YIKES!!!

Well the change to this site scared the crap out of me! I didnt think our page was here anymore! I have something to tell you guys.... I had this episode that i mentioned before where everything started to turn white and had that tunnel like vision and thought i was going to pass out... started to sweat profusely and started shaking like a crazy woman .... then the hunger struck I was insane with hunger! I hadnt eaten anything in like 3 hours and 3 hours earlier it was a little pork tenderloin with a little mashed potatoes... nothing special. this is NOT why i was hungry... this is insane hunger that was completely abnormal and definitely scary. I thought i was going to pass out and have a panic attack due to the hunger at the same time! lol.... anywho... WELL i thought Low Blood sugar even though my labs came back and they were great. I ate a piece of chocolate cake and in like 4 mintues i was fine. the sweating stopped (and i mean drippy type of sweating and insane shaking) the shaking subsided and the dizziness went away.... SO low blood sugar. i became very curious and looked it up on the web. Boy did I find something good. Turns out that this low blood sugar is a "new perilous side effect" scientists have been looking into from weight loss surgery for roux -en-y patients. Because of the lack of digestion when that food hits our intestines and such the pancreas goes into overdrive and pumps out insulin lowering our blood sugar. AND guess what the surgeons "fix" for this is... cutting out part of your pancreas to control the amount of insuling it pumps out. "with no side effect they say" well except that there is a chance you will get diabetes!!! go figure. LOL... anyway... they arent going to be slicing in my pancreas anytime soon i dont care. I think I will chew my food better and choose easily digestable foods before i let someone go slicing away at my other organs. ANYWHO.... I had to tell everyone about this. I may have been in the dark and its a known thing and may feel a bit stupid here when i get responses... but just in case anyone else is going through this and doesnt know what the heck is going on... no wonder my doc and neurologist were stumped...its a wls thing... This happened to me 3 times and its very scary. BUT it does go away when you eat sugar. so my thing is i will be carrying some real sugar around for when it happens. aside from all of this ... im typing on themost difficlult keyborad where the keys stickterrible... i wanted to say that i miss all of you and hope that everyone is doing well... i miss reading the posts... i will try to get on here more often... i think once i get a new keybrd it will be more enjoyable honestly its a taks...lol... luv you all!!! Elizabeth M

I'm with you Elizabeth, they can keep their mitts off my pancreas. I have those plummeting blood sugar moments, but they always eventually pass. It's usually eating that helps them pass. So where the heck have you been keeping yourself??? We've missed you around here. We still expect to see you, sticky keyboard or not. Hugs, Connie

I've had them too....the low sugar shakes and sweats. And they are scary. I try to keep a protein bar in my purse for this reason. Nah, no one is touching my pancreas...but if they wanted to make my pouch smaller, I wouldn't object. I actually liked the days when we ate half an egg and were full. Joanie

'lizbet, I have really, really missed you! As I've gotten more into the food and eating "bad" carbs throughout the day -- several cookies, other sweets, a honker piece of pizza last night -- I notice a few hours later the same episodes you describe. I was diabetic before surgery so I knew what was going on. Surgar levels spike very quickly when I ingest "bad" carbs and then plummet to a dangerous low-blood sugar level (last night as I was shaking violently I tested my sugar and it came in at 42). I have to say that although I was diabetic before surgery I never had these extreme fluctuations in blood sugar levels even when I was eating poorly. This cannot be good in any way on the organs. Thanks for sharing this with us. AGAIN, a reminder that the WLS was not just about losing weight; the physical health ramifications in terms of maintenance for the rest of our lives is of critical concern. Love to you, Maureen

Elizabeth, can you direct us to the internet site where you found this information? I think I'm going through exactly what you're experiencing. This is very scary health stuff. Love you tons, Maureen

I cant remember the website...I googled it... its from the Canadian press... here is the article: Complication feared in stomach bypass operation: perilously low blood sugar Jul. 20, 2005 Provided by: Canadian Press Written by: JEFF DONN BOSTON (AP) - A least six patients who underwent the most popular type of obesity surgery have developed an apparent complication - blood sugar so perilously low that it causes confusion, tunnel vision and blackouts, doctors say. The condition was corrected with further surgery and no lasting effects, and the researchers and other experts said the problem is probably too rare to warrant cutting back on the weight-loss procedure. In fact, the problem might suggest new ways of treating diabetics. "If we can understand the molecular details here, we can bottle them," said Dr. David *******s, a hormone researcher at the University of Washington. He wrote an editorial accompanying the federally funded study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. The possible complication stems from the stomach-bypass procedure known as the Roux-en-Y technique. A small pouch is stapled off from the rest of the stomach and then connected directly to the small intestine. The pouch can handle only small amounts of food. This technique accounts for the vast majority of the roughly 140,000 gastric-bypass operations performed each year in the United States. The number has been rising at almost 50 per cent a year in response to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn., focused on six Roux-en-Y patients who developed severe low blood sugar, or neuroglycopenia. They suffered temporary confusion, passed out or developed tunnel vision after eating. "For people who have it, they basically have to be baby-sat: They cannot be left alone, they can't drive," said one of the researchers, Dr. F. John Service. The researchers suspect the effect happens like this: Barely digested food rushes right into the intestine. Its hormones then overstimulate the insulin-oozing beta cells of the pancreas. The excess of insulin - the same hormone that fails in diabetics - removes too much sugar from the blood. To correct the condition, doctors had to remove most of the pancreas from the patients. But that put the patients in danger of developing diabetes, an illness that is often cured by gastric bypass surgery. Dr. Neil Hutcher, a stomach-bypass surgeon who is president of the American Society for Bariatric Surgery, said he has never seen the possible complication in his roughly 3,000 operations. "Do I think it can be called a substantial complication of gastric bypass at this time? Absolutely not. Do I think it's a reason to modify gastric bypass at this time? Absolutely not," he said. *******s said this insulin-boosting complication could explain why gastric bypass generally cures diabetes, and could also point the way to new treatments.

what is so interesting to me is that they think this is RARE. If its so rare then how come we all experience it? Its interesting. I have a dr's appt with my surgeon on the 30th, I am going to take the articles that I have with me... this article is sorta funny....hes one of those obnoxious journalists..... this is what he writes.... It has now been widely reported that bariatric surgery (an aggressive form of weight loss surgery where patients' digestive organs are lobotomized) has an unintended side effect: low blood sugar. According to reports in USA Today, the New York Times, and dozens of other papers, some bariatric surgery patients are suffering from medically-dangerous low blood sugar brought on by this surgical procedure. The "solution" to this problem, as offered by U.S. surgeons, is to surgically remove part of the patient's pancreas. Since the pancreas is the organ that produces insulin, cutting away part of this vital organ would, of course, result is lower production of insulin, halting the symptom of low blood sugar. Does this solution strike anyone else as medical madness? If a patient's body is out of balance, you don't go around hacking away parts of various organs to try to make it all fit together again. This is the approach, however, of U.S. surgeons and the medical community at large: there's no problem that can't be solved with a scalpel, these people believe. So, in a goodwill gesture designed to bring these surgeons even more business, I have assembled a list of additional surgical procedures that could be routinely performed on patients exhibiting various medical symptoms as described below. Each of these is consistent with the practices of modern surgeons, who seem to follow the idea that all disease is caused by physical organs, and therefore the removal of those organs is a cure for disease: New surgery ideas for U.S. surgeons: ?X Ear ache: surgical removal of the ear. ?X Constipation: removal of the large intestine and colon. ?X Rapid pulse: remove part of the heart. ?X Knee pain: amputation of the leg. ?X Mental disorders: removal of the head. ?X Coughing: removal of one lung. Elizabeth M

Joan... Yeah me too I sure wouldnt mind if they shrunk mine up again!!! It sure needs it!!! the thoughts that go through my brain... that obnoxious journalist would have a field day with me. If I can get myself to kill all the sugar and carbs for a week I would get myself back on track and actually start to feel the nausea and side effects from eating the wrong foods again... ive gotten my body use to the sugar once more. Need to stay focused... its so hard! Elizabeth M

REading these articules was great. Thank you elizabeth for providing them. Yup I'm part of the low blood sugar group. And I'm right there with all of you THEY AREN' TAKING ANY PART OF MY PANCREAS no way its mine i'm keeping it. I think I had it all along even before the surgery cause I've always gotten alittle shakey sometimes and would eat something and be fine. They've done checks for diabeties and that wasn't a problem and the doctor said you've probably got low blood sugar do this and this and this. mainly eat. welllll backl then that wasn't aproble at all! the problem was stopping the eating madness! ok so now that has stopped and thelow blood sugar confusion white tunnel vision need a candy bar is back. arggggggg I carry protein bars with me all t he time now. But they aren't something that hits it quick enough so I also keep some raisins or prunes too. I also eat 6 little meals a day. i have to or i have th eproblems.

Hi Elizabeth; It's so nice to hear from you again! Thanks so much for the info.....it was very interesting and it confirmed a few suspicions which I've had about WLS and blood sugar. I also have no intention of letting any surgeon near my pancreas!!!! It sounds like a case of "Cut first.....Ask questions later" to this boy!! CHEERS Mike