Week four...

My band and I have been fighting all week. It has been horrible!!! Starting on Monday, which was the first week where I started eating "soft" food, I began to get heart burn. And when I say heart burn, I mean the most horrible, awful, painful heart burn I have ever had. Well, I had gotten heart burn just a few times before, and it is never fun ... but this was something truly miserable. One day I even resorted to taking a prescription pill for heart burn which was the size of a horse pill. Well, I should have known better than to swallow that monstrous thing, but I was desperate. And sure enough, it got stuck. It was painfully scary. It was the first time something got stuck, and I was so scared and in so much pain, and I hated my band so much.

A few days I couldn't eat anything because I had absolutely no appetite and it just burned so much. I went to bed with heart burn and woke up with heart burn. I took prilosec and I took zantac, sometimes it worked, but mostly it didn't work at all. I had my first fill appointment on Friday, so I waited until then to see what was up.

I went in for my fill and asked my doctor what was going on. He said it is very rare for people with lap band to get acid reflux because the acid from the stomach has a hard time going up to the esophagus because the band often prevents things from going up. He said that heart burn feeling I had was from the new foods I was eating - he said the food was probably resting on my esophagus and causing discomfort and irritation. He said I probably still had some swelling in my stomach, which is causing some restriction, and so I needed to eat extra slow and extra small bites, and wait an extra long time between bites.

That all made sense to me. I felt like I was already taking small bites, small portions, and waiting between bites. But since then, I have been doubling my efforts to eat diligently, and so far ... NO HEART BURN!!! I'm so happy. It takes me 45 minutes to eat a half cup of food ... which is kind of insane, but I think it will get better from here. Right?!?!?!

And ... 12 pounds down so far!!!! This has been a bleak week, but things are looking up!