Well we are now back in Bandon, following a low residue diet with all the enthusiasm a granola girl can muster. The pain and the nausea has gotten a bit better each day, to the point that yesterday I was feeling pretty much back to normal. Today the nausea is back, perhaps I just have to get used to it all.
After much time thinking about this and trying to understand it all from a very basic level, I think I have come to some sort of understanding. So now you are going to get the "janet description", which may be relevant to many other GI problems.
When you eat, the chewed food goes to your stomach and is bombarded with the stomachs acids and basically broken down with a combination of the acids, the bile (which emulsifies the fats) and enzymes etc.
Most molecules of food, and water and minerals are absorbed through the small bowel. All that remains are fiber and residue. Residue is what is left after digestion, and fiber is what cannot be broken down. So by going to a low residue diet (which is just a low fiber diet with limitations on milk products) you decrease the workload of the bowels, less is passing through them. If they are inflamed or narrowed, the less going through them, the less pain.
It is not the healthiest of diets, as it illiminates many fruits and vegetables. When I saw the gastroenterologist on Thursday morning, he suggested I follow this diet for a month and then gradually experiment with adding more fiber gradually, as I tolerate.
I am more and more seeing that this is all just par for the course and things I will just have to live with. The small bowels have changed and do not allow things through with as much ease and they did in the past. Stuff like fiber is more apt to get stuck, if only for a moment at a time, but that is what is causing pain.
Work is going well, in that Ken and I go to work together each day, divide up the patients and work together. With me feeling so much nausea, it is hard to know how I will feel each day, so this way, if I am not feeling well, Ken just takes over. We are working a week on and a week off.
I have included a picture of the pelicans that were down on the wharf the other day, AND ME.
However we did not all fit in the same picture so I put them separately.
I have never seen so many pelicans in my life.
I am going to post this, and then work with Ken to get one of our house concert videos loaded as well
Love
Janet
jankenb @ gmail.com
At least, despite all this you have kept a sense humour- looks like you are going to have hours of bowel material for your future performances. Beautiful singing voice.
ReplyDeleteHope you don't have to be on the low fiber diet for too long - not a great lover of fruit although I can demolish a bowl of grapes in no time but love my veggies, couldn't imagine being without them- brussel sprouts finger lickin' gorgeous despite the protestation of my children to the contrary!