What are Foamies?

I've been so blessed to have a pretty easy surgery and recovery.  But on Saturday, I had the strangest thing happen.  I was eating dinner and having some stir fry with little salad shrimp in it.  Everything was going well, as it had in the past.  All of a sudden I felt immediately full.  It was almost as if my stomach was so full and starting to lurk up into my throat.  I can only think that perhaps I swallowed a little piece of shrimp without chewing the heck out of it.  If I could make myself throw up, I knew I'd get that awful chest pain to stop.  No such luck.  SORRY - This might start to get gross.  But I was able to hack up what looked like foam.  No food.  I took a sip of water thinking that would perhaps push down whateve was stuck.  But that little sip of water was nothing compared to the half hour of gagging up this foam stuff. Is that what the foamies are?  What is it?   After a good nights rest, I was back to usual yesterday.  Stuck with soup for the most part. Kelly  (I need a different chat room handle - I think my girls are going to come up with a snappy name for me)

Yep, that was foamies!   It helped me the best to have someone whack me, really hard, repeatedly between the shoulder blades when I would get stuff stuck at first.  Worked better for me than water.

Hi Kelly~ In my experience, that was the notorious 'foamies'. Even at almost 3 years out, if I don't take care in chewing and swallowing, I occasionally get the 'foamies'. Good lesson to chew, chew, chew!

I had my first foamies experience at the VA hospital about 3 weeks after surgery.  It was awful!  I had to take my mom there to have a surgery and I sat in the bathroom the whole time. I dont know what the foamies are either but they suck!

Some of us don't foam, we "slime".  Same deal, more or less.  But it's from getting stuck on something too big for your stoma.  Sending it back out the way it went in is the quickest way I've found to get relief.  And fortunately, after doing that a few times, I've learned to be more careful!  So it's rare now.  Drinking water was the one way I could confirm that I had something stuck, 'cuz water wouldn't even go through.  Some people swear by a swallow of Diet Coke to help un-stick you, but I'd rather send the offending bit down the plumbing.  Didn't like Diet Coke even BEFORE WLS...

You are right.  I will never, ever do that again.  Thanks for the tips on how to get over it.

OH MN is the best. 

I'll testify to the Coke, but for me, it's real Coke, not diet.  One gulp of Coke, a little pressure in the pouch, and just like Old Faithful....up she comes!!!  I'm all better.  (What a pleasant lunch time visual!!) I always have an "emergency" Coke in the frig.