AnaBanana

i'm so sorry you had a leak. i had one too, started getting treatment for it three months out (it was contained so i didn't get sick) in november and i'm still hoping for a miracle with the latest and last option before they start thinking of surgeries like what rj's had. i have a clip that was put in a few weeks ago. doesn't it seem when you get to the dealing with this around half a year it starts just becoming what you are and your life revolves around feeds, and you just feel like your life, period, is being held back. i thought by now after losing 100 lbs and everyone says i look so great i'd be happy and free. but i just show them my jtube hookup and say yeah, i'm still healing from this... i hope you have support! you will get it here..

well i have a couple of posts in the complications area, i've gotten a lot of support there! would i do it again? probably. but i would have made different choices here at home. i probably would have had the stent or the nj tube till the leak healed. done it right the first time. my weight loss hasn't suffered, i lost a lot right off the bat. in total i've gone from a size 24 to a size 8. my ass is so flat it's funny...because i lost a lot of muscle tone, but that's something i can work on when i feel better. i've lost over 100lbs. i didn't have tpn, just tube feeds so i never had too many calories. they wanted me to take 8 cans of food a day and i never did that, just 4. that's all i could stomach. been about 1000 calories a day as opposed to the over 2000 they wanted me on. of course that could have hampered my healing too, and i smoke. but i'll never know. keep up the good fight!~

I'm so sorry you went through this. I can definitely empathize with your pain and suffering. I had surgery August 16, 2013. I met a lady in Mexico who had surgery the day after me so we kept in touch through facebook. I was really jealous of her because she seemed to be doing really well with how she was feeling and I felt awful. I was really weak too, never being able to get in all my fluids, once i started eating normal food I would vomit foamies almost every time I ate. I had that awful left side pain. It felt like my shoulder got popped out of it's socket. My ribs were killing me. Ouch! No fever though. At 3 months out (November 19) I went in for a upper GI series. Drank the clay looking stuff and the radiologist said, it's going down fine your sleeve looks great! I was really happy. Four days later i get a call from my doctor's office. He wants to see me. I am panicked. I call mexico they say it's probably a hernia. It's not. It's a 2cm contained leak. My body built some sort of sac to contain the contents spilling out. So I wasn't 'sick' sick. I ask my doc to refer me to a gastro doc. In my city here in canada they don't do weight loss surgery. So i'm basically a guinea pig. I call mexico they say a nasojejunal tube for six weeks. I tell that to the gastro. He has no respect for the doctor in mexico's wishes. I think he thinks i got my vsg in some back alley chop shop. No convincing can make him think different. So I get admitted to the hospital. After much hydration and antibiotic treatment, I'm given three choices... leave it and see what happens, try to glue it (put some glue on the leak, let scar tissue form over the glue) or get a stent. I choose the glue. They go in through my mouth witht the camera and an attached glue gun. I stay in the hospital for a day and they let me go home. That week I feel really awful. Can barely eat or drink and I'm back in the ER within 5 days. I get a nasogastric tube shoved into my stomach to drain the bile and acid, give my stomach a break. This time I'm in the hospital for 3 weeks. I'm low on electrolytes and they want me on the tubefeed, just like my doctor in mexico said, but it's their idea apparently. So I get a nasojejunum tube and boy do I hate it. I am being fed in the hospital and they are going to send me home like this. Okay I say, I can handle it. No I can't. My throat feels like someone is in there cutting it with razors and I'm being a total baby. I am supposed to keep the tube in for six weeks. I pull it out week 4 and drink my cans of nutrition for a week, I have an appt. with the doctor who gives me heck for pulling it. I am scheduled for an upper GI to see if the leak healed. It hasn't apparently. The pains in my side and shoulder have never been worse, now it's in my back and my temp is a degree higher than normal. It's not a bad fever, just 99 or so, but it worries me and I go back to emergency. They take an xray and say nothing looks bad, but i overhear the female doctor say 'im keeping her overnight to cover my ass'. Good thing she does. I get a CT scan the next day. My gastro comes in looking like someone died and says 'not good news'. He then tells me my stomach has a perforation, I have two big abscesses, one has opened and is spilling poison into my body. There is 'free air' everywhere. I may lose my stomach. It's 5:30pm and he has me booked for emergency surgery. I think I might die. I call my family and they come to the hospital, and it's worse now because they look so scared and I want to comfort them but I'm scared out of my mind too. I go for surgery and wake up in recovery. True to form I chat way too much, I always do that after a surgery, yap yap yap. I somehow think it's going to prevent post op complications or something if i crack jokes and make the nurses laugh. I am visited by the doctor who said I didn't have a perforation after all, it was still the original leak but formed abcesses (do i trust him at this point?), i still have my stomach. I am wheeled into observation. I give the nurses alternate names to remember them based on what movie stars they look like, i'm being pretty generous hoping they treat me well haha. the morphine isn't completely hitting the pain and they up my dose to 2mg per 8 minutes. i am... stoned. thank god. i have a drain, an NG tube sucking the stomach crap out (it doesn't really bug me this time as i'm too much in lala land), and a new disgusting cut down my belly which means i will never wear a bikini again, not that i ever would mind you. i also have a tube implanted in my lower abdomen ready for the tube feed once i feel better. For 10 days i do an IV of antibiotics and different Vitamins and minerals. I get my blood drawn daily to see what I'm lacking. Boy the potassium hurts when it goes through your IV. I have developed thrush and a yeast infection from the antibiotic cocktail (Flagyll and Ciproflaxin). So they give me some cream and these little blue cups of anti fungal syrup. Four days after surgery I drink one and this total absolute hellish pain starts in my body. It starts in my chest and waves of pain work their way down my abdomen. I start screaming. Nurses rush in telling me to calm myself. I can't. I'm stoned, in total pain and I'm screaming thank you very much. A portable xray gets rushed up. I never though I might be dying of something, i was too much in lala land for that. But now, I think i'm a bit traumatized by the whole thing. It was worse than having a baby. I was rushed down to nuclear xray or whatever they call it and they shove a tube in my left side. I'm talking no pain control on that, just a cut and a tube shoved into my body. I guess I developed a post surgical abcess. The stuff that was coming out of that tube. OMG. It looked like cream of chicken Soup, complete with chunks of chicken. It was disgusting. And sometimes it would be green or yellow depending on the day. My abdomen was so sensitive if a stethoscope was placed on it my now superhuman reflexes would grab the doctors wrist so fast and push it away i was amazed. Within a few days the pain started to subside as the abcess drained itself out. I was completely exhausted. Cranky and tired. My hair wasn't combed, my long curly hair became a big ol' rats nest. I spent all of february in the hospital. Back on the tube feed. Started gaining my strength back but still had problems walking and started getting depressed. I don't blame myself. I had an allergic reaction to dilaudid and started hallucinating once they took me off the pump. Every thing i saw was evil. the curtains morphed into monsters, the floor had monsters, i thought i was on a boat. I didn't know where I was, and fought with the nurses. Finally I told them to take me off this crap and put me back on the morphine. Then I was back to cracking jokes. I was taken by taxi to another hospital 2 weeks in to place a stent in my throat. What a horror that was. I kept gagging and vomiting yellow bile. I was to keep it in for 4-6 weeks. I wasn't sure i was going to make it. Once I got some strength back they sent me home with the tube feed and the stent. I kept calling the doctor who put the stent in complaining about the chest pain and the gagging and he was like 'take a tylenol'... i wanted to tell him to go straight to hell but i needed him to pull the damn thing out. I only kept it in for 4 weeks exactly. He was mad at me afterwards as he said the hole went from 2cm to less than 1cm and if i had only waited another 2 weeks it may have closed. I don't know if i would have survived another 2 weeks. I felt like jumping off a bridge with that thing in there. I guess after all I had been through I just had developed low tolerance to any more pain and suffering. So two weeks later I went back to the stent doctor and he put in a clip. When he took out the stent, he did put two smaller clips in but one popped off real quick so he just figured he needed a bigger one. He had to order it in. After I got the clip the first few days I was like 'what have i done!', i was throwing up yellow bile again and so sick. That subsided. Now I'm just waiting for him to call and let me know what's next on the agenda. A tenth gastroscopy? Surely this leak has healed. I haven't eaten any food since november. I feel beaten and tired. I lost my hair. Now i have a short bob because of the rat's nest. I'm pissed off but not at anyone in particular. Maybe at myself for not just waiting a bit longer each time to give myself a chance to heal. Maybe I shouldn't have pulled that first nose tube, and I can't believe I drank knowing I might still have had the leak. Sorry this was so long. It's kind of the first time I had to get it all out in a story. I hope you can find some support. It's a tough thing to go through.

Did u end up with a stent also? Are u eating/drinking ok now? Sorry for your pain...get better sooner! i had a stent for 4 weeks, it wasn't in long enough to close up the hole, they just placed a clip on the hole this last friday, i am on a j tube feed. and ice chips.

Wow! I'm sorry to hear that. I just re read this entire story again from beginning to end knowing it ended well and had a huge smile on my face which is what I was seeking just weeks away from own date....and then this....another leak victim....I'm so sorry. How was your outcome? slowly healing. it's been a tough 5 months!

oh that's so great to hear freespirit! i'm rooting for you!

i think it's going to work too. i was pretty sick yesterday after the procedure. i vomited a few times, i hope that doesn't mess with the clip. i vomited bile too yuck. it's so sour. that was just the one time. this morning i woke up and vomited dark greenish bile. i hope this is just trauma from the endoscopy. oh i will follow instructions. i can't eat or drink till the doctor okays it. i'm all for that.

well today was my clip day! it took them an hour, i was on versed and fentanyl so it felt like 15 minutes and i have a bad headache and threw up after. but they got the clip on there! can't eat or drink yet till dr. gives me the okay (and i go for a test to make sure i'm healed). im so grateful that the procedure was done now lets just hope it heals!!!

thanks for checking in.. i feel pretty good. i'm scared of abcesses. i still have the hole, i'm on a tube feed so i'm not eating or drinking. but i do take ice a few times a day and my medications. even saliva worries me. on friday i get a clip and i hope so bad it works. i want to eat and drink so bad. iced tea especially (homeade with lemon and a bit of honey)... gahhhh!

the salt in Snacks is horrific. have you ever tried roasting chickpeas and seasoning them yourself? i used to make those for my kids. not sure if your husband would go for it though, lol.

immodium? ask your doctor. is it from nerves? i get a loose bowel when i'm stressed.

aww thank you so much green*eyed*girl. i appreciate it. i'm trying to stay positive.

oh hell no. no abuse from me. i'm gonna go back to the beginning with my eating when they do this, if it's successful. i feel so left behind from everyone else i met during the time i had my surgery. did you feel that too? they are thriving and growing and im struggling. but i will get there. this has to end happy. i sure hope it works! i wouldn't mind trying to find out what it looks like online, i might check out some sites. thanks for sticking by me.

i must have set the magic wheels in motion making this thread. i just got a call from the stent doctor and i have an appt on march 28 for a 'clip'. we'll see how that works. if he can't get the clip to work then i'll make sure he puts the stent in again. i hope the clip works. i've done a bit of research on it. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt. but if my stomach tissue is 'fibrous' then the clip should hold it well. fingers crossed **

they haven't done anything since the stent. i don't see a doctor till the 07 of april. the stent surgeon just removed the stent. tried to clip it after he removed it while he was doing the endoscopy, but said the clips didn't work. told me it wouldn't close on it's own because it's too 'fibrous'. the mexican doctor wants me on the j tube only as it's less invasive. but told me to listen to the doctors here because they know best what state my stomach is in. the stent doctor hasn't contacted me since he removed the stent even though i called his office to talk to him. he never phoned me back. my son said he's probably fed up with me for not keeping it in the whole six weeks. i don't think that's very ethical so hopefully not true.