pattymmw

Hi Mindy,

Hope I'm doing this right to reply just to you......I'm new at this.

I live in Texas...Dallas area. I feel like from the beginning the surgeon didn't want to hear about any posible complications. I was banded in august 2007. At my 2 week checkup I was in alot of pain in my back and chest. I couldn't take a deep breath at all. I was in tears in the surgeons office and he told me it was normal post surgery stuff and it would get better. When I got home from his office I called my primary doctor. They saw me right away....did a chest x-ray and I had pneumonia. Things got better except for 'normal' aches and pains.

At the beginning of December I started having terrible pains in my left side. I saw the surgeon 2 times in december and told him how bad the pain was. I had called his office a couple times also to complain about the pain. I am a registered nurse and I just had a feeling that something was wrong.

The first week of January I was still miserable and went to my primary. She did x-rays of my stomach and did not see any evidence of bowel obstruction but I felt constipated. I was taking laxatives and liquid tylenol regularly. A few days later I still was in alot of pain and still believed that I could be constipated. Back to my primary again. I asked her to order golytely for me......the medicine they goive to clean you out before a colonoscopy. I had very little results with that also. January 9th I went back to my primary. She sent me to the ER for eval and a cat scan. The cat scan showed some inflamation around the tubing of the band indicating infection. The ER doctor called the surgeon who was in Vail CO skiing at the time and told him his findings and his concerns. The surgeon told me to come in and see him the next week. In the mean time the ER doctor put me on antibiotics. When I went to see the surgeon which was about 4/5 days later he told me to stop taking the antibiotics, that there was no infection and the fluid was normal. He had not even gotten the results of the cat scan from the hospital. Another week went by and I started running temperatures of 102-103.5 and back to my primary. She sent me to a gastro doctor who sent me for a stat cat scan. The gastro doctor called me at home that night about 7pm and told me to go to the hospital where my surgeon practices to be admitted for IV antibiotics. The next day, January 22 the surgeon came in and said the only way to see what was going on was to do an exploratory lap. I agreed and when I woke up from surgery was told that he had found a 'phlegmon' (infection) larger than a baseball that was attached to my stomach, colon and splenic flexture. That day he told me that he removed as much as he could and also removed the lap band but he said the lap band had nothing to do with the infection. My daughter was with me at the time and she clearly remembers him saying that he removed as much of the phlegmon as he could. I'm an RN but had never heard of a phlegmon so I started investigating. The treatment for a phlegmon is not to touch it because it could spread and get much worse. It should just be treated with antibiotics. When I questioned him about this he said that he didn't remove anything, just closed me back up. I was in the hospital for 6 days. Went home and things were ok for 2 weeks. I was going to see him for a post op check and part of the incision started leaking. He opened a small area of the incision in his office and it was draining alot of puss. I asked him to cultue it and he refused and said it wasn't necessary. I was doing dressing changed on that area at home for 3 days and another area of the incision opened and started draining. The next week I went back to him and asked him again to culture it again. Again he refused. At this time I also told him that I work alot with wounds and I know when they look OK and the drainage color and amount was not good. I said "I can picture you having to open this and me having a big wound vac on my stomach". He said I was worrying to much. I told him that there was a wound care doctor that I work with and I wanted her to check the wound and see what she thought. He just had me doing wet to dry dressings and packing the wound but I knew there were better treatments. I made an appointment with the wound care doctor and the first thing she did when she saw it was a culture. It came back positive for MRSA. She started me on antibiotics. This is the end of February now. I had an appointment with the surgeon on February 24th. He then said he was going to need to clean it out. It would be an outpatient procedure and he was going to put a wound vac on it. Funny how I called that one about 3 weeks prior. I had the wound vac on for 8 weeks......home health nurse in to change it 3 times a week. I have had the vac off for about 1 month now. The incision was open in just one small place that was tunneling. Since the vac was removed it has reopened in 3 other areas. The wound care doctor recultured last week and it is still showing high counts of MRSA so I am back on antibiotics. I have been out of work for almost 18 weeks and don't know when I will get released. Bills are piling up like crazy. I really believe it was alot of neglect on the surgeons part for not pursuing any of my complaints and just telling me everything was normal. I believe the infection would not have gotten as bad as it did.

Thanks so much for your time and for listening.

Patty