Greetings and salutations!

[Regnadkcin 0]

Figgered I'd nip in and drop a post...

I got banded by Dr. Woody Denham at Evanston Northwestern on July 16 2007. Incidentally, very nice of him to do Medicaid work.

I'm a bit a-typical here... frankly, I've been told (and tend to believe) that I would have been reverting down to my 'natural' weight with time (and was already on my way, prior to surgery). That said, enough was enough, and I'm perfectly ecstatic that I had it done. There's a bit of a story there... and it smacks of 'vicious circle' coupled with quack doctors ... this is long (just feel like writing it down right now

Essentially, I was born (or acquired soon after) the autoimmune disease Celiac Sprue. That's a nasty little thing whereby the body's immune system ends up attacking glutens (wheat (flour), rye and barley) - and any organs in contact with the glutens. In hindsight, the first symptom was a 'rash' on my right ankle at around age 5. Over the years it was usually diagnosed as psoriasis, though the penultimate diagnoses (from a specialist, no less!) was something along the lines of "well, the morbidly obese often have skin problems" - thanks, doc! Doctors would also blame 'allergies' in general (like to doggies)... finally had my pediatrist tell me I'd be dead in 10 years, at which point I just stopped going to doctors (was offered no answers - just 'lose weight). The celiac hit overdrive right out of high school (all of the following started within a 2 week period): heart palpitations, nightly; acid reflux (had never experienced that before - went from 0 to the value sized tagamet and tums bottles overnight); bad sleep and nightmares; kidney stones (omg, those are fun!)... to name but a few things. Perhaps 8 years ago the celiac ratcheted up again - so, that was about 8 years w/o a solid bowl movement (and I went from once a day to 10-20 times a day near the end). Well, I just figured (depending on my mood) that I'd either gone nuts, was dying, had cancer, had a dicky heart, had a brain tumor... but I slogged on, nonetheless. Eventually the sleep became a serious problem (starting about 10 years ago). I've _always_ had trouble *falling* asleep, but up until the 'right out of high school' period I quite enjoyed sleeping A recent revelation I've had, though, is that I was -always- yawning for as long as my memory went back (yes, a bit of hyperbole... but only a bit). Gradually, my 'sleep' went up from 7-9 hours per night to 10-14 per night near the end (and ANY less than 10 hours and I'd feel like I was hit by a mack truck). I'd also wake up seemingly constantly because of back pain (I took to sleeping in bizarre positions - the worst was the last one I utilized: face firmly planted in the pillow, legs on a pile of pillows raised up a good 9" to 1 foot higher than where my head was). Ah, weights, as I remember them... 180 in 5th grade. 250 in 9th. 300 by the end of high school. Around 330-350 for quite awhile... then it shot up to 425 three years ago. At a guess, it was 625 1 year ago (wow!).

OK! Now, onto the punchline...

I had really gone 'down hill' starting maybe 6 years ago. See all of the above but I'd also taken a huge hit to my mental faculties, and I'd get horribly winded from walking a block or so. Ended up moving back in with my parents and started working for my father, but it became harder and harder to do even the simplest mental or physical activities. About 3 years ago I started getting real bad tooth pains; went in to a dentist and he found an impacted wisdom tooth. Ok - I figured I might as well get them all out. He yoinked 3 (was awake for it) but couldn't do the impacted one, so he gave me some pennicyllin and I scheduled for 2 weeks later with a dental surgeon. Got the last one yanked (awake for that one too... bits of tooth flying everywhere!) and got some more pennicyllin. That second course of antibiotics got me - I went into anaphalactic shock. I actually tried to wait it out, but after 5 hours I went to the hospital. Hit me with Benadryl and that fixed that. BUT... enzymes came back - I'd had a mild heart attack, They found a 100% blockage on some minor artery; stint didn't take and they just loaded me up with heart meds and sent me on my way. About 3 months later I had an arrythmia (conginital heart defect - another missed diagnosis). I was born with a misfiring node (literally a short circuit) that would occassionally fire off and produce a tachycardia (I think... extremely rapid (~200 beats per minute) and irregular. In the past it had always corrected itself w/i 10 minutes or less (it's happened probably 2x a year since birth). WELL.. this one lasted 6 hours (no shit - 200 BPM when I hit the hospital). They hit me with some drug - instant fix. 'Course, another mild heart attack (from the enzymes) showed up.

Now, I didn't have insurance then... and the docs certainly knew it. There was alot of discussion - I was assured that the problem was fixable and that they'd do it... but as the time got closer they suddenly had a change of heart (insurance, I'm sure) and tried to talk me into medicating the problem. I fought that, and they did it... kept me awake for that one as well. Jeez - it was supposed to be an hour long procedure (cardiac ablation - they burn out the misfining node)... but the node was in a dangerous place (or the doc was drunk) and it took 8 hours and a total of 18 burns... and I felt each one BUT they got it!

By this time they had me on 300mg Hyzaar, 10mg Norvasc and 400(!!! was reduced to 300 though) of Metoprolol... That's like triple the max dosages for the hyzaar and Metoprolol. So, 2 years later (January of 2006) I was like a zombie. I'd fall over, had tremors (heh! I told that to the doctor... he upped my dosages!), had trouble seeing... well, it was bad. Parents finally made me go to their doctor... And that's where it all got fixed! I walked in and he took my bp... 50 over unreadable. It took monthly visits for ~6 months for him to ween me off of the stuff - at the end I was taking no heart meds, other than an aspirin a day (he added in 25mg of Cozaar, just as a precaution). Next he tackled the sleep apnea. I went in for a sleep study in May of '06 and had an apnea index of 180 (anything over 30 is 'severe', and that's the highest rating the scale goes). 99% of them were hypopneas (meaning I didn't completely stop breathing, but came very close)... 180 "events" per minute (one every 20 seconds!) - I was told that they'd never seen anything that high SO, gotta mask, have used it EVERY single time I've slept... and the apnea index is at 2. Anything under 5 is "ok", so... well, it's made an unbelieveable difference! I do NOT yawn anymore - and that's shocking to me.

Then, right after the sleep apnea diagnoses, my doctor pinned the Celiac down. It was my ankle - I showed it to him as an afterthought (hey, with a list *this* big...). He got it right away (amazingly, he has Celiac as well - serendipity!).

Ugh, I still dream about pizza... but I got on the diet right away. Unfortunately, the celiac had progressed to Apocalyptic mode... it had ulcerated my intestines (many, many years ago) and the glutens were being carried throughout by bloodstream. And wherever my antibodys would find them... well, brain damage was confirmed (enough to get me declared disabled) and who knows what else (my heart would get it as well, I believe - I'd get (and will still get) funny and pounding beats if I get "glutened"). Also, unfortunately, it took until Feb of this year for the doc to piece together the rest. No matter how careful I was I'd still get reactions - twice they were bad enough (think kidney stones, but pain centered in the intestines) that I could have gone to the hospital (didn't, though). Apparently, other intolerances had latched onto the Celiac (he explained it, but I'll demure) and were replicating the symptoms (he called it a 'neat trick'). He gave me a neat analogy, though - people can be allergic to Benadryl/antihistimines! Said that some people who have gotten terrible cases of poison ivy/poison oak have rubbed topical benadryl all over it. The body, attacking the poison ivy/oak can 'mistake' the benadryl for the poison ivy/oak... and it then proceeds to "remember" the benadryl as bad. Upshot is that I can't eat gluten, dairy (lactaid is useless), tomatoes, citrus/citric acid, artificial sweeteners. SO... hehe, gastric bypass was NOT something I wanted!

We're talking ZERO amounts of those foods - zero meaning zero, naught, zilch, zed, bupkiss.

So, there it is... mu ticker's just dandy - had a chemical stress test before the banding surgery (chisticles, that was BAD... i had a violent reaction with one of the chemicals. I felt like I was in Gitmo in an interrogation room).The 'heart attacks' I had kind of make me chuckle - my doc assures me that I had many, many per night before I got the sleep apnea treated, along with many, many mini strokes (and, at a best guess, this was going on for 10+ years).

Apparently, any heart attack (infarction), no matter how "small", will show up in the enzyme tests they gave me. My EKGs are perfect too. My eyesight's returned (in fact, a few weeks ago I removed my glasses and found that I had 20/20 vision, which hasn't been the case since 6th grade at the earliest! But it changes from day to day...). I've been abdominal pain free (minus the surgery) for couple or 3 months - that's a first since "right out of high school". Mental facuties are creeping back as well (in high school I could do square roots in my head... I 'used' to be able to visualize words and numbers... and it's starting to happen again).

Still have to get the whole kidney stone thing sorted out - I'm on allopurinol (for gout) for 4 years now and still get 'em... and my diet is great now (as are my blood tests). Doc wants to wait for the weight to drop to some extent before dealing with that. Also just diagnosed me with peripheral nerve disease (now, that one ISN'T weight related, so far as I've read... seems like it's celiac related... and it definitely will flare up horribly bad if I have a celiac reaction).

The celiac definitely prepped me for the lap-band, diet wise... but what has _astounded_ me is that, once we got the celiac diagnosed and 'in check'... I'm -just not hungry-! After the lapband I've gone a few stretches where I don't eat for 24-36 hours... and, yah, I'm hungry (starving, really)... but it's controllable. The celiac, in comparison... not only was it worse (there was pain, nausea and _intense_ craving)... BUT, what made it 'hellish' was that it would (get ready for it) kick in (with attitude) AFTER a meal! Talk about 'never feeling full' - ultimately, and that's where the weight really piled on - I compensated by eating one meal, right before bed (else I'd just get hungry again) - and at a 'fit to bursting' amount. If I ate during the day (to the point of feeling painfully stuffed) I'd be ravenous not 3 hours later. Amazing.... and it feels real good not to experience that any more! Though.... ugh... I just have to live in chicago, pizza and hot dog capital of the world. I _dream_ about pizza... my last one (with gluten free dough) was for Christmas (re: 36 hours of utter, violent pain). Sigh, maybe the dairy and Tomato intolerance will go away!

Welp, end of story... large chunks left out, probably. Feel free to zap me an email if you have any Celiac or sleep apnea related questions 8^)

[Kat817 19]

Welcome to LBT---it sounds like you have had a time of it to put it mildly!!!

I have close friends who 2 of their 3 daughters have celiac disease. They discovered it while the girls were in their late teens.

My DH has had a rough year with his heart. The last procedure done was cardiac ablation. In his case he was bouncing from A-fib to A-flutter, with no visible pattern to the fluctuations. They told me the ablation procedure could last anywhere from 2 hours to over 12. That they will go in set the probes, and watch to see if a pattern develops so they know where to cauterize. Then when his rhythm changed, from fib to flutter, they would start all over. In the end it was about 6 hours, and he has been doing really well the last 8 weeks. Right now he is in week 2 of wearing an event monitor, similar to a holter monitor, for 30 days! He feels good though so that is wonderful!!!

Hope your band continues to aid in your recovery!

Kat