Saturday in Belgium

(Vilvoorde Station)

We all went together for our second fills. CDB asked if I'd noticed much restriction and I said no, not much different from what it had been, so he offered me 1, 1.25 or 1.5mls this time. I said 1.5mls please without even thinking about it (maybe not such a wise move). (And I even arranged with him to come back in Feb for another double fill. Why did I think this one wasn't going to work??)

(Restaurant at the Campanile)

The needle didn't hurt much - the first fill I decided not to look at it, since if it looks sore it will hurt me. But I watched the second fill and was amazed at the length of the needle that he put inside me. Ouch. I mentioned it and he said that that was only a small needle and proceeded to show me much longer ones. Whew. Reminded me of an amniocentesis needle.

I didn't feel any different when I sat up, paid him the required 50 Euros and drank some of the water he offered me. He must have given me about 80 mls in a plastic cup. It is going down fine I assured him; so I left, and waited for the taxi in the waiting room.

Only then did I realise that nothing was going down. I could not drink the rest of that water. The water I had drunk was pushing it's way back up my throat and I was terrified I was going to be sick. Lots of deep breathing and concentrating and the water stayed put, but there was no way I'd get any more in; so I poured it down the sink in the waiting room.

(Bicycles at the station)

Since my train wasn't till later on in the day, I'd planned to walk round Vilvoorde and take some pics, and then head into Brussels and sight see - but whatever the sights of Brussels are, they are not round the Gare du Midi! (see below)

(Tho to be fair, this is a better side of the station area:

I felt fine until I ate (without thinking) a boiled sweet, and that did not go down either. Hmmm, so THIS is what they mean by restriction! I was very aware that I had time to kill, and that normally I would have filled in the time by stopping for meals or snacks etc. When you know you can't eat, you have more time on your hands.

I wonder how often in the last 20 yrs I've eaten out of habit or boredom or because it is "lunchtime". I wasn't hungry and couldn't eat, so food was out of the question. I did finally get a cup of instant soup from a snack bar in the station (they had lots more interesting things than soup for sale, but when your stomach says no, your stomach means NO). I managed

to drink about a third of the soup before I felt I was risking it re-arriving; so I stopped while the going was good. I need to learn that more.

On the train on the way home I bought a 500ml bottle of water, but could only drink about 50mls on the journey, and I managed another 100mls all that day. Total food intake for Saturday (oops if you skip the orange juice and scrambled egg I'd had for breakfast before the fill) was 30mls soup, 200mls water.

Well, I'm not going to get fat on that.