A pre-op diet is no joke

You are at the very end of your journey. The surgery is around the corner and your surgeon told you to put yourself on the pre-op diet to shrink your liver. If you are among the lucky ones, it would be three days to a week, if your surgeon is strict, as mine was, you are starting three weeks of callous decisions. If you think this is the hard part, you are way too wrong.

When I received the call from the hospital with the surgery date and the prescription for the protein shakes that were an integral part of my pre-op diet, I was on cloud nine. It felt like a dream come true. After a whole year of medical checks, appointments with specialists, and rebuilding my relationship with food altogether, the day was almost there. What can be better, right? Little did I know that what I thought that would be the hard part, was the easier one.

I rushed to the pharmacy to pick up the shakes and I was sure that I wanted to start right away. I wanted to be as prepared as possible. I was hoping to prevent any possible complications manageable from my side. So, let’s jump into this head first. Three weeks to the surgery, and yes, I will have to spend the whole time on this special diet.

I was allowed to eat combinations of veggies – apart from starchy ones (so no potatoes and like) – in any form, without any dressings, and the shakes that came in chocolate and vanilla flavors. It doesn’t sound bad, right? When I tried the first chocolate shake, it tasted reasonable, so it seemed to me that it would be doable. The vanilla ones were pretty nasty and I didn’t like them at all. But I had a whole pack of them and I couldn’t return them to the pharmacy, so it was clear to me that I would have to use them up during the three weeks. I didn’t have any other options and I was strictly warned that I shouldn’t purchase any other shakes out of the prescription.

The first few days seemed to be quite ok, I was eating three times a day, classic breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I was making sure I was eating different veggies as I was fully aware that three weeks is a long time, aka many many days. The plan seemed flawless. I remember I was starting on Monday, all excited but when the first Friday came, the veggies were sprouting out of my ears already. Neither of the shakes that seemed to be ok initially, were so awesome anymore.

What I forgot to mention, I was forbidden to keep taking coffee. They told me that I would have to give it up before the surgery during the pre-op diet and I would go back to it later when the scar on the stomach would heal. Caffeine is acidic and irritating, so ok, I am willing to do this. If it means that the post-op part would be better and I would heal faster, ok, I am a very obedient patient. Let’s do this.

I was not a heavy coffee drinker, I was taking two a day, one for breakfast, to load software as I call it, and the second after lunch to survive the afternoon by the laptop. It is not much. I never thought that I was so heavily addicted to caffeine! Holly Molly… I don’t even want to imagine what it must feel like if you are a real drug addict and you want to give up cocaine or something like that. As a psychology student, it might be interesting to know, but I have to say that my experience with unhooking from coffee, was something!

The first day I felt like dying. In the morning, with no energy at all, I was doing my best to keep my eyes open. Mid-morning, crippling headache. Welcome and stay for the rest of the day. Ability to concentrate way below average, something like an ADHD pre-schooler. People were talking to me and I was seeing their lips moving, but my brain was not processing the input. Nice! The whole week it was like this. The headache was getting milder and milder as the days were passing, but come on! Concentration was still very low and the level of tiredness reaching the top of Mt Everest. This was a pretty nasty part.

But I was more than willing to go through this. I was two weeks away from the surgery and something like coffee wouldn’t spoil this all. No way! Keep pushing!

The first weekend we were invited to our friend’s birthday celebration. Great!! Who doesn’t like parties? They are all fun and games unless you are undergoing the strict pre-op diet. Sigh… how to explain to everyone that I seriously can’t eat anything at all from everything that there was on the table. No, even soda is not allowed. I am omitting alcohol here because I haven’t drunk it for many many years.

They were all so annoying, my dearest friends turned out to be a pain in the hm-hm, you know where. I had to make up a story that I was going to have the hiatal hernia reparation and that is why I can’t eat anything from the offered. It was easier than explaining the whole real situation, I was so tired and so pressed and stressed that I simply didn’t have any energy left. Do you remember that I told you this? Here we were…

The thing is that veggies are fun for a few days, maybe for a week. Do you remember those detox diets? You must have done at least one of them as well. So you know best that your batteries pretty soon start to beep and show a red color because you have no energy. The shakes at this point were nasty and I was forcing myself to swallow them. I felt as if I was having a pond of frogs living in my stomach. Same sounds, same feeling. Frogs mating inside. Yuck!

And everyone around me was having the cake, the cheese, the chips, the pizza, and whatever else. Not me… I was munching on my bell peppers and cucumbers, felt bloated and nasty, had no energy at all, and pretended that I was fine. I wasn’t. I felt like a rabbit. All the great food was there. I could smell it, I could see it, and it was right in front of me. Oh, self-discipline… stay with me and be strong because I was miserable. This was one of the worst birthday parties I have ever been invited to.

Little did I know that time that THIS and exactly this will be going on for months to come. Exactly for over a year. Ha! I was completely oblivious at that time. And it was good. If you don’t know, it is better like that. You don’t suffer beforehand 🙂

Week there, the last one before the surgery, that was something… uff. Just seeing the box with the shakes was making me nauseous. I WANTED to chew something! Not the fields of vegetables!!! They were in the fridge but I didn’t feel like opening it. I knew I needed to eat, but I was so tired of all that. It was pretty depressing. My boyfriend eating a chicken and I was pinching with my fork into steamed broccoli. This is what misery looks like.

Prepare for this stage. For a very long time, people around will eat whatever you used to like and you won’t be able. Some of the things will be completely off-limits forever. Yes, you will be able to eat pizza, that is the good part of the story. But it will pass many long months when you will be only looking at it and even when you can eat it again, you will have one little piece and feel heavily overeaten in the middle of it. I am leaving apart what it will likely do with you when your stomach processes it. No, the bathroom part won’t be nice at all. So the next time you will think twice if you so desperately need to eat that pizza or if you simply skip for this time. (Own experience, just much later learned. The hard way, obviously 😀)

Everybody will be eating all the time. You won’t. I live in Spain, where whole life revolves around food and meal times. Here they spend three hours around the table and they keep eating and talking and the meals have several options, always with bread, all the rice, the pasta, the sweets, the fruit, the yogurt and something sweet at the end.

Well, eating out under these circumstances came out to be a nightmare. At first, I couldn’t eat anything apart from veggies and after the surgery, it got even worse. Liquids and pures for weeks and I was full after five spoons. And everybody else around me was eating and chatting and having a great time. And I was sitting there watching them as they kept eating. My new very sad reality. Plus they will always keep offering you things and you will have to keep turning them down. Susjt don’t scream, it is not polite 😀

If you are a mom and you cook for everyone at home, you will get it straight away. You will be cooking all those delicious meals your family loves, you will be touching it all, putting it in the oven, making the cakes, the cookies, and stuff, but you will not eat a single bite at all. Your willpower will become steel strong, I swear 😀

Maybe try to negotiate with your loved ones and try to convince them that it might be a good idea to join you. Not completely, obviously. But maybe some healthier and better meal options could be the way to go. I know that Friday pizza night will not go away, but what if you start putting less sugar in the cookies? Make them from oats, right, half-and-half to start with… you know where I am heading. You will be surprised, they won’t scream much after a while. So it will be beneficial for everybody in the end 🙂

The pre-op diet this long is not an easy one. I won’t lie, I suffered. The last days were dragging endlessly. But when I slowly started preparing the bag for the hospital… you can imagine 🙂 it was all forgotten and I was looking forward to starting my new life.