Wolfy

Thanks for the info (and sorry for the late reply). I had looked into DS back when I was considering it. There were two things preventing me from going that route -- one is that I didn't think I was big enough to justify it and felt sleeve would be good enough for me (so far it is, we'll see as time goes on), and the other was that there doesn't seem to be a DS surgeon anywhere near me. I would have had to travel far out of State to get it. It hadn't occured to me at the time that you could get the sleeve first and then the malaborptive part of DS later. I knew all the details about it, such as the fact that gastric sleeve came out of two-part DS surgeries, and that the malaborptive part can be fully reversed if this ever becomes necessary, but for some reason it hadn't occured to me that someone would be able to go to a DS after a sleeve until I read about some folks doing that. I may consider it in the future if things don't go well with the sleeve. But right now the sleeve is doing its job for me, just not as fast as I was hoping it would

I had the same thing. Actually mine started when I broke the rules in the first two weeks and ate Pasta at a restaurant during a theater night. It was a big mistake. I felt a lower abdominal pain for days. I was afraid I had hurt myself, but the doctor told me it was just the muscle that he had pierced, and that it was bruised; he said that it would heal and that I was not in any danger. He was right. It took another week, but it eventually felt better.

I was out of work two days: the day of the surgery and one day after that. I returned to work much faster than I was told I would.

I felt nausea for the first week. It went away after that.

I recently had Gastric Sleeve surgery. It was only a week ago, so I am not trying to raise flags here or anything, but I am curious about something. I read that Gastric Sleeve was developed out of Duodenal Switch, when the surgery was done in two stages and it was found that the first stage (the Sleeve portion) provided adequate weight loss for most people. That makes me wonder if it is possible for Gastric Sleeve patients, who did not do this as part of a Duodenal Switch, to later decide to have the mal-absorption portion of the DS done, in cases where there was difficulty in losing weight. Has anyone had that done? Is it even possible? It would be nice to know what my future options are after having gone this far already.

I have Aetna and though I am post-op now, I am still not 100% sure I am approved. I was able to go through something called the "Hernia Program", which was offered at the office I visited. Essentially because I had a hiatal hernia, this was included in the surgery and was submitted to Aetna along those lines. I paid a total of $2900 to the main surgeon, $1000 to the accompanying surgeon, and $1000 to the hospital, as my share. The rest is supposed to be paid by insurance, but honestly I haven't heard from Aetna yet about the status of the claim. Just an FYI, my BMI is 48, and I have been diagnosed with sleep apnea since 2007. Somehow though those two criteria were not the critical deciders on whether I would be covered. It was strictly determined by the presence of that hiatal hernia.

I went to First Choice Weight Loss in Houston. That's where I met my surgeon, Dirk Rodriguez. I ultimately decided on Gastric Sleeve, because I just didn't think the Band would work for me, gastric bypass seemed a little too much for my case, and I also wanted the benefit of having the hunger hormones reduced. I had never heard of plication at that point, nor was I ever offered it as an option. My surgery is on Monday, and it has taken a LONG time to get to this point. Due to some false positive readings on an EKG, I had to have a stress test and heart sonogram, which also showed false positives. This led to me having to have a heart catheterization, which finally proved I had no heart issues and could go on with the surgery. In any case, since it took so long for me to get here, and my surgery is only two days away, I can't just back out of it now. All I am saying is that if I had known plication was an option (or that it even existed), I would have went that route instead of sleeve. The one thing that has bothered me from the beginning is that this surgery is permanent. I would like the option to reverse later if I needed to for some reason, especially if it gives similar benefits to the sleeve.