Gastric Bypass Truth

I saw my PCP this week, and we were discussing life after both gastric bypass and gall bladder removal.

Gallstones are one of the most common gastric bypass surgery complications. It seems that up to one third of all gastric bypass patients will develop gallstones in the months following surgery. Wow. The rapid weight loss, combined with the drastically lower amount of fat and calories in our diet seem to be to blame.

A few things are different now that my gall bladder is history. I’ve noticed that I dump easier, and on more foods. I even dump on protein shakes. I’m tolerating fewer foods.

Then again, I’m tolerating other foods that I wasn’t before. For example, my 7 year old has been sick, and a friend from church baked him some cookies. My favorite kind – homemade chocolate chip. So I just had to have one, figuring a few minutes of bilss was worth the misery that would follow.

Only the misery didn’t follow. Which made me utterly powerless in the face of this temptation! I ate three whole chocolate chip cookies over the course of the day yesterday.

But the omelet I had for breakfast this morning is making me very queasy. Where’s the justice in that?

Then, there is this yucky burning-pouch sensation I get when my pouch is empty. Not always, but enough. A single saltine cracker takes it away, but doggone it, I was trying to stop those. My PCP says it’s because the glands that produce acids for digestion are now closer to Pouchie since the gall bladder isn’t in the way. It’s normal.

I feel like I’m smack dab back in the days when I first started solid foods. I have to keep trying things to see if they’re going to make me sick or not. Fortunately, my safest bets so far seem to be low-fat meats like seafood. Cheese still works well, too. These are good things – the things I should be sticking to anyway.

We’ll just have to ban chocolate chip cookies from the house!