Cereal and Foil

At my last blood tests we found out I’m borderline anemic again.  I think the problem has gotten worse even in the last week because I feel terrible.  I tire incredibly easily, am paler than usual, and I’m losing weight like crazy.  Prednisone was a boon in the beginning but it makes it impossible for me to eat (I’m only able to eat about two cups of solid food per day right now, maybe three on a good day) and it keeps me awake for sixteen to seventeen hours a day, so it ups my nutritional needs while making my gastroparesis worse.  Lovely.

I can’t eat much in the way of meat or veggies that are high in iron because of the gastroparesis and because of Gob.  One thing we thought we might try would be to get some kind of cereal.  Cereal is often fortified with iron and since it’s pretty processed we thought I could handle picking at it.  I never really liked cereal the “normal” way, but I like to put it in a bowl and snack on it dry like a normal person might snack on chips or whatever.

Master found me a cereal when we were shopping with Star Wars shapes and BB8 marshmallows!  I love BB8 so this was enticing to me.  Plus, it had 15% of my iron in a serving so we thought we’d give it a go.  (By the way, I do take a iron supplement just for the record).  On Master’s birthday I whipped the cereal out to pick at throughout the day, and I put 3/4 of a cup of it in a bowl. 

Because my stomach is paralyzed I’m a nibbler.  I have to be.  I can get more food in that way.  The cereal went down okay (I thought) and Master and me went to his birthday dinner.  That night when we came home, I realized I had left the box on the counter and when I went to put it away in the pantry the ingredients list was facing me.  The number one ingredient?  Corn.  FUCK.

You can’t eat corn with an ileostomy.  You especially should not eat corn in that big of an amount with an ileostomy.  We had meant to buy a rice-based cereal but at the last second we saw the BB8 cereal and we just bought it without checking that it didn’t have corn in it.  Why is corn in so many things? 

Needless to say, I’ve been miserable ever since I ate the cereal (it takes a few hours to notice you have a blockage) and I’ve been eating even less food now because if you aren’t having output, you can’t eat solid food at all.  So the last several days have been full of me pounding fluids, drinking soda (gross, I hate soda) and praying to any god I think will listen that this passes so that I can start eating more again.  I’ll never make the cereal mistake again though, that’s for sure.

Last week I had a blockage that lasted two days and it wound up with tinfoil in my bag!  I must have accidentally swallowed that tinfoil when I was drinking a juice box because it was a perfectly round piece of foil (from the hole the straw punches when you put the straw in the juice box).  We almost wound up in the hospital over that one, and we’re hoping I don’t wind up in the hospital over this corn cereal either.  We know the signs for when to go to the hospital and we’ll go if we need to, but we’re doing everything the nurses taught me and hoping it takes care of itself.  Still, it’s been a tough two weeks here.

On Monday we decided to scale back my exercise.  I am no longer getting any exercise right now because I’m too sick to do anything.  I’m just focusing on getting through the days (doing my normal routine) and when that works we’ll reevaluate. We can usually tell I’m feeling better because I’m bad at sitting still.

It’s such a hard place to be in because without the Prednisone I’m stuck using the wheelchair a lot, but with the Prednisone my gastroparesis is completely rogue and I can hardly eat..  Never mind that I’ve had two pretty bad blockages in the last two weeks which also doesn’t help things.

Ugh.