Don't let them keep telling you that nothing's wrong with you

 I have continually had problems since my gastric bypass surgery in April '04.  The two most horrific issues have been found after multiple trips to the surgeon and ER, one was a surgical clip left inside at some point and was found imbedded in a loop of my small intestine and a large hunk of omentum( the fatty lining of the interior abdomen that keeps it from sticking to the inside of our tissues) hanging from it in the right upper quadrant of my abdomen. This was found after  a negative CT scan x 2 and a screaming fit on the phone with my surgeon's nurse, demanding some attention and threatening to have my family sue his @** off if I died that night. The second issue has been after a trip to the ER, a 2 day hosptial stay, both with negative CT scans and sent home on Reglan and Bentyl for nausea and spasms. I finally drove myself the ER from work Mon the 17th, almost stopping at the local EMS station twice along the way. The ER doc did an occult stool test, first one ever done during all of this, positive for blood. He called my surgeon and I was admitted again. The CT scan Tues morning showed gross free fluid in the abdomen and multiple loops of twisted bowel with something else. I immediately went to surgery and there was a huge orange-sized hernia with a hole inside. My right small intestine had telescoped into the left side and all was strangulated and swollen in side that hole. He had to pull all of my entire small intestine out onto my abdomen and unkink and untie the knots in my small intestine. This was found to be a chronic obstruction with a lot of backed-up stool even though I was having bms all along.  I had been in excruciating pain for over a week and he blew me off as far as what was going on with this. I almost DIED. I then came out of surgery with a 6-inch long vertical incision and the attempted lap sites and a paralyzed bowel that took three days to wake up. I ate ice chips from Monday until this past Saturday. I finally had a BM on Sunday night, PRAISE THE LORD, and got to come home yesterday on my youngest son's birthday. I am home for Christmas, what a perfect gift from God to all of us, I am here to celebrate it.  It has been such a hard road to travel with this and I am so grateful to God for my life, he kept me here. Please don't give up if you know in your heart that something is wrong, I believe that we all have a voice inside us, or maybe it is Him, that tells you when something isn't right. Be persisitent and mean about it if you have to. It's your life you're dealing with, not some vehicle or just a body. Rachel

OMG! That is horrific. I am so sorry you had to go through all that and for so long. I know from the experience of watching what my mom went through and how she was brushed aside like she was nothing how you must of felt. We all have this surgery to save our lives, to prolong our life span, to be there and watch our children, our grandchildren and if we are lucky great grandchildren grow up. We do this to help take care of all those pesky little medical problems that come with being obese. For alot of us, we are successful and have no complications or problems, but now theres the other side, people like you, my mom and so many others that post on this board who have problems and complications that most of the time just require the surgeon to take an extra few mins to look a little more closer and see the problem instead of brushing them aside. I urge strongly that anyone who has problems and does not get any help or satisfaction from their original surgeon to seek out a second, third, fourth, hundredth opinion, whatever it takes. Yes we took a huge risk in having this surgery and we knew that there could be some complications but that is NO EXCUSE for your surgeon or any other one to say oh theres nothing wrong, test show nothing, its in your head and all the millions of other excuses they use to brush people off. I truly believe that with alot of these baratric surgeons its all about the numbers of success rates and their overly inflated egos than the well being of their patients. They would rather push their patients aside and have them end up somewhere else and when they are asked about their success rate or how many patients per 100 surgeries they have lost, they can lie and say either 1 or none. I believe the numbers are much higher and they just dont want to admit to it. I am glad that you were able to come through this ok and hopefully you will continue to heal and go on to live a long healthy and happy life. Take Care ~Michele

What kind of pain did you have associated with these problems?  I am having a horrible problem and it seems to be cummulative and happens about every 3 months.  It is the most horrible pain I have ever experienced, only described as someone stabbing me in the back with a knife.  I am almost 4 years post-op and would have thought any problems like these would have been found out closer to surgery.