What a difference a week makes! Last Friday Becky got her stitches out and the incisions have all healed nicely. Her blood work also looks great, except for her iron, which is a bit low, so for the next two weeks, she’ll be taking iron pills for extra fortification. Her blood sugar is normal and so is her blood pressure. Good work Becky!

She’s still drinking her protein shakes, but she’s also now eating solid food … well, sort of. She can have peanut butter, which goes down quite smoothly and she had some scrambled eggs the other day. There is not a happy ending to the story about those eggs. Becky loves scrambled eggs and was really looking forward to eating some. Only she decided to follow the advice of a well-meaning friend and cooked them in the microwave. They came out just as fluffy as predicted, but tasted awful. “I was pretty much sick for the rest of the day,” she reports. “I had an upset stomach and felt like I was going to vomit. I did manage to eat some peanut butter and some ground turkey during the course of the day to get some protein, but yeah, the eggs did not go over very well.”

The staff at the Central Maine Bariatric Center told her something like that might happen. “Your taste buds change, and something you liked before you won’t necessarily like after the surgery.”

She’s going to wait a week or so and try scrambled eggs again, only next time she’ll cook them like she always used to, on the stove.

One of the issues that she has been dealing with is being afraid to eat, mostly because she’s worried she won’t know when she’s full and will damage her smaller-sized stomach. “Am I going to know when it’s too much? Am I going to overeat? Yesterday, when I ate the egg, I didn’t even eat half of it and felt awful, but when I ate the peanut butter, that went down really well and tasted good. Think about it,” she says. “My stomach is the size of an egg now, it can’t hold much. They told me it will be trial and error and not to get discouraged — I’m only two weeks out from the surgery.”

Seeing a therapist at the Center to talk about how things are going and some of the things that worry her is helping her come to terms with the fear of eating too much. “Just learning to know the signals in your body when you’re full,” Becky explains. “Is that a feeling of fullness or is the food just settling and I’m going to want more?”

All in all, she feels great and has no regrets about having the surgery. And yes, she’s losing weight — 37 pounds so far. Becky is on her way to being a much healthier person.

We’ll be back in two weeks with another update on Becky’s progress. She appreciates all the support she’s been getting. If you have any questions or words of encouragement, please leave a comment below.