How did you feel after TIF?

I had the TIF the middle of April. I am retired so I did not do much the first 4 weeks partly because of the lifting restrictions. The only exercise that I got was walking which I started slowly and worked up to a couple of miles a day. At 10 days I had a unit of blood drawn due to my hemochromatosis and that was not a problem. At 5 weeks I returned to bicycling and by 8 weeks I was back to 50 mile rides. After I went off the diet at 7 weeks I felt close to normal although I continued to lose weight for another 4 or 5 weeks. I lost 22 pounds over the 12 weeks.

I made a couple of mistakes. At 7 weeks I returned too fast to a normal diet, although I phased it in over a couple of weeks, and I don't think that my stomach was ready for it which gave me gastritis. I though that I was still having reflux and at 15 weeks I went cold turkey off my Nexium to have a second 24 hour pH test done. I think that suddenly stopping the Nexuim after 10 years of PPIs increased my stomach acid and encouraged my gastritis.

If you had surgery by early October you would be starting back on a normal diet by late November. I felt good after 8 weeks but my diet was still limited. Following the diet the is very important to the success of your TIF.

By the way, my first pH test had a reflux score of 28, over 20 is severe reflux. My second reflux score was 5.8 which is the normal range. My surgeon said that a NF could give no reflux but the TIF is easier to burp, vomit, and is closer to the original valve structure.