Sometimes I am slow....

This entire week I have been having issues with diet #2, the full liquid diet. Just so we're clear, a full liquid diet is not just liquids. I am to have 3 "meals" a day consisting of 1/4 cup of either a cream soup, pudding, grits, or oatmeal. But for some reason, every time I ate my "meal" I was in a good amount of pain. It felt like I was swallowing a bowling ball and then when it hit my stomach I had stabbing pains.

It finally dawned on my today what the problem. One of the things that they told us when in our pre-op class was that we had to wait a half hour after we drank to eat anything. And then we had to wait a half hour after the meal before we had anything to drink again. At the time I found this pretty odd, and then somehow it slipped my mind.

I am not sure why this just dawned on me today, but it did. So, I waited a half hour after drinking before I ate. The meal seemed to do much better. Now that being said, the pain was not completely gone. It was just a LOT less of it.

Then I remembered something else. They also told us that we needed to eat slow. This is NOT something that I am good at. I have always been one to shovel in food. I attribute that to high school. I was always one that didn't want to waste time eating when I could be hanging out with my friends.

So, step number two was to slow down my eating. I had a 1/4 cup of oatmeal and it took my about 20 minutes to finish it. Weird, eh? But I would take about half a spoonful, then set down my spoon and wait a few minutes. I repeatedly this several times, until all my food was gone. I feel that it went a lot better. Again, the pain was still there, but it was a lot more manageable.

Oh...and one last thing. The gas that I had anytime I drank anything has also decreased greatly. This makes me very happy. :)