i had my rny on march 3, 2010....things didn't quite go as planned.

Well, I had my gastric bypass on wednesday morning and everything seemed to go as planned. Wednesday was quite painful and I don't really remember too much except for a few visitors. Thursday started out well until about 9:00 pm when my pain meds weren't working and laying still was about a 10/10 pain rating. They checked my vitals and that's when the ball started rolling. They finally started believing my student nurse about my pain when they discovered I was tachacardic (high resting heart rate) mine was 138! My blood pressure was on the lower side of 90's/60's. They immediately started running a battery of tests. I had an ekg or ecg, and a heart attack was ruled out. They brought in a portable xray machine, which was quite painful. I then was consulted by 4 surgeons. They decided I needed emergency exploratory surgery. I signed my life away. They told my wife where to wait and they wheeled me into the OR at exactly midnight on thursday night/fri morning. They told my wife to wait in the atrium and they would know within 15 minutes what was wrong, if anything. Ang waited patiently for over 2 hrs before the surgeon reported back to her. He informed her that I would be fine but that they were lucky that they caught the error when they did. They said they were lucky to have caught the issue when they did as it was a potentially fatal complication. I had a twisted bowel, and both my old stomach and intestines were distended and full of crap, literally! They fixed the twisted bowel and they inserted a g-tube into my old stomach to drain the fluid out. In the first 2 days they drained approx 2 liters of fluid from my old stomach and have since clamped the tube off and will drain the tube when the pain gets too severe, which they have done 3 times today. The dr's are also telling me that this tube will remain in my stomach for at least a month. I am doing better, off my antibiotics and iv for the most part. I am on a full fluid bariatrics diet.

Wow that is quite the experience. Sorry to hear that you had to go throught all that. Last year I had a twist in my bowel and it actaully just happened naturally for no reason and the only reason they found mine was that I had an ovarian cyst that ruptured and they were doing x-rays and ultra sound at the time. For me I was able to be giving this stuff to drink that emptyed the bowel and it untwisted itself. Far less complaicated  than what you went through.
I wish you good luck and hope from here on out you have a wonderful experience and the weight lost you expect.
Hopefully in the end it'll all be worth it.

I'm so glad to hear you are doing better now! What an experience!

I am so happy that you are on the mend ....things hopefully will go smoothly now. You had the best bariatric surgeons in the province.

Brenda C

Hey Brenda! Yes I agree that we have the best surgeons in alberta :) Birch did my emergency surgery because karmali was away. Karnali came and saw me today and was like....complications do happen with surgery, BUT I wasn't expecting that one! And I totally know that there are risks, and I'm now headed in the right direction :D

Its nice to know your are ok. .
 
I going to have surgery soon.... Im also having  the same as you hopefully by June. As per Dr Birch.. I have done so much reading but you never really know what to expect.. ..

I look forward to reading more on your recovery..


My thoughts to you .

Thanks for telling us all about your experience. I have been thinking about you and wondering what happened since I read your post on Laura's facebook. Glad to hear all tragedy was averted. Poor Ang though, that "15 minutes" must have been torturous. Did she have anyone to sit with her? Please do let us know as things progress and you are certainly in my thoughts.

Michelle