"Dad, you don't look so good".

Thank you Audrey. I am very concerned about deficiencies also. I just always seem to fall short on my calcium. I am gonna work on it.

My daughter would have said "Geez, you look like ****"

Don't do that again.

I agree on both counts Grim.

No smirks here, it's too painful a memory.  My medicine cabinet has a bottle of NOW brand chewable papaya enzyme tablets that help break down the protein in stuck meat.  (Adolf meat tenderizer is on the spice rack for emergencies but have never tried it).  I have needed the chewables maybe six times, they seemed to work well, are inexpensive, and should be used seldom.

Meat tenderizer is a great emergency idea. Thank you for that.

I use papaya extract -- you can buy a roll at a place like Vitamin Shoppe.  

I have only had to buy one roll -- and still have some two years in -- but man, that stuck feeling is MISERABLE.  

Well I hope you feel better. Never thought about the cast iron thing, so no advice to give you on that. Have you looked into getting your vitamins in a patch? Some people really like them & get good labs from them & they're on sale now, its advertised on the bottom of the site. I've recently tried them myself, I'm mostly using the sleep patch. I work a rotating shift & I did notice the difference. 

Don't screw up your vitamins, too many people get seriously sick when they start slacking off.

You're so right about that T. I'm really good about my daily vitamins, along with B12 and D3, But the big big one for me is getting the 2000 mg of calcium in. I'm always short by 500.

Maybe you should try the calcium patch & wear it to bed at night, at least you won't be eating right?, no need to worry about the iron thing as long as you ate it early enough that it'd be digested by the time you go to bed. Me I like my sweets, so I suck on bariatric advantage lemon chews at night.

Hey Gary, thanks for the post and for the reminder to us all and the newbies to CHEW CHEW CHEW!  Hope you are feeling better now and sorry you lost the PP tournament LOL LOL

I had chicken stuck ONCE, I was maybe 8 or 9 months post op (I think, its hard to remember back that far, ha ha).  And lucky I had read enough of being on here getting food stuck and that it will feel like a heart attack and the pain will be out of this world.  Well yes and yes!!  I am one of those people who can't puke now, I just get the lovely retching for hours and I mean hours.  My poor husband was beside himself with worry, he was ready to rush me to the hospital or call 911, through the pain and me pacing the house and lying down on the bathroom floor a couple of times I managed to tell him that if I need him or 911 I will let him know otherwise leave me alone with the pain. Mine lasted for hours, like four or five hours, I was sweating buckets and almost passed out from the pain, it was truly horrific, so I know this pain you speak of.  It really felt like a heart attack to me!  Your experience sounds exactly like mine, and since then it has never happened, I am so scared of feeling like that again that I super chew to water in my mouth and if I feel myself speeding up when I eat I talk myself back down to a slower pace.  Fear is a powerful thing!

As for the vitamins, like other posters I do this daily, I won't stray and it did take me months to find what I liked and what worked but now its routine. Before surgery I took multiple meds, and one I never forgot was my BP meds, so I look at this like that, I need these and must take.  Here's my daily timelines:

5am - Proferrin Iron pill with water when I wake up

9am - Two Chewable Centrum Silver Multivitamins, sublingual B12 melt on Mon/Wed/Fri's only (I also take a few other "female" vitamins)

Right after I take these I get out my cell phone and set the timer for 2.5 hours later

10:30am 1st calcium  chew + Vit D (I take the Bariatric Advantage 500mg Caramel chews) - set alarm again for 2. 5 hours later

1:00pm - 2nd calcium chew + Vit D - set alarm for 2.5 hours later

2:30pm - 3rd calcium chew + Vit D - set alarm for 2.5 hours later

4:00pm - 4th calcium chew - I take 4 calcium chews a day because there is a lot of osteoporosis in both sides of my family

All vits done by the time I pull in my driveway home at the end of my work day.  I have a desk job so setting alarms and having my pill container in my lunch bag at work is easy. 

On weekends although the times are adjusted as I like to sleep in its still the same timeline, many times I will be out grocery shopping and my phone alarm goes off and my hubby looks at me and goes "calcium time" too cute 

Hope that helps, good luck you can do it!