Friend is sick, need some advice

Bumblestitch · February 28, 2011

Hi all. I had the sleeve done with a local doctor back in December, but this post isn't about me. A friend of mine had the sleeve done in Mexico (Jerusalem Clinic, I think? Dr. Ponce de Leon) back in October, so she's about 4.5 months out. Everything fine until about 2 weeks ago, she got sick. Typical flu-like symptoms - fever, unproductive cough, tired, no appetite.. 2 days in she started getting better but strangely started to become nauseated. Still not eating at this point and barely getting in enough fluids, she became dehydrated and went to the hospital to get an IV. Made an appointment with her PCP last week and he scheduled bloodwork to see if perhaps it was a viral infection. He prescribes her antiviral meds and anti-nausea meds. The week continues and she is feeling worse - nearly constant nausea, any attempt at eating (and sometimes just taking her pills) ends in vomiting. Even the occasional 'nothing in my stomach but still end up vomiting/dry heaving'. Fast forward to this afternoon at the bloodwork followup, she's now two weeks without really eating anything and not keeping down anything more substantial than a small glass of orange juice or Water. Doctor finds nothing off in the bloodwork results, she's very drained (obviously from not having any nutrients), and what's more worrying is that he can't even get a blood pressure reading after multiple attempts (again I presume due to lack of nutrition and being dehydrated yet again). He basically told her she had to go to the hospital, it was not an option.

So, she's now at the hospital getting an IV to rehydrate and I believe she will be admitted so they can figure out what exactly the problem is. I'm putting this out there because I wanted to see if this condition rings any bells with the community. We don't know if her problem is related to some general illness or if it might be connected with her VSG surgery. It just seems odd that it would suddenly present itself 4 months out on the tail end of being sick. The only thing we could think of is that perhaps her heavy coughing during the first couple of days could have caused a problem of some kind. (Sudden leak?) What's odd is that it's just nausea. I know there's lots of talk here over leaks, strictures, gall bladder problems, etc but she has no abdominal pain, it's just nausea all the time and an inability to keep food down.

My other concern is that since her surgery was done in Mexico, she doesn't have a surgeon familiar with her surgery who can get involved in her diagnosis. She's at a pretty good local hospital but as far as I'm aware, no one at that hospital does the VSG, so I don't know if VSG complications is something they will give much focus to or even be aware of. I'm tempted to call my surgeon (who is in another town/hospital) but I suspect they would not give any kind of medical advice or even their opinion without seeing the patient.

So based on the above, does this sound like something that could be a complication from VSG? Has anyone had (or developed) nausea 4+ months out after an uneventful recovery period?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have.. like I said it could be completely unrelated to VSG, I just wanted to see what the community might have to say about it.

renniemommie · February 28, 2011

I hope your friend feels better, and though I haven't had surgery yet, I am not the best to answer, I will say I did read about a woman that had a hard to diagnose pin-hole leak that took months to discover and she had a lot of nausea issues from it, she also had some bouts in the hospital from Dehydration issues (then they found it and fixed it)

The VGS is important, the hospital might need to consult with a specialist who does do VGS, no matter where her surgery was from.