Throwing up

I have a headache because I have been throwing up for two days now.

Yikes! you may be saying. Well, don't. It's not as unusual or alarming as it sounds initially.

No, I'm not anorexic or bulimic. Not at all.

Here's the deal. Eight years ago I underwent a type of bariatric (overweight) surgery called an SRVG, or a silastic ring vertical gastroplasty. When you hear about obesity surgery in the news, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's about the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (or RNY for short). The difference between that type of surgery and what I had is this: the RNY actually bypasses part of the small intestine. The surgery I had, it simply stapled off a small section of my stomach and created a little silicone band at the bottom edge of it, so that anything I eat must be able to pass through this pinky-sized hole before it can go into the rest of my stomach and then on through my intact digestive system. That's it. No bypassing of intestines.

What this means is this: anything that you can't chew up really, really well just won't go down. Particularly, things with skins (tomatoes, grapes, smoked sausages, etc) are difficult/impossible to eat. Bready or doughy things also tend to "gum up the works" so to speak.

What happens when it doesn't go down? It comes up, and I puke.

It's not like normal puking, though. The stuff that doesn't go through, actually hasn't mixed with any kind of stomach acid yet, so it comes back out exactly like it went in. In the same order, for that matter, which is interesting to note.

Once I've had a day of puking, then it lasts for two or three more days... probably because the puking is irritating to the stomach and it swells up. There have been days when I couldn't even drink water because my stomach felt like it was wadded up into a tiny ball, not letting anything through.

So yesterday I decided to try an old trick I used to use back in elementary school when I was on my first diets. I took an apple to school with me every single day, and that's what I ate for lunch. That's it.

I was hoping I could maybe start that up again, but as soon as I finished the apple, I could tell this wasn't going to be pretty. It sat there for several hours until finally I was running to the bathroom as fast as I could.

Anyway, I've puked up just about everything I've attempted to swallow the past couple of days. On the way home from practice tonight, I stopped at Casey's for some gas and a slice of pizza. Casey's pizzas are the bomb, even though Casey's is just a convenience store.

Now I've spent most of the day on and off in the bathroom somewhere, puking up whatever I'd tried to eat. I think that my stomach may be swollen shut.