Here we go again. I have gained just over a kilo since my last weigh in according to Mr Patels scales. The thing is I wanted to gain more weight as my bum was not covering my coccyx and I felt I could do with some. So I should be delighted.
Am I? Nooooooo. The voices in my head are at it bigtime. I have 2 archetypes - one is for people being a decent healthy weight. The other is Miss Anorexia. Miss Anorexia starts at me:
‘you might regain too much’
‘you are looking fat’ (what the ….???? - me registering surprise!)
‘your clothes won’t fit you’
‘well, now you can’t feel skinny anymore can you? ‘ (taunting little minx)
‘you are’nt really going to eat that are you? (accusingly …and just as I was enjoying the prospect of a Peanut Kit Kat!)
No sooner than she is done than the voice of Mrs Reason appears:
‘ Your health is more important than your weight’
‘You have lovely curves now’
‘Don’t be silly of course you won’t regain more than you want’
‘You are 40 years old and you don’t need the body of a teenager’
‘The odd chocolate won’t hurt you … just enjoy it’
‘Look where you came from… you’d have been delighted to be size 16′
‘Stop whining, just think of others with WLS who are battling real regains. Be grateful. ‘
And so it goes. It’s quite tiresome. It’s worse when these two appear together and engage in a battle of wills. The bickering in my head is quite a phenomena. I’d make a brilliant candidate for a physojournal on the root of weight related disorders. Ideally if I could only banish the first little cow I’d be okay. The thing is the psyche is a complex thing and even though I try to ignore little Miss Anorexia, she always comes back with a vengence. As you can see I can’t stand her even though unfortunately she is mine. She ruins my day. She whispers in my ear about cutting back on my food, she makes me insecure because I know some of what she says is only too true.
For example I do only feel thin when I am VERY VERY thin. Anything normal and I still feel fat more often than not, despite attempts at being logical. When I was very very thin after my bowel surgery I felt it for the first time in my life. It was physical. But I also had days where I had terrible fears I would fall into the abyss of endless weightloss. It’s always a double edged sword for me really. I hoped sometime I might find peace with this, but it’s looking depressingly unlikely. At 57 kilo’s I am hardly in the throes of a massive regain, but the thought scares me so much. These are old fears leftovers from the years of regain after dieting ’success’.
Anyway, that aside I saw Mr P as I mentioned. We discussed some interesting stuff and he looked at my dexas. Did not seem overly concerned but then he is a calm person generally. Thank god for those Dexa’s of mine. We hovered over vitamin requirements and the fact that the most likely scenario is I will need Vit D therapy. I had hoped I might escape the bone metabolism hassles with the DS despite reading Scopinaro’s report on it carefully & despite my genetics. It makes me laugh this because of course deep down I knew I would face this. It was pretty inevitable. I am shockingly fine with it. I surprise myself somewhat. I think it is because I know the thing is being monitored properly. The labs will determine my course of action.
I’m researching my options on the vitamin front. I have a good idea of what my experiment will be - it’s a case of how much D really…so I am waiting for the labs I started to take Mellies formula of Magnesium, D & citrate. I have been viciously constipated but feel that is because of the V4L which I still take.
When I started my DS road… the whole vitamin thing scared me shitless. It seemed so overwhelming. Now I am really not phased. I think vitamin deficiencys are only life threatening in the event they remain unmonitered. It’s not the deficiency that kills, it’s the lack of awareness and proper follow up care and labs. I’m very aware that we have a strongly selective malabsorption and that my new plan for myself will be factoring this in. At the same time I don’t want to lose the benefits of the finer minerals. It’s going to be a balancing act, but I am confident I’ll find a very good balance.
Aside from the vile constipation my bm’s are doing a once or twice a day stint on the throne. Very normal behaviour for a DS so I am pleased.
I did have a laugh the other day. It has been so cold and so I hiked the old electric blanket out and got it working again. That night I climbed int my warm bed and let the fuzzy feelings of warmth and comfort drift over me. So relaxed was I that I made a surreptious attempt to avoid having to run to the loo in the cold and I let off in bed as silently as I could. To no avail. Silence is one thing but a DS fonkie is just that. My hubby turned around making his usual puking noises in jest. ‘Good god - that fart is boiled solid’, he said! We both had a good laugh. So there you go - electric blankets and little DS let offs are not a wise move. 
Home life is very busy…I am still working on the house . I am also researching the DS churning over new abstracts in my mind. It still looks like a very fine surgery and I’m quite pleased that my hunch to roll with it all those years ago when so little data was available is still holding firm. I do however find there are times I scare myself witless with the research. My current witless scary stuff is that I have been looking into the hormones of the gut - oh lord - it is one complex mother going in on there. I am aware that I know sweet booger all about these finer matters…I’m not convinced many of the surgeons want to venture into the finer field of gut hormones either - though some such as Mr P have. The thing that scares me is the relative lack of knowledge we have about how these work and how we might be affecting them in the context of rearranging our organs. On the other hand I remind myself that longerterm DSers seem just fine…so it must be ok?
It takes me hours to get my head around simple medical sentences. I am such a dimwit really. It can be frustrating sometimes I re-read a paragraph and have to research words that are frankly unspellable and barely pronouncible, just to get the gist.
I am going to update my website. It needs new pics of me and it needs a broader vision. Things have changed and updates must be made. I want to include other DSers experiences with the DS…when I wrote the site it was just me here. But now there are many of us and I think it is right to expand the site for all of us and make it less of my individual ramblings. So my DS friends please please send me your stories and pics. I would be most grateful.
