What do you wish you would've known?

late · March 25, 2007

Hello everyone! Just wondering if there was something you wish you would've done differently or if there was something you forgot that you should've done before your surgery. Also was there anything that happened to you the first week after surgery that you wish you would've known about so that you could've been better prepared.

marjon9 · March 25, 2007

In general I was pretty well prepared because I read this forum a lot before surgery. There is not much that has not been talked about here in terms of pre-op and post-op, and a lot of people have a lot of the same questions.

For me there was one small thing which turned out to be not so small. That is, I thought I was being really smart by putting Neosporin on my surgery incisions. It turns out that Neosporin is really bad for that because a surgical incision is a deep cut. Neosporin is great, they say, for keeping surface cuts and abrasions from getting infected. But for a deep cut it just turns the wound into a soupy mess and keeps the cut from healing. I extended my healing time by quite a bit by using Neosporin, and I came pretty close to getting an infection in my port incision because it would not close.

So, you now know much more than you ever knew you needed to know about the dangers of Neosporin after surgery.

Other people may have other things to mention, but in general I think you will be fine if you read this forum a lot before surgery.

Good luck

faithmd · March 25, 2007

Great question, and I'm glad Mark has reassured me that I'm pretty well prepared (I've been reading here and other places a lot). Thanks for the tip on the Neosporin!

HelenC · March 25, 2007

I didn't find this forum until after my surgery, and the yahoo group I visited before that didn't talk much about the complications of erosion and band slippage. I wasn't even aware of them until I came here.

Also, while the nutritionist spent a lot of time talking to me about how small my portions would be, she didn't explain at all about how small your bites need to be, and just how slowly you need to eat. I really wish someone had.

belle75067 · March 25, 2007

I didn't know anything about the surgery or procedure itself before I met a friend in training for a new job and she said she was getting the surgery, I checked it out online and it sounds interesting. I really didn't think I would go through with it but it happened and I am glad I went through with it. There's not really much I wish I would have known about. I would do it again in a heartbeat!