I had my surgery on December 14, 2015 and I guess everything has been going okay except for a few things: The post-op meds are disgusting. Since I can't swallow anything bigger than a tic-tac, most of my pills (new and existing meds)have to be crushed. I choke to get them down. Even the calcium supplement makes me gag. Next is the food. I haven't found much to eat that appeals to me. Since the place I am staying at (for a few more days) doesn't have a blender, I have found cream of chicken soup to be the least objectionable. The final thing that is disgusting are the bowel movements. Does any of this get easier and less gross?

I'm about a week ahead of you, and it gets better. The improvement day to day is remarkable in week 2. The first BM for me was like trauma, the second almost a week later, was worse, but easier to recover from, so there is that. Try taking your pills with hot water with lemon. It gets easier to swallow pills as the swelling goes down. And that also bothered me: if I can't eat something that isn't chewed to paste, how come o can swallow all these pills you prescribed, doc? Turns out you can. Lastly, are you taking anti nausea meds? Might help with the gagging.

Try splitting the pills into pieces rather than crushing them. The taste isn't as bad and you can get them down with a sip of water.

Well you can get just about any vitamin in liquid or chewable form. I have a liquid calcium. And yes everthing does get better day by day and week by week. Hang in there!

After surgery, I could not swallow anything medium or large size. The calcium pills were large and had to be crushed. They also tasted like chalk. The only way I found to take these was mix them with a glass of Crystal Light and drink them down. Since the crushed calcium tended to form a paste at the bottom of the glass, this generally meant that I had to refill the glass with some more Crystal Light and try again. At least I was meeting my Fluid quota. The good thing to know is that this condition does not last forever. In about 2 months, I was able to swallow and taking the calciums no longer presented a problem.

One of the problems I encountered after surgery was that I became lactose intolerant. Anytime I drank milk or anything that contained lactose, it lead to pain and a quick trip to the bathroom with diarrhea. Some Protein shakes contain lactose. I took myself off all milk products and eventually after a few months this condition also went away.

It took me about 6 months to reach my "happy state", when all these type of conditions were resolved and I could get back to living my life. So be patient.

In the beginning I was able to get all of my supplements in a chewable form and in fact my Bariatric team required it.

I stayed on those for almost 3 months and I promise they taste a lot better!

Yes, everything gets easier and as time goes by your tastes do get a lot better as well.

One day at a time!

I had surgery on the same day as you. I was struggling to get anything down until I decided the on Wednesday to stop pain meds. I still can't do broth, but miso soup and straining other soups seems to be the trick for me.

I am slow going...will start vitamin s in A few days...5 days post op...

I'm ten weeks post op and I have seen improvement every week. You will start feeling better. It's normal to feel awful and to have a hard time with pills at first. The larger pills I had to take I split into four smaller pieces. The tiny pieces went down so much easier. Hang in there. You will hit a point where you will think oh, I'm going to be okay. It took me eight weeks to reach that point. I'm still not 100%. Remember we are all different so we have different recoveries. As long as you see a small improvement every few weeks, you are on the right path. If any problems arise, call the surgeon or nutritionist. Good luck!

I'm almost 2 months out and some pills I just cannot swallow especially the giant vitamin pills. I switched to Bariatric advantage chewables and it's going better. I always had a super sensitive palate even before surgery, but since then, I gag on every taste that isn't right and every smell is 10000 times worse! The post op poop was the worst stinking foul nasty black compost like things. I was always holding my shirt over my nose with febreeze in one hand and toilet paper in the other. It got better and easier though. I take a daily probiotic and at this point, my poop is more like poop and less of a zoo in July. It does get better.