Black Tongue - things they don't tell you...

Well here I am starting into the second week since surgery.  Actually that started on Saturday, but Saturday was far too nice a day to be blogging - sunny and warm and I spent a good while sipping fruit juice in the garden admiring the bees buzzing round our flowers and watching Jon pottering in his kingdom.

Today it is cold, damp, I have the heating on and I'm drinking hot stock... Ah the coquettish nature of the British summer.

Coming back from hospital was a milestone and felt good until the next morning when the affects of the last 'happy pill' (a so called opiate cocktail designed to give you that bright, positive world's-a-better-place feeling) had worn off.  Horrible dry mouth, painfully bloated with gas, tenderness and general debility if you try to do anything.  I was a bit of a wreck for visitors.

So the first week - not the best, and must advise anyone approaching a similar procedure that you will feel generally exhausted, swollen, sore and traumatised by having to drink so many supplements when everything is accompanied by belching, gurgling and sometimes hiccupping.  However, it passes.

There are dispersible tablets for everything. Actually that's something to be grateful for as Lilly had to open up capsules and EAT the foul contents; now they've made a soluable version which is pleasantly fruity.  So here we go: First, an anti-acid, on the tongue, 30-60 minutes before food.  Next, make up a protein shake with liquidiser.  This takes about 30 minutes to drink, slowly.  Then, dissolve vitamin tablet in water.  Dissolve Zinc tablet in water (tip - both together in squash kills two birds with one stone).  Then, clexane injection around navel (not as bad as it sounds) and iron syrup (disgusting to others I actually LIKE this, it's made with maltitol, yum).

Keep drinking.  Then, small bowl of sieved soup for lunch, thin and runny.  Then another dissolved zinc (tip - it will dissolve in a very small glass but don't overfill or it will go everywhere).  Mid afternoon it's the calcium.  Keep drinking.  Dinner = second half of the can of soup.  Another dissolved zinc.  More iron syrup. Keep drinking, keep some water beside the bed to see you through the night.

The other thing to remember is that you only have 7 small holes on the outside, which are generally healing well, but inside a lot has changed.  As the nurse has put it, someone has taken a knife to your insides and it will take the body time to readjust and repair, so expect to feel tired.  No-one tells you about the alarming evacuations from the other end though, in all the post-operative literature.  Lots of information about feeding and drinking, but nothing about the ultimate result...  Not attractive, we shall leave it there.  Then there's the tongue.  Stuck my tongue out yesterday - as you do - in front of the mirror and got a shock.  It is black.  As you can see (I could have gone closer but have spared you this delight) there is a black coating on my once pink tongue.

Twenty minutes of scrubbing later and we have a more acceptable offering. Apparently you can pay a lot of money to get a special device to do this but a soft toothbrush and some Colgate seem to do the trick :-)

There's also a rather unpleasant film taste inside my mouth.  Normally a sign of poor dental hygiene this appears to be caused by the vitamins and iron liquid.  It is not a pretty sight but should sort out once I start taking pills instead of liquid, which will be a while yet.  But if anyone else gets black tongue, don't worry, it's not a problem.

Drinking is getting quicker though.  As it's all clear liquids it runs down quite fast and I can now get through a cup of tea before it gets stone cold.  Had to give up on the skimmed milk there, and now using coffee-mate light instead - the thin milk made me feel queasy.  Okay in the protein shake though, as it's cold and I put some extra Splenda in for added sweetness.  Okay, okay I've got a sweet tooth.

So the good stuff - fancy the look of food I like, but don't have any 'need' to eat it.  Part of it is mental = you know you can't eat it because your stomach wouldn't cope with it; part of it is physical in that you just don't feel you need to eat.  I can tell when I need something substantial (like a soup) when I start feeling tired.  Put some of my favourite sugar snap peas in the fridge for Jon and boy did they look nice, but there's no temptation to actually eat them - not when you've had all the painful distended belly and the incredible gurgling just with soup.  I look at food on adverts (there was a warm grilled courgette, asparagus and feta salad and a quorn sausage the other day) that I could eat later down the line and make a mental note that it would be jolly nice, but you seem to have an awareness that all is not quite as it should be and these things are the stuff of the future at the moment.  It will all happen one step at a time.

Now I think I'll make a nice cup of tea and have a read - what a luxury!