Dumping Syndrome

I am 4 months out from my full gastrectomy, and have had similar treatments as you except I had my inital chemo/radiation before my surgery to shrink the tumor.  I am now on post op chemo, which has been more gentle than the chemo that was done with the radiation.  That chemo/radiation combo really affected me.... so much so that I had to get a feeding tube down the nose for 2 or 3 months to get food into my system.  Those differences aside, what you are describing sounds familiar to me although I don't think mine is quite as severe - at least not at this point.  The first two months after surgery for me was all a difficult time to figure out, it seemed like all was pain and discomfort.  My biggest problems are getting down enough water (60 oz+) down between eating and recovering from eating.  Not enough hours in the day sometimes, I completely agree.  It's pretty much a full time job.  At this point my activities besides eating and drinking consist of one to two hour projects at home, but that is all I can do at this point.  My other problem is this heavy feeling or pain that hits me about a half hour after eating, I hope that goes away someday.  I have lost 85 lbs so far myself during this whole cancer fight, but it has been fairly stable the last two months or so.  Again,  post surgery, everything was a muddle with hard to figure out patterns for the first two months.  About the third to fourth month after surgery, I was finally able to pin down what was affecting me (foods, times, amounts, etc) as the gut pain and diarreah from eating seemed to lessen and subside with time.  I used to need to lie down with almost every meal, now maybe only once a day.  I also have a feeding tube to the small intestine that I take in 750 calories at night that also helps me, but frankly it allows me to be a little lazy as far as making sure I am getting enough protien, etc.  I have been focusing a lot food that is not too heavy, especially fruits and veggies and a light weight bread (in very small amounts).  My favorite is to sit and read a book or watch a video and nibble on some food and take maybe 15 minutes or half hour to eat a small bowl of food.   That always goes down with very little pain afterwards.  I also add with that food all the peanut butter, cottage cheese, real mayo, tuna, ect that I can handle to get the calories up.  Ensure type drinks really do not set well for me (probably too much sugar?), or many meats.   The meats I still eat, but sparingly because I get a real ache out of it.  At least for now!  Hope this helps!  Sounds like we are in the same boat.    Scott

I just discovered that our Stomach Cancer Survivor's Guide website has been hacked and the link I posted above is redirecting to other sites. My sincere apologies. I am trying to get the problem fixed!