Belle12689

Hi everyone, I'm new to the forum. I'm a 23 year old female who had my surgery in January 2012. First, I just want to say I love the surgery. It has helped me get down near my goal weight and given me confidence and happiness I never knew I could have. That said, I am having some issues, which is why I found this forum in the first place. After getting my surgery in January 2012, everything went swimmingly. However, sometime around July 2012 I got sick and vomited a lot, which caused my band to slip. I did not know what had happened at the time, so I just dealt with it for a while. The result was that the band first slipped down and then slipped back up, almost entirely sealing off the entrance to my stomach. Consequently, I could not eat anything without throwing up. Nothing would go down into my stomach. In fact, I could barely even drink liquids. Finally, in October, I went to my surgeon with the issue. He discovered that my band had slipped and brought me in to fix the problem the next day. He did a surgery and fixed the band. Immediately after the surgery, my esophagus was seriously inflamed and I was in a lot of pain. At that point I really couldn't eat or drink anything, because of the pain. About two weeks after the surgery the doctor brought me in again and gave me a series of IVs and told me if I didn't eat I would have to continue to get IVs every day. As a result, I started to force myself to eat when I could. However, I encountered a major problem. I would start eating, and even after an extremely small portion it would feel like the food was just sitting in my chest rather than going down to my stomach. This is a painful feeling for me, and as a result there were often times when I would throw up. The vomit had no stomach bile or anything, it was just the undigested food sitting in my chest. Things were a little better when I ate things that had a liquid like consistency, like yogurt, ice cream, or food covered in condiments like butter or dressing, but it was still an issue. About two months ago, I went to the doctor and told them I was having trouble eating anything more than tiny portions, and they took some Fluid out of the band and told me I should be able to eat normal portions. However, since then, things have only gotten worse. It is now at the point where if I eat anything of any substance I cannot keep it down. It just sits in my chest and I need to throw it up to relieve the feeling. I can only drink in small sips. Basically all I can eat now are things like yogurt or tuna salad, and I'm even having trouble keeping those down lately. This is different than when my band slipped, because it feels different to me. For the last two months I've also been experiencing weakness, fatigue, reflux, chest pain, and an overall uncomfortable feeling in my body. I'm also experiencing a pain/numbness and tingling/weakness in my hands for the last week. I went to my normal doctor and he ran a bunch of blood tests on me, and everything came back pretty much normal. He suggested I might have Celiac disease, but the test for that came back negative. The only thing of note from my blood work was that I have a deficiency in my Vitamin D. I'm assuming these other symptoms I've experienced are associated with whatever is causing the problem, or from the lack of nutrition I'm getting due to my inability to keep down any food. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Does anyone know what might be causing the problem? I'm terrified to go back to my doctor because I'm scared he's going to say I need another surgery, which I don't want (I also had thyroid cancer in 2008 that needed surgery to be removed, and I had my gall bladder out in 2010, so I'm so sick of being in the hospital and going through surgery). I would appreciate any advice anyone can give, and any suggestions or guesses anyone might have about what is going on. I know I am going to have to go back to my surgeon soon, but I'm just scared and you guys seem to know what you're talking about, so I'm really hoping that someone might have some ideas about what's going on, so I can at least mentally prepare myself. Thank you so much guys!!