Marilyn, Unraveled

There are numerous Facebook “support” groups for weight loss surgery patients and they are full of people who have been given no rules, who are asking when they get to eat pizza again, and who are clearly not appreciating the benefits of surgery having gone through dramatic altering of their digestive system. You usually hear about these people ending up in the ER with dehydration or damage to their new delicate pouches or sleeves. I have had such smooth sailing in my recovery, I resolved myself to believe Rule Followers don’t get complications. 

But I changed my mind on that. 

One week ago from today I found myself in the ER doubled over with severe intestinal pain that started the day before. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink — I knew something was wrong. I called my surgeon (note: call your surgeon, don’t consult Dr. Google) and she had me take my leftover pain meds overnight, but said I should go to the ER if it got worse. I spoke with her several times in the morning and decided the ER was my best bet. I went into the ER where they did blood tests and I got a bit of judginess from one of the nurses about “being talked into that procedure.”  I had heard stories of bias against weight loss surgery patients in the ER so I was dreading going in. I was seen really quickly, put on IV fluids and major pain meds. MAJOR. I had to do a contrast CT scan which required me to drink some nasty stuff over the course of 2-3 hours before they could do the tests. Morphine was wearing off in 2 hours so they bumped me up to dilaudid. It was crazy pain. 

About 6 hours later…a few hours after the CT scan, some nurse I hasn’t seen asked me if the surgeon had been in to see me. I was like “SURGEON???? WTF?”

My original nurse, Joaquin, who I thought was going to be a dick, turned out to be my biggest advocate. No one had come to tell me what was going on so he told me the CT scan revealed an internal hernia and twisting of intestines. They were trying to find a surgeon and I told him I only wanted my surgeon. He took all of her contact info and gave it to the ER docs and it took them another hour to figure it out, but my surgeon had them arrange for an ambulance to take me to her hospital for surgery. The general surgeon came in to talks to me in the ER and said he had done ONE gastric bypass in residency 10 years ago so they were happy to send me to her. I was pretty freaked out at this point but the pain meds were definitely taking the edge off. 

I got to the other hospital after a 40 minute ride with possibly the dumbest ambulance guy and was put in a room on the floor where they take care of bariatric patients. People who understand what was going on. My surgeon came to see me within the hour to tell me what she saw on the scan and told me I get a gold star for being her first patient to get one of these so early in my recovery. There were two cases in the ER before me, so my surgery was going to be at midnight. I was so out of it and in pain and thirsty  and going on 2 days of not eating I didn’t care. 

So out of surgery at 2:00 am Saturday, I find out I had a tiny piece of scar tissue that caused the spiraling of my intestines and all she needed to do was snip that and everything unraveled (hence the name of this blog). She explained that I had lost so much internal fat leaving spaces in the area where she did the bypass which allowed things to move around. She said she put in several permanent stitches to hold everything in place and I should be good to go. I could immediately tell that the pain I had been feeling was gone. Now I just had surgery pain. And I had to start over with my food progression. Liquids for a few days, then onto purées and then solids as tolerated. Still working on getting past puréed food a week later. 

I had to stay over night and had to meet all of the requirements to leave. 

• Walking laps around the floor
• Breathing exercises 10 x an hour (the anesthesia was a bitch and I still feel like I am catching my breath)
• Drinking progressively more for several hours, 30 ml, 60, 90, 120. It’s hard to do but I wanted to go home. 

The nurses were awesome. I made sure to be extra nice and self sufficient so I could be their favorite patient. I even saw one of my favorite nurses from my surgery back in July. I’ve lost about 35 pounds so far and they were all so encouraging about how well I am doing. 

Anyhow…took the week off to recover and it is so much easier and faster than the original surgery. I’ve been doing some work from home so I know I will be ready to get back. 

So, I am a rule follower who had a fairly rare complication early on and I consider myself very lucky. 

Knocking on wood this is the last of it.