BrandonKea

I was off 4 weeks for recovery and now I'm off intermittently since I've had this structure.

Don't feel bad about taking the time off if you have it. I burned through 120+ hours of sick time, but I needed every hour of it, and then some.

Odd, I had an Upper GI (Swallow Study), but no EGD until post-op when I got my stricture (I've had two now.) Hopefully your surgery goes well! 8 months is a long time to wait, you don't want to know how long I was in the process...

Had my EGD yesterday, it went VERY well! My surgeon is very pleased with my outcome, and I'm definitely able to feel a difference in volume and as far as things moving more quickly. Now I'm just working on getting all that anesthesia out, I'm ridiculously sore!

It's nice to know I'm not alone, too. I've definitely gotten used to calling my surgical team, even though I feel like I'm bothering them, I'm not. That's what we all pay them for! They do great work too, at least my folks. Hopefully I can get this resolved soon, I'm damn tired of TPN already.

@@twinmomC I can't imagine being that far from my surgeon, I'm a 20 minute drive away! I have a feeling my path with EGD's won't be too much different though, they've already told me it'll take a few. Found out today I am scheduled back in for my next EGD in 12 days. That's only 12 more days (if I'm lucky) with the TPN bag, which for the moment is my biggest complaint. Apparently my stricture was so tight, they struggled to even get a pediatric scope in to do anything to it. Frankly, I hope they resolve this sooner than later.

Hey all! About a month out from surgery I went in because I had an unusual series of events happen. Out of nowhere, I was able to eat significantly less than I had been (just yogurt and cottage cheese), and I had even vomited after a few occasions of simple drinking (Water only). So, I went in and had a swallow study done. That confirmed my new stomach was slow to empty, and my surgeon suggest a scope to go in and verify and if needed, dilate the closing connection to allow me to eat. I got called the next day, offering me a time on Monday to go in, or I could wait about two weeks. Since my symptoms had gotten better by this time, I said I didn't need to rush in and get it done, and that I could wait for two weeks. That was another big mistake. I found my symptoms would be ok in the morning and then at night, they'd flare up and I'd end up vomiting and being unable to keep anything down. This eventually morphed in to being able to consume no Protein shakes (I was put back on Clear liquids and protein by my doc regardless of when my procedure was, UNTIL I had my procedure.) I felt fine though because my body was still burning fat. But all things being the same, I put a note in my online chart for my nurses to see Monday, asking for the next available date to do the scope. Monday I was called and told to come in Tuesday. Everything seemed very routine, and the overwhelming feeling was this procedure would fix my issue and I'd be back on track. Wrong! I got up after the scope ready to walk out and feeling refreshed from what I'd just call a nap. The nurses had different plans for me. As they wheeled me back to recovery, I asked where my wife was. They told me she had gone to get something to eat and would be up soon, in the meantime, I should order some food. I was told that I could "have whatever I wanted," which I immediately questioned. I also asked why I needed a meal if I was leaving shortly. The reply was that I wasn't leaving shortly, I was being admitted overnight. I was literally shocked. Confused, and now wishing my wife was there to answer some questions, I tried to get whatever I could out of the nursing staff. They had limited information because they're all just staff in surgical recovery, they don't know all the details of every patient, and there were a lot of them. I got ahold of my wife who told me she had actually gone home because they said it would be 2 hours before I'd even get back to a room. She told me the dilation was only mildly successful, and that I was malnourished and had to stay overnight for observation. Long story short, I ended up with a PICC Line, a massive bag of TPN, and orders for home health to help me with future daily bags of TPN for about the next 4-6 weeks until they can go back in and do another scope. I'm feeling a lot of things right now, most of that is disappointment that this hasn't gone as easily as really everyone led me to believe. I understand every patient is different, but it's so hard to hear things like "you're an ideal candidate for this now because you're so healthy and your only comorbidity is hypertension, so you're mostly healthy aside from that," or, "we don't anticipate any complications in your case." The moral here is if you think you're having issues, call your surgical team ASAP and tell them. I have no clue if there was anything I could have done to avoid this, I honestly doubt it, but here I am with a 2 liter bag of Fluid I'll be toting around for the next month and a half either way.

Hi all, Wanted to drop an update on here. I've run in to some more complications post-op than I'd like. I'm that low percentage of patients who apparently have issues. When I actually had my operation, my stomach pouch leaked, so they did a revision on the spot, which basically just means they stapled more off. This resulted in an even smaller pouch than the standard RnY patient. It also meant some very deep stitches to keep everything from moving around. So, post-op, the stitches (which were sealed in place on the surface with staples) were the source of tremendous amounts of pain. I have a high pain tolerance, and hydrocodone wasn't even touching my pain. I ended up going back in, they ran some labs, gave me IV fluids, took the staples out, and told me to continue to lie low, it should heal on its own. After a few more days of my pain being at a 12 on a 10 scale, it did finally get better. Then, earlier this week, I started having an issue with the pureed food I was eating just sitting in my stomach. The only way I could move it was to throw it up. This was happening with food and liquid/water. So I went back in again, and after an upper GI, they determined my stomach was very, very slow to empty. Now I'm waiting for 2 weeks to have them go in with a scope and balloon open my connection from my pouch to my intestine. In the meantime, I'm back on a liquid diet. So, I guess my update isn't really that positive, but there it is. My weight continues to fall off. I'm down 36 pounds from surgery just over 4 weeks ago, and soooo close to being below 300 for the first time in I don't know how long. Those are positive. But I'd really like to be semi-normal now...

I took about a month.

Best of luck on the recovery. I hope you get healed up quickly. We started in a very similar place. Hopefully you will have a fairly easy go of it through the different food phases. It helps a lot once you can start eating scrambled eggs and stuff. You may already be there, if not, you are probably looking forward to it. Thursday I (hopefully) get cleared to pureed foods. I've been on liquids since November 10th. I might enjoy that first bite of "food" a little too much haha.

@@dlappjr Thanks for that information. (It's also nice to read the stuff under your name and see we've got similar starting points and goals.) I have a feeling I won't get the clear for a little bit just because I had some minor complications and I'm still rocking some pretty healthy abdominal pain from some deep stitches they put in, but as soon as I'm able, I'm ready to get in there and start accelerating my weight loss.

I'll definitely ask my surgeon what his guidelines are. I don't plan on packing on Schwarzenegger levels of muscle and lifting small cars, but I'd like to do some small level of resistance training.

Oh definitely. I'm not in a hurry by any means.

Prior to surgery, I tried to get into weightlifting, but found that I was too heavy to even really do a bodyweight squat, let alone anything with added weight. Now that I'm post-op, I'm looking forward to eventually trying that again, but I'm worried about how my body will do with not having as much fuel to draw from since, you know, tiny stomach and what not. Anyone have any advice in this department?

This is excellent advice.