Last year for Lilith's 2nd birthday, I purchased a cake from Costco. Yes, I know, not smart for two post bariatric patients to bring a giant cream filled cake into their home. I am not claiming that I have super self control or anything, because I don't, but once I get ill (aka dump) on something, I'm done with it. I mean really done. As a child I once became ill on Dinty Moore beef stew and haven't been able to look at a can of it without feeling nauseous ever since. The only thing that I still attempt, (even though it is like playing Dumping roulette), is ice cream. Even though I stopped allowing 1/2 gallons in my house and only buy low carb or low sugar individually wrapped novelties, it is still bad. I know that if I stop at one (okay on a bad day 2), I will be okay. But, ice cream is my Achilles heel, my Anna crack if you will. It is also my #1 trigger food or gateway drug. This means that if I give in to the ice cream, I am more likely to give in to other naughties and then you better lock up your chocolate and SunChips! Ice cream releases my inner sugar and carb monster. It also is the first food I want when I want to stress eat. But other than ice cream, if something makes me dump, I don't even see it after that. I don't care how good it was. Maybe this is because I usually vomit when I dump and have horrible cramps. It isn't pretty folks. It isn't suppose to be, that is one of the ways this surgery works, it is suppose to deter you from eating things that will make and/or keep you fat. It always reminds me of the movie "Clock Work Orange". I am "conditioned", if you will, not to want certain foods anymore via pain aversion therapy.
Husband, not so much. Husband can get violently ill from something and after he is through being sick, go have more of it. This always makes me sit and look at him with a puzzled/disgusted look on my face.
He probably does this because his mothers cooking made him sick a lot. No seriously, I ate her cooking twice and was sick both times (this was pre op) and made excuses and justifications for it but when I found myself making husband pull over on the way home from her house so I could be sick on the side of the road after the third time I ate her cooking,I was done. I couldn't make anymore excuses. Husband would get sick too, maybe not as violently as me but sick none the less and he would act like it was no big deal. Now I know this is because it has happened to him his whole life. Sad huh. Once he went to her house for Thanksgiving dinner while I was at work (we had our own dinner after I got home) and couldn't make it to the bathroom before he vomited. Yet, he stayed for pie and even let her pack up a plate for ME! As I was throwing it away, he asked if he could have it?!? I said ,"No! Are you a glutton for punishment or what?!?", and threw it away to save him and our carpets! Again, this was pre op for both of us!
Maybe this is why he can dump on something and then continue to eat it afterwards. He did this last year with the Costco birthday cake. He continued to do this even after I cut it up and froze it. I finally ended up taking it to work and leaving it there (where it was devoured in one shift), for his own good. I had dumped on the 1st piece too and was so afraid of repeating the experience that looking at the cake made me want to cringe. But he is a sugar junkie. Probably always will be surgery or no, diabetes (with fasting blood sugars in the mid to high 300's while on meds preop)be damned, he can't (some would say won't) help himself.
So this year when Lilith's birthday came around again, I was determined not to repeat the experience. I choose to buy her an artfully decorated cupcake. I tasted a bit of the frosting, so did husband. (You can watch the video to see for yourself) I also purchased a low sugar, low calorie fruit tartlet thingy for us. Granted it isn't tasty as a "true" cake but then it didn't make us dump like a "real" cake would. It was also marginally healthier. It is just one of the "lifestyle changes" we have made post op.
Did Lilith care that she didn't have a huge cake to blow 3 candles out on?
Again, watch the video because I don't think she did. I also like the idea that she is growing up learning that celebrations aren't about gorging yourself. I think both of our mothers failed to teach us that growing up. I wonder how many post ops have a hard time to adjusting to celebrations. I know it was hard having my birthday fall just 3 weeks after my surgery and realizing for first time that the way I celebrated holidays, parties, even treating myself, was forever changed. I think that is why so many of us have a period of depression post op. Our whole way of living is forever changed. It is kind of scary and exciting at the same time.
I can only hope that because we have both had this surgery and have had to drastically change our way of eating and celebrating from what we grew up doing ourselves, that Lilith will not develop the same food, health, and weight issues that her father and I had/have. I think that is ultimately the one of the best presents we can give her.
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