Has anyone smoked cigarettes after surgery ?

I have had this strong urge to smoke a cigarette since about a week ago. Before surgery I only had a cigarette when I had a bloody mary on the weekends. I would like a bloody mary also but I know that is a no no. I keep thinking it will settle my nerves but I dont know the rules.

Let me tell you that if Dr. Blacktone finds out you've smoked, she'll rip your lungs out through your nostrils. She used to be a cancer surgeon and switched to bariatric surgery. When I went to my pre-op seminar, she said that she absolutely refuses to operate on smokers. Her reasoning was why should she save someone's life if they're just going to kill themselves later by smoking. I don't mean to sound so negative about this and certainly support your right to make that decision for yourself, but I fear for your safety. My S.O. is a detective and I can just picture him coming home and telling me about some whacked out surgeon who bludgeoned a patient with a pack of Camels. Besides, you probably have Ketosis breath by now so why add cigarette breath to that? As for the Bloody Mary, give yourself some time. In the rare event that I do drink, a Bloody Mary is my weapon of choice. You want to be careful about drinking for a couple of reasons. I know several people who have traded their food addictions for alcohol addictions and secondly, they really don't know what effect alcohol has on the liver for RNY patients since the duodenum is no longer in the picture. Bloody Marys are full of acid and I don't know if you'll want to irritate your new baby pouch with all that tomato acid just yet. I'm just a ray of sunshine today, aren't I. I don't mean to be so negative, I just want you to be healthy. After all, that is the reason we have surgery. Hang in there. I SWEAR it gets better. Connie

Hi Connie. I was 20 years postop last month and my buddy many years ago that had wls before I did and was the one who told me about it b/c in those days you didn't hear much about it and not all the ads on TV etc. Well this guy had weighed over 500# when he was preop and did great getting the wt off; even had PS and was down around the low 200's which was fine for him b/c he was tall. He had a beautiful wife and two preteen kids. Well he did not heed the advice from our WLS surgeon who felt the same way as Dr. Blackstone did about his patients smoking and while my friend quit prior to the surgery when he got to goal he not only started chain smoking again but used to sit down at the Elks lodge bellied up to the bar pouring down double shots. One night he fell off the bar stool and was out! By the time the paramedics got there he was straight line on the scope and too late for anybody to do anything for him. His wife asked for an autopsy and the medical examiner after it was all over said based on what he found it was his opinion that the heavy use of nicotene had caused stenosis in his blood vessels and closed a major one which put him in cardiac arrest. This guys wasn't even 40 years old yet at the time. It broke my heart to see what happened to him and I tried to give the message to other WLS patients who thought they were smarter than the doctors. I was on the Texas message board of OH and there were so many complaints from the smokers on the board and one of the moderators happened to smoke also so they yanked my post. They probably won't bother yours for what you stated though the medical evidence speaks for itself. I used to smoke cigarettes when I was in HS and quit and some years later I began smoking a pipe. 5 years before my WLS they made my work place a non smoking area because of some sophisticated smoke/spark detection equipment that had been installed in our control center. ( I worked at Vandenberg AFB, CA) then. I figured that was a good time to quit and haven't touched the stuff since. I still from time to time get the craving but after what happened to my best friend, and having lived to 68 (next month), there is no way I am going to play Russian roulette with my life. Like you told the guy who you responded to in your post, it is his decision. BTW I like bloody marys too but I use vegetable juice in mine and drink them virgin. By the time I get all the spices in them I don't miss the vodka. Our WLS family has grown by 1000's since I had mine 20 years ago as of last month. Most people that ignore their doctors advice don't realize they aren't kidding anyone except themselves. I lost too many friends and acquaintences to lung cancer, emphysema and other respiratory diseases to not benefit from what I learned from what happened to all of them. Most of them are not around anymore. Good luck to you since you had your WLS and to all the rest of our WLS family. Mike Mobile, Phoenix, AZ Bilio Pancreatic Bypass June 1986, 327/193/GOAL

Jeremy, I am recovering from a surgery right now too.....the healing is a bear since neither of us cn do the things we were up to as pre-ops. I'm a grumpy patient and yet my family is being extremely patient. But, the last thing that either of us should be doing to ourselves right now is to give in to those things that got us to the point of needing any type of surgery in the first place!!!! Alcohol? Smoking? .......How about plugging in some great self-help videos from the library, or plan a vacation for next summer in detail, or work on your Christmas list now and do some on-line shopping......Have some wild and crazy S@# wtih your honey bunny.........In other words....FOCUS on good healthy choices and give your surgery a chance to turn your life around!!!! If Dr. Blackstone has some extra support groups going on, then I'd suggest you get yourself on over to them so you can rally some emotional help to get you down the road on your journey! ....In fact,....there's a Chandler Support Group tomorrow night! .....There are folks in that group that will have some answers to your alcohol and tobacco urges! Fight the battle Jeremy! You CAN do it! A real piece of meat is just around the corner! Joyce

After reading Happy Girl's response... I would say NO! haha I am a social smoker or used to be anyway, haven't had one since last year but today for some reason I am dying for one. I have a pack hidden in a drawer some where for a rainy day... but I don't want my lungs to punish me tomorrow... I react pretty fast to smoke with my asthma (worse when I used to go play darts than actually smoking) and when i used to smoke alot (like 6 cigarettes /day) I would end up with some nasty bronchitis. Since I learned at the seminar and then reading smoking is a complete no-no... don't most surgeons do a urine test to see if you are smoking before surgery? it would probably come up positive for me, since majority of my friends smoke... and I sit with them for lunch and breaks at work, I try to stay out of the way, but when you are out on the patio with all the smokers, second-hand smoke is impossible. How are you feeling otherwise, Jeremy?

Connie, Thank you for all of your insight. I do not think you are negative I just think you are being honest and I appreciate that. Mike, That is one of the best stories I have read. I thank you for sharing that and I take no offense to what you said. I am not trying to ignore the doctors but I am being vocal about my ups and downs along with my cravings so people like you can help me to make the right decision. Joyce, Again you are a great inspiration to me. I agree with your positive suggestions and I need to find some kind of coping mechanism. This surgery has made me realize I coped with food. Food was my rock and now it is gone. I cant help but feel lost and lonely. Nicole, Thank you for being honest. I knew I was not crazy for feeling this. That is why I post. If I dwell on it then I go crazy. So I feel alot better when I post and get some feedback and opinions. I just feel so deprived of so many things. My life really did revolve around food and now I am lost. But hopefully it will pass. Now that I am done explaining the mental part, as far as physical I am doing pretty good. My incisions are almost healed, I am not as weak as I was, I stopped the pain meds last weak, my pain has dropped down finally. I am holding down most of my food except for tonight I had one chicken wing from Zipps and I thought I was going to die. I did not throw up but the pain in my chest was unbearable and finally when the pain let up I got hick ups for 45 minutes. So I guess I am not ready for spicy. Oh yeah and I am down 40lbs since my surgery 2 weeks ago.

Jeremy, IF I DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER I WOULD SAY YOUR A COMEDIAN.? Are you

Jamal, What do you mean ?

*HIJACK* Jamal sometimes you have to become a comedian to keep your sanity after WLS. I have always said it is far better to be able to laugh about something than cry about it. In my 20+ years now postop, I have had some moments if I wasn't able to laugh it off, i would lapse into deep depression and no antidepressants helped. I have dealt with anemia for many years and only a little over 3 years ago I took the initiate to see a hematologist. I have had no WLS doctor following up on my postop problems for about 7 years when the one that was supposed to shut down his office with no notice and moved out of town. I learned enough in all these years to know things to look for on my lab work which I told my PCP if he didn't order them I would find another doctor who would. Now he is more accomodating. The hematologist never treated a wls patient in his whole medical career and I am still his only one. His patients are cancer patients on chemo, etc. He said he would like to try me on PROCRIT for the anemia which I agreed to. I have to add he wanted and did a bone marrow biopsy prior to starting the PROCRIT shots to rule out leukemia or bone cancer. I made the mistake not knowing what to expect in letting him do it under a local in the spinal area and when he hit that suction device whatever it was I found out the local did @@$#@%# and I rose about 3 feet off the table. I had some choice words for him for not telling me what to expect and he said after getting the results he wanted to do another one in a year. I said not under any local you aren't. A year later he wanted me to see a surgeon and go in the hospital to have another one. I told him I would not do it until I had to be hospitalized for something else and be under general anesthesia and get them to do it then. He made no comment. About 6 months later I had some disc surgery in my neck and got the neurosurgeon to do a bone marrow biopsy on me while he had me under as a personal favor. This neurosurgeon had done a previous surgery on my lumbar spine so we knew each other. I was not even sore when I woke up in recovery where he took the sample from my thigh vice the spine area. My neck was another story. I had so much swelling from him having to move the esophagus and the trachea so he could get to the bad discs I was not prepared for the postop problems from that. I could barely swallow and then only with pain. I lived on creme of wheat cereal for several weeks and I had to smash up some of my wls supplements I needed to take in order to be able to swallow them which had never been a problem for me mainly b/c my old outdated surgery did not have the same little pouch the RNY's have today. I was on regular food in about a week and the only thing I ever had problems eating until just a few years ago was broccoli and out of the clear blue sky, that problem disappeared and now I can eat it. I developed an incisional hernia 2 years postop from my wls which BTW was a Bilio Pancreatic Bypass. Everyone I know that had my identical type of surgery has had anemia problems and some of the ones that did nothing about it unlike myself are not around anymore. About 6 or 7 years ago I guess now, I forget sometimes as I will be 68 next month; I started getting some edema in both legs and feet. The doctors didn't know what was causing it but I suspected after they ran a bunch of tests on me and found nothing that it was related to my WLS anemia. They had me on all kinds of diuretics to cope with the water retention problems. The hematologist has not a clue why but when he put me on the Procrit shots, after a few months went by, the edema in my legs and feet went away. I decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth and was very happy this occurred. A few months ago I started taking supplemental protein again in the form of whey protein powder and was taking over 44 grams a day for a couple of months. For the first time since I started the procrit, I did NOT need my monthly shot. I continued with the protein and the following month my HCT was just below the low normal range but the RBC and the HGB were normal. I must have been doing something rite and one of the people on the board suggested I increase the protein to twice what I had been taking. The first of August I will get another CBC which I get every month which tells the doctor whether I need a shot or not then his nurse tells me and I give myself a shot. I am keeping my fingers crossed the CBC will show I do not need any Procrit again. All of this is experimental and several years ago I had taken this same protein powder and had to stop due to causing me constipation. When I started taking it again in my shakes, the only thing I did different is I added a banana to the shake in the blender. No more constipation. Through all these years there were many times I would start laughing about some of this stuff when I really felt like crying but I didn't throw in the towel and have lived to see my grandkids grow up and I now have 3 great grandkids. If I am able to lick this anemia with the protein and I can stop the Procrit shots that will be super. If not, I will keep doing whatever it takes to stay alive. I am also trying to get some information from this one wls surgical group I emailed a week ago about a possible revision to my wls to correct this problem with the anemia. If they don't answer my email soon I will call them on the phone and see what they say. This is not the first time I have checked into a revision but the wls doctors I talked to about it in the last 5 years all recommended if the anemia continued to get a reversal. I am not going there B/C I am sure the diabetes that went away 20 years ago and the hypertension and a number of other things will return. So I am still waiting and looking for solutions. With all these problems would I do it again with the wls? Yes in a NY minute. I would not be sitting here talking to you today if I didn't have it done then. I send a lot of jokes out on email I get from friends all over the place to my wls friends I have made through the years and it helps to be a joker and keep laughing sometimes to keep your sanity if you start having problems nobody knows how to fix with your body. Good luck to you and most people that know me think of me as a comedian. Nobody pays me for kibbitzing around with them and trying to be funny but it helps a lot of people and it helps me. Cheers Mobile, Phoenix, AZ Mike

Thank you Mike. You have had a long struggle and great results and stories to share. Have you called Scottsdale Bariatric Center about your revision ? Just an idea. Thanks again for sharing.