if that is the case. I have held out until now, thinking that it might get better. I could persevere for longer in the hope that these odd symptoms might lessen, but what's the point of 'suffering' unecessarily? I want the band to work for me - in the context of living as near a normal life as I am able.

So starting tomorrow, it'll probably be back onto fluids and mush for another six days and then the waiting game starts all over again. I'l keep you posted! I recall reading a post on the UKGastricBand forum where an experienced bandit was explaining to an impatient novice how much trial and error there is in getting restriction levels right. She said something along the lines of "...and when you get near to your sweet spot - that's when the fun starts". Oh how right she was!!!