Pool Rage, a hypo and an unfill

As a bandit I haven’t had a very good week – I’ve lost a few pounds but for all the wrong reasons (no I don’t want them back, it’s not that bad).

On Sunday morning I had my usual weekly treat of 3 rashers of smoked streaky bacon (grilled till crisp) and fried egg plus one small buttered toasted pancake/drop scone (no toast permitted by the band) and coffee, and in the afternoon we went swimming.  The pool was busy, with one lane cordoned off and various people steaming up and down as though their lives depended on it.

I did my 20 lengths swimming sedately (read ‘with the least effort’) in the lane next to it, but finding it difficult to enjoy because all the activity going on in the pool made it feel like a Channel crossing.  At one point I got kicked by mistake by one of the serious crawl swimmers from the fast lane, who apologised in a gasp as he lunged past.  It didn’t hurt, it was just one more annoying invasion of space, and – as frequently happens when I go to a public swimming bath – I finished the swim feeling cross and out of sorts.  However, I did, as they say “get over it”.

I noticed that evening as I had a small bowl of polenta, comfort food that normally sails past the band without difficulties, that the restriction was too great and I could barely eat it a small spoonful at a time.  I was hungry, so persevered and finished it after about an hour, but I wasn’t very comfortable – and in fact I wasn’t to eat again till three days later.  It was only after a couple of hours that I was able to drink – and I knew that something had changed pretty dramatically in the past few hours. 

Goodness knows where my brain was, but before I went to bed I gave myself an overdose of insulin because I had switched the colour coded caps on my insulin pens by mistake.  I realised immediately after giving myself a hefty dose of the strong instant-acting insulin, and to compensate I therefore didn’t inject with the slow acting one at all.  My body knew the difference though.

I had a terrible night because I woke up four times drowning, and a fifth time at 4:30 a.m. feeling like a newborn kitten, which meant I was having a hypo (low glucose levels in the blood).  On these occasions getting myself out of bed and walking to the loo is a tremendous effort of will – difficult to explain to non-diabetics, and it scares the hell out of me.  I chewed a couple of sugar pills and prepared to wait ten minutes for my glucose levels to rise and therefore to regain my strength, but alas my restriction had well and truly kicked in and there was no way I was going to get those lozenges down, however well chewed.  I started to panic as I felt a stalemate situation coming on. 

After a few minutes of scrambled thoughts I remembered that I had runny honey in a squeezy bottle on the windowsill put by for when I occasionally need to crush large bitter tasting pills that won’t get past the band, and thank goodness enough glucose got through to bring my levels up a bit.

I stayed home the following day, Monday, too exhausted to do much except sleep in a semi-reclined position and worry about the fact that it was getting harder and harder to keep water down except in tiny sips.  On the Tuesday I went in to work and only managed a coffee in the morning and a hot chocolate in the afternoon.  The evening’s cold milky coffee got undrunk.  On Wednesday John drove me to work – the lack of food had really weakened me, but we were due in Taunton that evening so I reckoned as long as I could drink a bit I’d be OK.  He collected me at the end of the day and drove me to Taunton, and I had lost 1.2kg – actually it was a great deal more than that, but I’m afraid I’d gained a bit since the last visit 3 weeks before and the 1.2 was a net loss...I know the true loss must have been nearer to 4kg. 

I was lucky that my surgeon was doing the clinic that evening, a rare treat, so he did my unfill of a quarter of a cc.  I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him about the strange development, and also the one I described some months ago when I coughed up a bean I had eaten 8 days previously, but – you know what? He just said “this is an art, not a science”.  He had nothing to contribute as to these two events, other than to reassure me that my port and band were all in place as they should be. 

Tina’s post today is bang on, this is what she writes, referring to the bariatric nurse she consulted –
I really don't think she (or any of the surgeons for that matter) are doing studies about living with a band. They just do their quantitative blinded crap and are muddling around in the dark as far as the actual details of the experience.

I couldn’t agree more.  Sandy has debated on her blog as to the reasons for sudden increases and decreases of restriction, and more study is evidently needed to understand how certain everyday activities – exercise, bowel movements, kicks in the ribs... – can rearrange our internal organs in such a way as to have an effect on the position and pressure of the gastric band.

The quarter cc adjustment has made a slight difference, but I can’t eat much.  I know it’s unwise to lose weight this way, as it encourages one to go for high calorie sliders, but I’ll give it a go till my next appointment in two weeks time.  At the very least I’ll have better figures to note on the weight loss chart on the right side of the blog come November 17th.

A rather obvious conclusion I had never really thought about before:  simultaneous over-restriction and hypos should be avoided at all costs.  It would be good if there were any other diabetic bandits out there who could comment on their own experiences – anyone?

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Photo Finish:

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

Bonfire Night

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