A tale of a Ulcer and the Keto Diet hybrid.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Thunder5Ranch, Sep 2, 2022.


  1. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    Since 2016 and a round with cancer with a sepsis chaser that was about 1 nail short of sealing my coffin my health life has been pretty rough. Everything that has gone sideways with the health tracked back to the sepsis and massive amount of damage it did. Hands down the worst being the Duodenal Ulcer that encased the sphincter/valve between stomach and small intestine in scare tissue and stopped the flow of things completely. That one put me at deaths door as well, I went from 285 pounds of packed muscle down to skin and bones and 165 pounds over the course of less than 3 months. I became convinced during this time the hospital and medical system in general is damned joke. I puked straight stomach acid every 1 hour and 15 minutes like clockwork (Learned later that was how long it took after emptying the stomach that it took it to fill back up and since it couldn't go down it only had one other direction to go. Mrs T5R kept carting me off to the emergency room of different hospitals and to prompt cares and Doctors that all concluded there was nothing wrong with me other than a case of food poisoning and "You will be fine in 24-48 hours." I got every scan and test under the sun and none turned up the ulcer and scare tissue. The most fun test being the one where you drink the radioactive sludge for a scan..... and before getting half the sludge down it comes spewing back out all over the labs floor.

    So I had a customer that is a Doctor that was by all accounts a good Doctor but had not been accepting new patients for a couple of years. Could not get an appointment and could not get past his office staff to talk to him. So Mrs T5R being the annoying persistent person that she is dumped my barely able to walk using a walker, puke spewing ass back at the farm and drove back to his office and caught him leaving the office for the day at his car and I had an appointment the next morning at 11am so late because he needed a bit of time to get my test papers and results from the hospitals. Seemed odd that he could get those files so fast but learned later he was the Chief of internal medicine at the main hospital that is overlord of several of the smaller hospitals and labs. LOL remember we were not friends yet and he was just another customer at one of the farmers markets that I saw every Sunday. So the next day we show up at his office and the office staff is telling Mrs T5R NO HE DOES NOT HAVE AND APPOINTMENT and Cannot have a appointment because we are not accepting new patients! Doc walk into the front area and say He Most Certainly does have an appointment and we are accepting him as a new patient because I say we are!

    He had already reviewed a file of my medical crap thicker than my FBI file for the last 3 Months and looked at me and simply said "We have got to figure this shit out fast or you are not going to be around much longer to figure it out!" That was a Friday morning his half day at the office and at 1PM I was over at the hospital with him sending the scope down my throat and into my stomach. That was when I learned he was the Chief of internal medicine at the hospital and bumped a colonoscopy out of the scope room to scope me LOL as I was going under he laughed and said "Don't worry I am pretty sure they cleaned and sanitized the camera and stuff after the last colonoscopy!" LOL woke up with that damn thought in my head....... did he just send someone else's butt hole down my throat!?!? Skipping lots of details and getting to the important stuff here...... Nope he did not put someone elses butt in my mouth :) Different scopes and they are indeed thouroughly sterilized after each use! The preliminary diagnosis was my duodenal sphincter was completely closed and locked shut with scar tissue. The good news it was allowing enough water through which allowed me to survive as long as I had. And with enough force and plunging the scope cable up and down he was able to force the camera through the scar tissue and see the problem, which was initially diagnosed as duodenal cancer because it looked exactly like cancer pending the test results of the tissue he nipped off while in there. And I was already set up to go to Carle Hospital 200 miles to the North and see the alleged best cancer specialist in the State on Monday Morning. Get a phone call from Doc on Sunday afternoon and the test on the tissue Friday night that said it was not cancer and Doc had spent the weekend sending my pics to specialist and learning that it was a almost unique ulcer and getting the treatment dopes in order to reduce it and eventually and hopefully heal it without surgery as the surgery would result in the sphincter having to be removed and that would be very unpleasant. Over the next 6 Months I got scoped 6 more times to monitor the condition of the ulcer and pictures of it progressively getting smaller and finally fully closed up and healed, at the same time Doc became probably my best friend outside of the Doctor Patient realm, lol we keep the two totally separate when we are hunting or fishing we have strict rule that is no talk of medical anything or business anything!

    About a year ago he broke the rule while we were fishing....... "You have gained all of your weight back but in the wrong way, YOU ARE A FAT ASS NOW!" Can't argue with that I lost a ton of muscle mass before the ulcer was fixed and he in the end put a balloon in the sphincter and ripped the scar tissue up and got it opening and closing again. Instead of building that muscle mass back up, I mostly regained my weight with soft flabby fat.

    So at my every 3 Month appointment to Check My A1C and general health six Months back he hand me a folder with a plan him and nutritionist came up with for me. The basis of the plan is that I need to lose 85 pounds SLOWLY and build back the muscle mass I have lost SLOWLY. He is adamant that it be SLOWLY because of all the variables and wild cards the sepsis threw into the mix and losing weight and adding muscle fast could trigger other serious problems from a lot of potential as yet unknown things that might have been damaged and just waiting to break.

    So my diet is all of the meat, poultry, fish and animal fat I want, NO or Very limited carbs and sugar other than 1 Banana per day every day and 1 Tomato or Orange per day every day and I can have a limited amount of green beans, onions, lettuce and all of the garlic I want. First 3 months of this diet I did not lose any weight, but my A1C dropped from cough.......... 16.3 to 8.4 Yesterday was the end of the second 3 Months and I lost 13.4 pounds and the A1C had dropped to 7.2 Doc did his Voodoo calculations and figured up that I gained 4 pounds of muscle in that 3 Months so my total fat loss was 17.4 pounds the target range is to lose a real 12-14 pounds every 3 Months and when the target weight loss is reached start building the muscle back up more rapidly.

    What I can say is I have felt better these last 3 months than I have in years more endurance, a lot more energy and have been feeling a bit lighter on my feet..... Probably because I am a bit lighter LOL. I am a big guy and have weighed 285 pounds since I was in high school. 285 is like my magic weight where I stall out at and stay at. I can say there is a big difference in 285 of packed muscle and 285 of be a FAT ASS. So with some blood work to monitor stuff, a good Doc and what is looking like a good diet I am on my way to no longer being a 285 pound fat ass :) Be nice to have pecks again instead of man tits! A good ways to go yet in getting back in shape but the last 3 Months has offered proof that it is achievable! Also a good possibility of getting the diabetes beat back and off these damn meds. Anyway it was a real morale booster yesterday to see the results of a plan working and being on the winning side of the battle.
     
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  2. johnbb

    johnbb Monkey+++

    You certainly have been to hell and back health wise glad to hear you are doing much better keep up the good work.
     
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  3. oil pan 4

    oil pan 4 Monkey+++

    I used to have an ulcer. The cure was separating from active duty.
     
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  4. sec_monkey

    sec_monkey SM Security Administrator

    [biggrouphug]
     
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  5. enloopious

    enloopious Rocket Surgeon

    I had 2 or three ulcers for many years from stress. Someone told me to eat 3 bananas a day for 2 weeks and see what happens. I thought, thats a dumb idea because bananas give me heart burn... but at that point water gave me heart burn. So I figured I'd try it. After 2 weeks the heart burn was gone. The ulcers had healed dramatically and I am now able to eat hot peppers again. Before they gave me 'coffee grinds' puke, if you know what that is. Bananas and teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water does miracles.

    As an aside I also stopped eating processed foods and most carbs.
     
  6. Thunder5Ranch

    Thunder5Ranch Monkey+++

    LOL Mine was from the extreme stress on my body from the Sepsis and the stress of everything that went to hell after I managed to survive that nightmare. When they tell you you are most likely going to die and have maybe a 5% chance of survival it does tend to create a lot of mental stress along with the physical stress.

    The entire body going Septic from what started out as a summer cold ain't no joke........ Even though I can laugh about it now..... and laugh about managing to still be here to laugh about it now. My advice to anyone that even thinks a little bit that they are going septic is to get to the hospital ASAP. When I finally decided to go to the hospital I was running 110+ fever in and out of reality was hitting temp peaks of 115 and on the verge of death. I don't even remember them throwing me in a tub of ice, sticking fast drip antibiotic IVs in. I just remember a Doctor and Mrs T5R standing beside my Ice back talking and the Doc telling here I had almost no chance of surviving the next hour, but if I did I would have a much better chance at recovering. Playing tough guy while you are going Septic and waiting it out is the total wrong move to make. I will pay a heavy price for the rest of my life for my poor decision. The Massive scarring in my lungs will never heal and I forever more will sound like Darth Vader breathing when I walk or exert myself, will always have a inhaler and small Oxygen tank and mask in my go around the farm bag for when I over do it and lose my breath and can't catch it again. 6 hours sooner at the hospital and I would have saved myself a whole lot of problems. But hey I was tough and could sweat my way through it, as the temp went from 99.5 to 110+ plus over those 6 hours. Other thing I will have to live with is the hot and cold receptors in my brain were fried, I can't tell most of the time if I am hot or cold. Doc constantly tells me to always be aware of that in both heat and cold as It would be very easy for me to overheat and stroke out on a hat summer day or be freezing in the winter and not know it and come it with a case of frostbite or hypothermia because those same receptors that are fried play a big role in the body regulating its temp. So another gizmo I keep on when it is above 90 and below 50 (Seems to be my operational range without much risk) is a thermometer with a pad sensor taped under a armpit that beeps annoyingly if my body temp gets to high or low. Like this summer doing dirt work out in the heat and sun the Thermometer beeps pretty regularly and I have to head to the shade and throw a cold towel around my neck and drink cold water for about 30 minutes to get back in the safe zone. Everyone was worried that the extreme temps I was peaking at would cause perm brain damage and it did just not cognitive beyond some minor short term memory issues. It did give me a fairly good speech impediment and the hot cold receptor thing. I was very lucky in that regard. The road from there to here has been a very long and hard one, and trust me NO ONE wants to go through what I have since July of 2016 and every hour I wasted being tough was more damage to the body to over come on the other side. 6 hours sooner and most of what I have had to deal with would not have happened.

    Occasionally one of you pms me a phone number and says call me......... I won't I sound like a total tard on the phone and am semi almost barely... not really understandable. I can count on 3 fingers the number of people I will talk to on the phone :) In person I am much better and only sound half drunk instead of totally wasted :) LOL the biggest problem is I start talking and the brain is still going but the mouth stops moving mid sentence. Mrs T5R is nice about it and says so are you going to finish that thought or leave me hanging to get the mouth working in unison with the brain again hehe. Everyone keeps telling me and has been telling for years now that I should get on SSD, I am NOT Disabled and still perfectly capable of earning my own way and scratching out a living!!! I am just a little more F'd up now than I used to be ;) I figure when I can hunt and provide for myself, then I will be disabled and at that point have lost my right to live. When a predator can't fend for itself its life is over! Right or Wrong that is how I see it for myself. I can still fend for myself and hunt don't see that changing for a good long while yet......... Might not be up to taking down the big game anymore but I don't need others to hunt for me!

    The ulcer itself would have been easy, its the scar tissue it encased the sphincter in that totally shut my digestive system down and let nothing leave the stomach other than back out my mouth that was the real issue. The first scope a nurse handed me a cup of stuff and said this will keep you from puking during the procedure. I told her that is pointless because I will puke it back up within 2 minutes of drinking it. She insisted, so I did and less than 2 minutes later projectile vomited it right back out. That was my life for the almost 3 months up until Doc forced the Sphincter open with that first scope. Then stuff started moving again and I had the pleasure of my body learning how to digest food again and another three months of spraying liquid crap more often than not in my pants until the body relearned how things worked. Can't count the number of times I said "Damn was only one or two steps from the toilet that time!!!" One of the meds did not help with that. It was liquid and wax like and attached itself to the ulcer and created a barrier between the stomach acid and the ulcer allowing it to heal over time. Other meds were a Strong acid production inhibitor and a half a bottle of gaviscon per day to neutralize and acid that was produced. Words can't convey the pleasure and relief I had at not puking straight stomach acid every 1 hour and 15 minutes, shitting my pants once or twice per day was a small price to pay for that relief!
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2022
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  7. oil pan 4

    oil pan 4 Monkey+++

    Yeah that's probably about where I would have ended up saying continued to do special ops stuff.
     
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  8. Ura-Ki

    Ura-Ki Grampa Monkey

    Mine was from crap Cofveve, the Seattle kind! We chased the issues all up and down the west coast trying to figure out what was causing the massive heart burn, the kind that requires a pretty nasty pill you can only get from the doctors! So, I finally discovered good Italian arabica Cofveve and have been heart burn free ever since! It's crazy, but that Seattle Black is some of the highest Acid of any blend in the states, no wonder I was a wreck! Last scope said my innards looked like that of an 18 year old, cool with me!
     
  9. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    I have used Bananas for 50+ years and very good for my Gut...
     
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  10. Bandit99

    Bandit99 Monkey+++ Site Supporter+

    Since I returned from overseas ~ 8 years ago, my weight balloon up to as high as a whopping 220 lbs at times. About the end of February, I finally said, "Enough!" I stopped all carbs and sugars (obviously this includes alcohol), to include natural sugars, and within 3 months my weight was back to normal. I am now 165 lbs and still don't eat the dangerous carbs (breads, pasta, rice, crackers, etc.). The only other thing I did beside dropping the carbs and sugars was stop eating after 6pm plus I only weighed myself on Sunday morning. No extreme exercise, no nasty drinks, no etc. In truth, it was quite easy, one just needs to be dedicated and let your body get back to its normal function of burning fat instead of carbs.

    Now, I have a few alcoholic drinks on a Friday/Saturday night, even eat some non-fat frozen yogurt but still weigh myself every Sunday morning. Anyway, it works and is relatively easy after the first week or so and one's body adjusts.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2022
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