If you spend any time over at ObesityHelp.com reading the Vertical Sleeve Gastrectomy Forums (wait, you don’t read those??? Ha!), you know how many posts there are about not being able to get in your water post op.  There is a really good post on the forums over there that I found, and I wanted to post it here for anyone else who might be pre-op wondering how exactly they will get 64oz of water in a day, on top of 16 oz of protein shakes, into a swollen stomach that holds approximately 2oz at a time.

This is something I want all you pre-ops to practice a bit until you really KNOW what it is to sip. It will stand you in good stead in those early post-op weeks when you are thinking you’ll barf yourself to death on more than 16 oz. of fluids.

Get the following: a measuring teaspoon, a measuring tablespoon, a single size shot glass. Sit down with them and a glass of fluid of choice. Oh, and get a stopwatch or digital timer.

I shall divide this exercise into three parts. Please try all three.

1. Let us begin with the shot glass. Pour out a shot of water and down it by sucking it through pursed lips–sipping, not chugging–in one swallow. Feel how big that swallow is? Practice it several times until you KNOW how it feels.

Once you KNOW this feeling, take out that timer and take a full minute to ingest that jigger of water. TIME YOURSELF and make yourself do it over a full minute, NOT in one swallow.

64 oz. per day means doing one of those shot glasses 64 times. If you take a full minute to empty that shot glass, you will spend a total of 64 minutes of your whole entire day drinking.

2. If you fear this will be too much water to ingest in one minute, take the tablespoon and repeat the exercise. A tablespoon is 1/2 oz. So, by drinking a tablespoon of fluid in one minute (USE THE TIMER AND TAKE THE FULL MINUTE TO DO THIS), you will spend two hours and 8 minutes of your day drinking.

3. Think this is impossible? Repeat the exercise using a teaspoon. Doing a teaspoon per minute (TAKE  THE FULL MINUTE!!) will take you six hours and 24 minutes of your day.

Okay? Don’t tell me 64 ounces is an impossible amount of fluid to ingest in a day. You can do it and still have LOTS of time to sleep, poop, walk etc. Yes, you will feel it. It might be uncomfortable. You might have nausea. If you do, get it medicated. Use your acid reducer and your antiemetic. If you can’t keep down a teaspoon of water per minute, you are in trouble and belong in your doc’s office or in the ER. It might feel like pure **** to keep it down, but that’s basically tough bananas. Keeping it DOWN is what counts. Feeling good while you keep it down does NOT.

It might take this kind of work to hydrate yourself early postop. Get your head around it NOW.

Source

I have such a hard time grasping the idea of not being able to drink 120+oz of water a day like I do now.  I know though from reading blogs of people who are post-op and the various forums, that it really is a challenge.  Since I am now 6 days pre-op, I’m going to follow the plan above to get myself used to drinking more slowly.

PS-Some doctors office allow the protein shakes to count towards your daily fluid intake, my doctors office specifically allows for it, others do not.  Please follow the requirements of your doctor.