Feeling tired after bariatric surgery

I thought I knew it all

When I was preparing for my surgery, I kept reading feeling tired after the surgery was normal. As well as many other things. So I somehow counted on this and was mentally prepared that this would very likely happen to me too.

I also read that when I wake up, I will feel a lot of pain in my shoulders from the gas they had to put in my belly to perform the surgery. Well, in my case, it didn’t happen. At all. I was bloated, but I had barely any physical pain.

This led me to the feeling of false security. Oh, everybody is complaining about being so incredibly tired, but it seems they are exaggerating. It won’t be that bad. And at first, it seemed I would be right.

The easy beginning

Right after the surgery I was sore and had my sleeping pattern a little off because of the anesthesia, but other than that, there was very little I could complain about. My energy level was the same as before. I was quite active at home. I was cooking, doing basic cleaning, and functioning as usual.

Ok, apart from changing bed sheets and doing the laundry, I was self-sufficient. My partner brought the groceries, but I put them away at home and organized the fridge. So it kept convincing me that it was all ok and I was losing weight and all was fine.

To tell the truth, the first month after the surgery, I was completely ok. If I didn’t have the stitches on my belly, it would have been hard for me to believe I had some major surgery. That good the thing was. I was convinced that all was fine and that it would go on like this forever.

Change on the horizon

The second month was more or less the same, but at the end of this period, I started to feel sleepy. Checking my agenda from that time now, 2,5 years later, I can clearly distinguish the pattern. It started the week 7 and it was in full swing the week 8. I started to sleep 12, and later 15 hours a day.

I started to feel like a slug. I had no energy. Crawling out of bed to do the bare minimum was a challenge. I wanted to keep going for my daily walks, to do things around the house, to have fun with our mice – our pets at that time. I couldn’t. I felt like some bad magic. From a person who was recovering and all seemed to be ok, to this crawling, sluggish, half-dead shadow.

The valley of horrors

The months three and four were the absolute worst. I spent them mostly in bed, sleeping and hating everything and everyone. The bloodwork I had showed up lack of any vitamin and mineral you can imagine. All of a sudden I was taking so many supplements that I barely had space for food. I have it counted: 34 pills of supplements.

I was also severely anemic. Which didn’t help the cause at all. Anemia makes you feel extremely tired, dizzy,  nauseous, you name it. Together with my very low blood pressure (90/55), it was a perfect storm. I was surviving day by day. It was horrible.

But at the same time, it was pretty confusing and upsetting. I kept reading all over the forums that people have a lot of energy, that they are starting to exercise, and that they have gone back to work. They all had a pretty normal life and I was in bed, crawling around and what was more, I was barely tolerating food.

Food problems

I got to know it later, but I had intolerances to half of the food I was supposed to be eating. So my stomach was upset all the time. I was spending a lot of time in the bathroom, I was bloated, with diarrhea, drinking Aquarius and I became scared of food. Everything was causing me some kind of nasty reaction. I was still with soft food. It was incredibly frustrating.

I couldn’t eat any dairy products, meat became my arch-enemy. So my major source of food was eggs and protein shakes I absolutely despise. Guess why? Till today I can’t stand them. But well, as I couldn’t eat anything else…

My anemia lasted for months. Maybe half a year. It was trying to kill me. I was lightheaded, dizzy, and nauseous, and I saw floating dots in front of me most of the time. It was awful. I was making it day by day and there seemed to be no sign of improvement anywhere near. This was the time when I was doubting what I had done to myself. But well, I was losing weight. So at least something. But my body was not happy at all.

Mental exhaustion

The mental toll of this was enerving. I was anxious, I hated food, I didn’t want to eat, and I was forcing myself to do it, all doctors kept telling me that I should be doing better, that there was nothing wrong with me. Some even suggested that it is all in my head. I wish I had known the thing about the intolerances nobody told me that time. So I thought I was the bad guy in the story. I wasn’t.

Some improvement came after six months. The supplements I was taking started to work, and the levels increased to some reasonable levels, well, they weren’t amazing but it was a livable situation. But still, I was taking my 34 pills every day. How could I get in some food when I had all this in my stomach? Yes, it was almost impossible. But I kept trying.

Is it getting finally better?

I started to do some exercise. Well… I called it exercise but it was more like stretching and some rubber bands resistance training. Level? The least I could find 😀but after spending so much time in bed, I was happy I could move a little. Of course, I could do it for 15 minutes in the beginning. Nothing more. But I had to start somewhere. I did 5 mins of static biking when I could as well. But it was more than enough at that time.

Checking my agenda now, I was able to go back to normal functioning in the eighth month after the surgery. I am endlessly grateful to my partner who survived all this with me. Poor thing, he was suffering more than I was. He was trying to help me but he couldn’t. So you can imagine how he felt. Well, we survived this both. But it was just so so 😀 when things started to be better, it was a complete game changer.

It happened!

I felt like everyone else. Just months after everyone else did. When I could eat at least dairy products, things started to be much better around food. Regarding meat, I could eat it after a year. And the same with coffee. I didn’t subscribe to this, indeed. This was a nasty challenge that dragged much longer than anyone thought.

The bloodwork after the first year came back much better, so I was taken off many supplements. Since then I have been taking 5 prescribed and 3 that I am adding myself – collagen, extra calcium, and vitamin B. I had cracked lips, so I sorted this out by myself. I should tell my endocrino now when I see him to prescribe it to me.

I was overly secure

Sometimes I think I got punished severely for feeling overly secure and well right after the surgery 😀 most people feel bad in the beginning and then they improve a lot. My case was just the opposite. I  spent six months of hell before things went to some kind of normal. I became anemic, had extremely low blood pressure, had all my vitamins and minerals depleted, and was weak, dizzy, with food intolerance. I had diarrhea for months.

Remembering it now, makes me feel sad. It was a really hard time. And it was not short. It lasted almost half a year. I truly hope that your experience will be much better. But in case it is not so easy and perfect, at least you can see you are not alone. Everybody is different and people have different reactions and different problems at different times after the surgery.

It was worth it

Even if things are not so amazing right now, don’t lose hope. It will get better. Only you might have to wait for a while. In the meantime, take it one day at a time. This was a very hard experience. Still, at the end of the day, I would do it all over again. Yes, I went through hell, because at that time it felt like it. But when things got better and my doctors-specialists started to take me off all the meds I had been taking for years, when they all told me that I was ok, completely healthy, that my comorbidities were gone… it is beyond description. You would have to feel it yourself to understand it.

Sending a lot of strength to those who are doing not so great right now. This too shall pass 🙂