April 26, 2017: Nutrition Visit (Vitamins)

Nutrition is the biggest, longest part of this pre-surgical process.

It also has the potential to be the most confusing.

Hopkins' program is a single, 90 minute meeting with the nutritionist about a month before surgery. I made the appointment in February assuming my PCP visits would stay on schedule. Sure enough, everything stayed on track and I was able to have my appointment.

There was a book that the nutritionist went through, but it can be summed up into two parts: vitamins, and food. This post will focus on vitamins.

Vitamins were deceptively easy. I have decided not to talk numbers as to not confuse any readers from what your program's nutritionist may have said. When in doubt, trust your own nutritionist and now some power-hungry blogger.

I will say this about vitamins that I have found other patients in other programs concur with. First, there is no swallowing of vitamins for the first 6 months or so, so everything is chewable. Also, no gummies that are so popular right now. The new gastric bypass stomach cannot handle a gummy.

I was given options with regards to brand, and she said if I found a new vitamin, to look at the goals she was giving me that day, and make sure it lined up. She also gave me some samples to help my purchasing decision.

This is what I've decided to take (again, this works for me, it might not work for you):
By 6:30am:
Celebrate Calcium Plus 500

By 8:30am but no sooner than 2 hours after first pill:
Celebrate Calcium Plus 500

By 2:00pm but no sooner than 2 hours after second pill:
Celebrate Calcium Plus 500

In the evening, at least 2 hours after final calcium pill:
Celebrate Multivitamin with 60 Iron (2) 

I was told that Calcium Citrate is harder to purchase in regular stores, so I decided to go through Celebrate for those. I have since found out that a chewable calcium citrate is sold at WalMart and I have yet to investigate for myself.

I decided to buy Celebrate for the Multivitamin as well, because Celebrate was the complete package, including Biotin for hair, and my daily iron. Since starting, sometimes the multivitamin makes me really nauseous. For my next order, I decided to separate the multivitamin from the iron to try to help this nausea. The total cost for my first three months of vitamins was $96.

A quick note on my iron intake: bypass patients require a higher amount daily as do pre-menopausal women. So I won on both fronts. 

In the past couple of months, I have heard so many stories about vitamins. I'm glad my vitamins are so streamlined, even when I do separate the multivitamin from the iron. Also, while $96 feels like a big purchase when I buy it, it lasted me ninety days, so that's a hair more than a dollar a day.

I ordered the next batch and it went up to $121, but it might be worth it to not end my day with sometimes overwhelming nausea.

Successful vitamin intake has shown to prevent hair falling out, bone issues, and more successful pregnancies than those who do not take vitamins. I also ordered this oversize pill holder on Amazon that has been perfect for me. I pop the "day" box out and carry it with me all day.