The Stricture

Today I had my endoscopy.  Here's the "before" picture of the bottom of my stomach pouch.  Notice how there really isn't a visible opening for food/drink to exit my pouch in a forward direction.  No wonder I was throwing up so much!

Here's the picture after they stretched out the anastomosis (the connection between my stomach and small intestine).  Note the comparatively giant hole for my food and drink to pass through.

This time the sedation they used was propofol.  The previous time they had used fentanyl and versed.  Propofol kicks versed's ass!  Except it did burn my arm all the way up to my elbow when it went in.  The CRNA scared me to death telling me how much it would hurt; it was much less pain than he described.  It was amazing how much more awake I was right after the procedure.  Although I did feel rather drunk.  And my awesome friend and chauffeur for the day, Erin, told me I said some pretty interesting stuff after the procedure.  Most of which I don't remember.  Good times, good times.

So the rest of the day has been awesome.  I probably should have taken a nap or something after the propofol, but I wasn't really tired until later this evening.  They told me I could eat soft foods right away, which was totally unexpected.  I thought they would tell me to stay on liquids for a bit longer, or to move to pureed foods if I was lucky.  I drank a whole bottle of water (and it didn't take me 3 hours) right away.  Then, I started off with some apple sauce, and it was incredible the difference in how it felt going down.  That made it painfully obvious that I have been absolutely miserable for the past 3 weeks, and that was not a part of normal expected recovery.  After no problems with the apple sauce and more water, I tried a piece of cheese.  No problems there.  So then some Spaghetti O's, something else nice and soft.  No issues!  I was so excited.  Then when I went to a baby shower this evening, I was able to eat 2 meatballs.  So cool:  not only did I eat a new food, I was able to eat food with everyone else, something I have not been able to do in 5 long weeks!  It's very awkward to stand around drinking water or a protein shake (or nothing because you can't stop puking) when everyone else is eating, fyi.  And tonight I had some scrambled eggs with sausage!  I can see so many more options will be open to me.  With all these recipes I've been finding, I can't wait to cook up some good stuff!  I'd better hit the grocery store!

Optimistic...  :)