# After effects of Surgery



## Guest (Jan 31, 2017)

I'm not shy about sharing or talking about this because I believe every experience we have good or bad has the ability to help another. Four years ago my husband and I were both 150 lbs overweight. I moved from my home province to his in 2012. From a landscape of oceans and mountains to the prairies. I immediately felt a shift in my health.

My first taste of winter was -40ºC weather. That winter I went from 230 lbs to 265lbs and it freaked me out. I started to feel sicker. We bought an acreage the following summer and moved out of the city to a piece of property surrounded by farmers fields and no neighbours. I thought it was heaven but my health was deteriorating. Of course it was my weight. I had dieted for the last 20 years and it didn't and doesn't work. I thought I had no recourse so I went to my doctor and talked about bariatric surgery. It took me over a year to qualify for the surgery. There was the waiting list to get into the program and then many standards to uphold before they put you on the list for surgery. It's a great program and I believe more successful because it really prepares you for your new life.

I was stiil having bowel issues and would tell the doctors or other people that "it's kind of like IBS symptoms" but I didn't believe it was IBS. I thought it was my terrible diet.

Fast forward to after my surgery and I lost weight and lost it fast. 150 lbs in less than a year. I went down to 120 lbs and was scared because from the moment I got out of surgery I had increasing health problems. Pancreatitis 2 days later, gall bladder out 2 weeks later, I could not eat for 7 weeks as it made me so sick (I was put on IV nutrition and given fluids). I had thrush for close to a year. For 2 years I was in the hospital weekly. It went from several times a week to weekly to every couple of weeks. Now I am lucky as I can go from 3-6 months without an episode if I watch what I eat. I have had every test possible; seen internal medicine specialists and surgeons. Physically they could find nothing wrong with me. Blood tests show inflammation (unknown source but they keep pointing to my pancreas), I've grown nodules on my thyroid and my levels are low and I was suffering with chronic constipation and diarrhea.

I have learned to manage this. After a year I was tired of the thrush and learned about candida in the body and cleansed myself of it. Considering I was being kept alive by soda crackers, toast and tea it was really hard to cut all the starch out of my diet. But it worked and I started to feel better. It took a full year before I could eat moderate amounts without the thrush coming back. I took a lot of probiotics at that time. I also started to learn what I could and couldn't eat. It was a daunting process of eating something and getting sick and then wondering what on the plate made me so. I learned to eat one food at a time. Learned my triggers and eliminated foods until I was down to a small core list of foods that I can eat with no problems, some I can eat with occasional problems and others that are death.

Turns out once I got my flora balanced the one thing I could tolerate well was home baked/cooked foods made with basic ingredients. My first indication that set me on this path was a trip to Ireland. I felt good there eating the homemade stews, breads, and good baked goods from the bakeries. Eggs and chicken were fine there (not at home). My food tolerance doubled and tripled for those two weeks. Then we went to Scotland where we were in the cities more and small towns less. We'd go into pubs and order food that I immediately knew was pulled out of a freezer and heated. Processed foods of unknown origin. I got sick again and often. That last week was a struggle. We returned home during the spring time to seeds be planted and round-up being sprayed. I got sick. We had brought in goats and I thought I was allergic to them so they went back to the "goat lady" for a two week trial to see if I got better. I got worse. I had asthma and allergies like never before. I was breaking out in hives and having episodes of my throat swelling (anaphylaxis). That summer I was on allergy medication and inhalers the whole time. I'd had trouble with asthma occasionally over the years but never to the degree that I needed inhalers multiple times daily.

Of course people asked, was it the surgery? It seemed like that was when I got sick but as I've traced it back it wasn't. I remember when I first moved to Alberta an increase in health issues, when we moved to the farm it got bad enough I found a doctor right away and started asking for allergy testing and they were testing my thyroid and other things. During my year of qualifying for surgery my thyroid was low and the inflammation was present. Did the surgery factor in? I think it did in the fact that it is major surgery. Your body goes in to shock with the invasive nature of it and the resulting rapid loss of weight. You lose a lot of your hair and your hormones go crazy. It's temporary while your body adjusts and not usually a problem (my husband had no issues and actually his lifelong allergies are pretty much gone but that's another story). What did the surgery do?

When you get really sick you first trust the doctors to figure it out and then you start googling. Every time my doctor would come into the hospital I would ask, "did we check for this?" I had seven weeks to become a google doctor. Nothing was ever found.

So moving forward to the last couple of months. I have been baking for a couple of years about once a week. I was taking a lot of it to work so we wouldn't be eating too much sugar. No use putting all that weight back on. I have a really hard time maintaining my weight but my husband is completely healthy so a diet of cookies and cakes is not in his interest. I usually would bake something, leave a couple each behind for us and the rest would go to work where I had a very large team of co-workers. Baking has been my stress relief. As much as food has seemed to become my evil nemesis I have found peace in a love of cooking that I gave up years ago.

In August, I was laid off work. We are having a bit of an economic crisis where I live and I am one of it's casualties. Another trip to Ireland gave me a lovely 3 weeks of feeling fabulous. We returned home and with all this time on my hands I have more time to do what I love and I love creating good food. Typical of me, I can't just do something half-way. I have to do it fully and I've been immersing myself in food, studying it and educating myself. I am great at hyper-focusing on something to the extent I will ignore everything else. For years I shovelled fast food, processed food and crappy homemade food in my mouth with no thought to what I was actually eating. It wasn't on my "time to perfect" list so I didn't care. But as my relationship to food has changed, first with illness and a forced drop in calorie consumption, second with an awakening of what I had been (mindless eating machine) and thirdly with this awakening to an almost primal need to learn about food and it's origins.

I found a video about the gut and GMO's. Want to hear about a 48 year old woman that lives in her own little world without paying attention to what is going on around her? I had no real idea who Monsanto is and what GMO's really are. In a nutshell, GMO's are genetically modified seeds that are meant to cause an insects stomach to explode when they eat it. This has no effect on human stomachs (sarcasm intended). GMO's are made to be Round-up ready. Meaning they will survive being sprayed as many times as a farmer wants to eliminate weeds that might invade his crop space. Round-up was a chemical that was patented in the early 60's as a de-scaler for mineral build up on metal, when they discovered (by disposing of it on the ground) that it killed off vegetation Monsanto bought the rights to it and re-patented it as a weed killer. Seeds were then genetically engineered to not only kill the insects but not be effected by the round-up. Sound yummy? I'm no scientist but this can't be good for my already sensitive gut!

Another little tidbit I learned in a simple google search...

"In Ireland: All GM crops were banned for cultivation in 2009, and there is a voluntary labeling system for foods containing GM foods to be identified as such."

"Canada has widespread GM crop usage. Nearly all Canadian canola is GM, as is a large portion of the country's soy and corn. Prince Edward Island tried to pass a ban on GMO cultivation but failed, and GM crops in the region are currently increasing."

http://naturalrevolution.org/list-countries-banned-genetic&#8230;/

So when did my health problems start? I have been lactose intolerant since I was young, the IBS symptoms developed in the 80's and the debilitating illness with new allergies I had never experienced developed when I moved to an area that sprays roundup like it rains in Ireland.

So I've come to my own conclusions of what I need to do next. Either it's the answer or another false path to wellness but I believe it's one that won't hurt me either way. I, we, are going back to the beginning. To the land. To our food source. We are going completely organic, phasing out all the food in our pantry, fridge and freezer and replacing it with ridiculously expensive food that doesn't have poisons on it. That isn't engineered to destroy your digestive system. I know it's going to be a process. going from a McDonalds mindset to clean protein and vegetables was a long process as well. But we are ready for the challenge because we already detoxed from the fast food world and succeeded.

Yesterday I finally got to see a digestive specialist. It has taken over 5 years of incompetent care to get to this point. Turns out this doctor has been in my community all along but not one of the dozens of other doctors thought to send me to a doctor that specializes in the gut. He did his homework before I even stepped in his office. He knew about every test I have had over the last 5 years. Which turns out, except for an MRI, I have had every test possible in this city. He asked me about my history since I was a child, he took notes. He listened. For just that I could have cried. Not one doctor spent more than 15 minutes with me in all these years. He then started to talk. Told me I have IBS. I wasn't surprised. But he then told me what I didn't have. All the scary diseases these other doctors put in my head. All the stress and fears of the unknown. He showed me proof in the test results. Showed me charts of my history. He then told me he was ordering an MRI to look at my pancreas. Not because he believes there is a problem but because he wants me to be able to let it go. He says that the fears that they have created in me over the last few years have done more harm to my health than anything. He gave me a prescription for my nausea that won't make me drowsy and one for a probiotic that he says is one of the best. He gave me information on FODMAP and other resources so I can learn what I can eat as he believes there is so much more I could be eating but have been too scared because I have no support. He told me that bariatric surgery often makes IBS worse and had I had the tests when I first started asking for them I would have been able to make a more informed decision.

He complimented me on my tenacity of not giving up and continuing to try and do the things I love like hiking, kayaking and travel. Even when I'm so weak or debilitated by my stomach.

Yesterday I got my life back. I'm feeling anxious today. So much to learn and figure out. I feel really alone in that I have to watch (as I have for the last 3 years) who knows. I still need to work and worry that because it's so much worse I may not be able to hold down a job.

So that's why I came here. I know I need support from people who understand. I can't do this alone. I need coping mechanisms. I hope I can find all that here, now that I know who my tribe is.


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