Gastric gurgling and gnomes

My stomach has been making odd noises since I started eating again and it made me realise just how quiet it’s been over the past year. I guess that with my LES closed, all the food in my oesophagus was just dripping into it slowly over a period of hours after I ate and so it simply never filled up and never had too much to work on or to make a noise about. On a similar note, I also find it virtually impossible to remember when I last that full feeling in my stomach after eating a meal before my surgery – although just the smallest bowl of soup when I first started eating and I felt incredibly bloated. One of the nurses told me that it was almost as if I had had a self imposed gastric band in place and after so long, my stomach had probably shrunk. I guess such things will all take time ...

I mentioned to my surgeon how odd my stomach felt and he looked very concerned. Maybe odd was the wrong word to use...as I just meant different to what I have been used to more recently..not odd as in bad!

Odd may be a bit of a good description for my surgeon too. I mean, he is very sweet and (I hope) good at his job, but he is just so gnome-like to look at.^*1
Give him a long beard and a little fishing rod and he would look right at home on the edge of any garden pond. He would be a natural extra for LOTR^*2 or any other great fantasy film and I can’t help feeling that he would be perfect in any live role playing situation with just a minimum of make up!

^*1 This is about 10 minutes long...but worth sticking at....?
^*2 Yes...I know there are no gnomes in LOTR, but I couldn’t think of any other amazing epic fantasy film ...suggestions on a postcard please...