Week 4

This week has been an eventful week, and not all good.

This was my last week on the liquids-only diet. It was going well, and I discovered the WeightWatchers range of packet soups, which went down very nicely, especially the Thai Spicy Noodle, which was excellent.

On the day before my liquids-only was about to expire, my wife was preparing Sunday dinner. I thought I would take a risk and try a little of the solids, just a tablespoon of mashed potato, and a small 1" square of breast of chicken, with some gravy. I did notice something strange as it went down. I did chew the chicken square thoroughly, and I even chewed the mashed potato. But as soon as I finished I noticed a tightening of my chest, a strong feeling of indigestion, and then massive heartburn in the middle of my chest. It was horrendous. This continued, and grew more severe over the next 15-20 minutes. Eventually, I began to feel sick, and I went to the bathroom. I retched, and all that came up was foam, and lots of it! A few more retches later and the potato and chicken came up too. A big experimental fail :( I finished the evening with my norm, a diet yoghurt.

I was awoken during the night with familiar aches in my feet and knee. When I got up two of the aches had subsided, but the third in my left foot had grown, and the foot began to swell. My gout was back. Over the next two days I suffered my biggest ever attack of gout. My left foot swelled to twice its normal size, and the massive throbbing pain was almost unbearable.

I was more than a little peeved at this development, as one of the positive side-effects that my surgeon had told me about with the RNY was that it would cure my gout, and that did affect my decision to go ahead. It most certainly didn't. This attack confirmed what I had been suspecting for years, that it was not particular foods or drinks that brought on my gout, my body often does it on its own, and over-produces uric acid, with no dietary stimulus. I had seen this before when I was on my last big diet, weeks of yoghurts and bananas, then out of the blue, a big gout attack. Same again this time.

I will raise this issue with my surgeon at my follow up appointment (where I will have several tests to ensure the internal healing all went well), on the 19th October.

I now have 4 days of semi-solids before I switch to solids. Not quite sure what 'semi-solids' are, but I will switch my yoghurts to thicker types with bits in (still low fat and low sugar though), and have thicker soups, like tomato or mushroom. I am a bit wary of chicken soup or oxtail soup.

My current weight is 111.3Kg, BMI 36.76
(a total weight loss of 14.2Kg, or 31.2lb, or 2stone 3lb in old money).

I'll be back in Germany this weekend, so my future posts will have photographs to continue the charting of my progress.

Rock