Two meatballs

We were doing so well with Rich's output. His daily numbers were hovering around 200mL. I sent an email to Dr. Shen who did the surgery back in June with photos of Rich's incision/stoma and the giant Excel file of doom with his fistula output numbers. Dr. Shen agreed that we could experiment with some low residue food. If that increased Rich's output we could back off, but it was worth a try. On Thursday at lunch, Rich ate a Vietnamese spring roll. It's basically rice noodles in rice paper with one piece of lettuce and one strip of pork. That went down just fine.

The next day we went for dinner while running errands. Ian wanted pizza so we stopped at Fazoli's. Rich got a meatball sub with the idea of only eating one or two of the meatballs and giving away the rest. He ate two golfball-sized meatballs and according to him they were delicious. But while sitting at dinner, his output went up by 200mL alone. The next day his output was 1350mL. Needless to say Rich was discouraged.

On Sunday we had to get on a plane and that has been increasing his output as well. We ended that day with 1500mL and a very sad mood. But Monday was better and he only output 500mL all day. Today has been equally mellow, despite getting on a plane again. So I'm hoping we are working out way through that experiment.

This has all been a lesson in patience. After Rich ate the meatballs and told friends that it increased his output, several folks said, "oh, well beef is very hard to digest." To which he said, "Why didn't anyone say that before I ate them?!" And really beef and steak are what he's craving. He's not craving potatoes or apple sauce or rotisserie chicken.

But we will obviously have to take this very very very slowly. One bite at a time.