Update on Me - 6 weeks Post-Op

Hi, Guys!

I haven't posted much lately--been keeping pretty busy.  Just thought I would let you know what's going on.  Tomorrow (Monday) will be 6 weeks since my surgery.  I am down 39 pounds.  I feel great, and am so happy I decided to do this.  I will be honest - the first few weeks were not easy.  I really wondered what I had done and why.  But I remembered hearing lots of you say the same thing, and that's what got me through that time. 

Right now, I'm having a small problem.  The doctor thinks I have a stricture.  My nutritionist actually helped diagnose this.  I was telling her that I have been throwing up 4 or 5 days a week.  I'm fine as long as I have mainly liquids.  Whenever I have anything with any substance it comes back up.  I had decided that the way this works is that you throw up everything you eat and that's how you lose weight!  What was the most weird to me was there were foods I had been able to tolerate early on that I could no longer tolerate.  So now I'm on all liquids again.  I am going in Wednesday for an EGD.  They are going to inflate a small balloon to open the area, so hopefully that will work.  As much as I hate to have to have another procedure, I'm glad to know that this is not normal, and that it can be fixed.  I'm mainly posting this so that other new post-ops will be able to recognize these symptoms if they have them and know that they need to talk to their doctor.  Also to let them know to have patience, and know that if things seem bad early on to just hang on.  Things will be better, and you will lose the weight.  It's all worth it.

Take care!

Stephanie, glad to see you posting.  Strictures happen and at about the stage you are is when the majority experience one if they'll have them.  Hopefully Liz will chime in and Amanda from Houston, both have dealt with them, several/multiple times. 

Don't fret if it requires more than one EDG, sometimes it takes several times to correct the strictures, which is one of the most common problems RNYers experience.

Congrats on the weight loss.  My understanding is that you will feel almost immediately  relief from the EDG.

Thanks, Dana.  They told me that I may need more than one procedure.  I'm guessing that the way I know that I need to do it again is that I start getting sick again??  Maybe Stephanie or Liz can answer that. 

hey,
sorry had to work overnight and just saw this. Yes i had 3 of them done. Umm mostly my dumassness for waiting too long to have the first one done lol.  Yes you will know if you need more if you start getting sick again. For me, i had to have more than one beceause i had waiting so long to have the 1st one done that they could only inflate so much as once.  Its really a simple procedure, and i could tell a huge difference by the afternoon of hte procedure. They do that 'conscious sedation' stuff, you know where you dont remember a thing, but you arent totally out so basically you dont remember like 30 minutes, and you 'wake up' in a recliner.  No biggie at all.  And by that afternoon, things are much better.  Its really one of the easiest things i have ever done. Hope it is for you as well :)
Liz