The Dietician, the Bad or the Ugly

I guess, for most of my life, dieticians have not been my best friends. One could say for obvious reasons. So that makes that my visit to this dietician was met with some form of apprehension from my side, expecting this professional to come and lecture me  on what to do and what not to do to lose weight.

My experience with dieticians dates back to early school days when we had a compulsory day at the clinic, every two years i believe, where all kids six years and up would be checked from top to toe to see if everything is in good order. And so i as well, got regular check-ups up to the age of about twelve. Tests included body checks,  psychological tests and the usual talk with the dietician, which for me usually was the climax. Every time we went we got the same dietician and every time she would lecture me on calorie intakes, the necessity of physical exercise and the healthy foods to eat instead of the greasy, oily or sugar foods pushed by our commercial society. It was a very depressing talk, every time again, because it would mean to give up on all of the good stuff in life, just to get a bit thinner? My understanding of life at that point had other goals, i am afraid.

And with repeat lectures every time by the dietician, maybe some truths of life would have sunk in eventually, had it not been that the dietitian, a woman by the way, was getting, let's say " more bodily rounded" every time i saw her? Yes, you can stop smirking now, i was not allowed to smirk either when i was in her office. I was even self trained to keep a very serious face, evolving into an overall depressed look by the time i left her office quarters, you know, just as if to show that the lessons had sunk in deep. Her secretary, seated just outside her office, told me on my last visit not to take the dietician too seriously either, cause she had seen the dietician eat many unhealthy things for lunch and that her favorite snack was chocolate, if you could call it snacking still because she turned to her vice much more often than she would want the world to believe. Ha! Gotcha, Mrs. Dietician, betrayed by your own staff.

So as i got bigger over the years, what was i to do, go back to a dietician? There really was nothing a dietician could tell me that i didn't know myself already, eat less, eat healthier, do more sports.

And here i am, scheduled for the gastric bypass at age 46, and now having to meet a dietician again, you can imagine my apprehension and gumption to see this person. Anyhow, arrived at same hospital again and asked at the reception desk where i could find said dietician and they directed me to the third floor, yes, via the orange elevators (see my post on the psychologist) and to ask the reception there to guide me further. I arrived there and this next reception told me to go all the way to the end of the hallway, then take a left and you will see a secretary there. So did my long walk and found the secretary, but this secretary told me that yes, they do have dieticians there, but none by that name. I showed her the letter of invitation i got and she told me she would look it up in the hospital database. No such dietician on the database. The secretary then offered to call the number on the letter but got an answering machine instead, so no help there. I had no better idea than to go back to the bariatric department, to the people who wrote me the letter, for sure they would know where i can find this person? I figured if i go down this huge staircase two flights and then take similar long corridor backtracking what i did on the third floor, then i would land pretty close, at least. I was right, hadn't it been that there was a wall between me and where i wanted to reach, a pretty new wall too, freshly painted. Cuss, cuss, damn, damn, so figured i best backtrack the whole way now to the first receptionist, else i am going to get completely lost in this huge building.

On a separate note, when you are a patient, hospitalized and you are bedridden ,  there are "chauffeurs", drivers, who will push you from your room on your bed to your next appointment in a next department. I asked a couple of them how long it took them to know all the rooms, all the departments, all the technical rooms of the hospital. The answers varied from two to three months up to even a year for the specialist things. Just wanted you to get an idea of the size of this hospital!

So having backtracked my paces i found the secretariat who issued my invitation letter to see the dietician. To my surprise this secretary as well said she didn't know exactly where this dietician was located, so she called the head of the department who was so kind to come to the office and guide me to the dietician's quarters. This department head, professional as she is, and in line with good hospital practice  asked if i could do stairs instead of elevators. My macho reply....OF COURSE! Up four floors we went, eight staircases if one would want to count. By the time we arrived there, in another building, on another floor, i was sure i had lost half a kilo of body weight. Let this dietician tell me i need to do more physical exercise..HA!

I was put to wait outside the door of the dietician and it's kind of funny, because there were different services on both sides of the corridor, at least three or four different offices from different doctors, each with their speciality. That is when the eye game starts, i am sure you are familiar with it. One one hand you have the doctors who are waiting for patients who may be late and they are wondering if you are the person. On the other hand there is me, watching everybody in a white coat suspiciously to see if they would go into the office i am supposed to go into as that may be my dreaded dietician. Not to forget, there are the other patients, looking at each newcomer and staring them down with a look of:"And if you think that you are going to skip the line in front of me, you have another thing coming!". So there is a psychological war going on between all the eyes involved, nobody really knowing what the prize of winning will bring.

There comes the next white coat, a lady, a head smaller than me, blondish hair, skinny and she goes into the office of the dietician. I just sat there as she was obviously not as anxious as the other docs to get a patient into her quarters, i was still early after all. I like being early, it gives me the opportunity to scan areas and to learn from experiences. My brother always jokes at me being early and he wasn't even convinced about getting the worm if you're early. His philosophy is rather that one doesn't have to be early, but rather better to get the worm. He may have a point. But i am sure that if i ask the dietician about who gets the worm she would say that both my brother and i would be fine without the worm!

The skinny lady was then apparently my dietician, just my luck. I got up and presented myself and then we had a nice talk. To my surprise she told me absolutely nothing negative about my weight, she complimented me on the choice of doing the operation and gave me some info about what to expect after the operation and what my temporary diet would be like. She told me i would be drinking plenty juices, water and tea, most foods will be like baby foods for the first days and only later i can add some soft cereals to the mix. She was very helpful with any info i needed, or questions i had. She also explained this thing called the dumping effect. With the bypass surgery, an actual bypass is created from the stomach to the small intestines. The stomach itself, which would normally be one to even two liters content wise, would be made smaller to a maximum content of 33 centiliters, about the size of a coke can. What can happen though, is that if one eats too much food, or undigested sugars for example, the the food is pushed right through to the small intestines. These intestines then in turn make an alarm to the brain and asks it to redirect water from the whole body immediately to the small intestines, and that is a feeling over the whole body which apparently is not a nice one to come across.

But in how far dieticians go, this was actually a very pleasant, cordial visit, without misconceptions of life or unrealistic expectations of life changes needed.

Side note: Between finishing this post and today, i have already had the operation, and all went well. The prof called me that my operation was four days early due to circumstances. I will update you on the operation and days after as soon as i get more energy to write.