First bad experience post-op

Yesterday I came home from work and sat down to eat my dinner - 4 oz. of homemade split pea soup and 3 crackers with fat free cream cheese. None of this is "new food" for me. I ate and about an hour later started feeling terrible - like I was completely plugged up from mid-chest down to my belly. Standing, sitting, laying down - nothing made it better. Lots of belching and a little slime came up but nothing much. After two hours I finally had to make myself vomit. Today things felt pretty irritated and haven't really eaten much at all today - 2 servings of soup. I had never dumped or vomited since surgery so this came as quite a surprise at 7 1/2 weeks out. Any ideas? Eating too fast? Not chewing enough? Really would like to avoid this in the future but don't have much idea what caused it in the first place. Steve

Oh Steve. I'm so sorry you are not feeling well. I don't know why you might have dumped, I would think that you probably didn't chew well enough. But that would just be a guess. Rachelle

Hey Steve, Just checking in and glad to see you got over that alright. Sorry I can't be much help here cause I'm not RNY but if I eat too fast I get the same symptoms but they only last about 10 - 15 mins. the funny thing about my journey so far is I never thought the hardest part would be to learn to SLOW DOWN when I eat. Hope everything is well. ...................................Paul

Thanks Paul - doing good. Like the new avatar! Steve

Hey Steve, You know at 11 months and 3 days out I can tell you from experience sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason to why you dumped. Sometimes it is the same food you have eaten a dozen times before. i personally think it has to do with several factors: what else you have eaten that day, the consistancy of that food, the amount of water you have eaten, if you are congeted (post nasal drip can be a bee-otch!), etc... My suggestion to you is this: go with your gut. If you think you ate too fast, you probably did. If your sitation had been me my guess would have been that I ate my crackers all at the same time as opposed to nibbles throughout my meal. The crackers are very dry and sometimes clog the hole going out of my pouch. This is a big problem for me with any carbs that are dry like crackers, potatos, and breads. They absorb fluids and make a paste which sometimes needs more water. My suggestion for next time is this: Break up your crackers into tiny pieces in your soup and drink a glass of hot tea with the soup. I know they tell you not to drink with your meal. I could NEVER do that, so I turned to hot herbal teas that I sipped small amounts while i ate. This helped lubricate drier foods. It is totally not necessary anymore, months down the road, but it was a god sent. Especially the flavored (but sugar free) ones like Lipton's apple cinnamon, etc... If you feel like you are not getting your food down because of the tea, please don't do it. But one meal, one try... know what I mean. If you get this down and it doesn't work, cut out a cracker or even two. The carbs will make a return to your diet soon enough that you dont' need to waist time missing them.

Thanks Cam.. always appreciate the wisdom you have to offer! In retrospect I'm thinking I probably did eat them too fast and didn't chew them well enough. Steve

If you notice that it keeps happening and it gets to a point to where, you are unable to swallow you saliva you could have a stricture it happened to me around the 6 weeks out.,