Hi Everyone

Westchester's Post-Op Support Group meets Wednesday
May 25th @ 6:00 PM

White Plains HS
550 North Street
White Plains, NY 
Room G-122

RSVP if you need more info.

Now I am three years post op from the reversal and I feel great. Things will never be the same as they were before the bypass. Things have been put back to be close, but I still have restriction of the pouch, and still have the occasional dumping syndrome. I have mild malapsorption issues, nothing major, mainly needing B12.

Can I eat? Yes of course I can, however the recovery from the reversal was just as long and hard as the bypass recovery and it took a long time to introduce soft foods, let alone anything solid. I was not eating solid foods for approx 6 months. Today I can eat yes, but I am limited with how much, which is a good thing - the tool still works ! As far as food tasting good.... well, I was very sick for a long time after both my surgeries. Truthfully nothing tasted good for a long time. My whole body felt out of whack for a long time. At times, certain smells of food make me sick still. Nausea was a way of life for the first year maybe longer after the surgery. It really has not been until this year, that the nausea has stopped. I take Pariet daily.

WOW! I feel so much empathy for what you have gone through. You are definitely a fighter and have a lot of courage. I am facing the possibility of a RNY reversal and had not really considered that any 2nd surgery could result in serious complications. I have had some complications from the original RNY, but nothing like you had. I will do some more research and ask some serious questions to my bariatric surgeon before I agree to a reversal....like you said..."think twice, cut once"

I didn't know about this forum until tonight. I've copied and pasted this from a previous post I had made. I have also added my now and before picture.
I have been asked a lot why I decided to revise from RNY to DS. Truthfully, it was because I was gaining weight. When I had my RNY in 1999 I weighed in at 430 pounds. I really didn't see any possibility of losing 300 pounds or even less than that. RNY was considered "the GOLD standard" and though I had heard about the Duodenal Switch when I asked my surgeon about it his reply was "well, it's just like a distal (now called an eRNY) gastric bypass.  I trusted my surgeon and so I didn't do due diligence and I didn't research it like I had researched RNY. I just went with the RNY. So  I lost 220 pounds and got to 210 and never lost more weight. My weight just stopped and that was it and where I maintained for about four years after which I started gaining weight and from years 4 to 10 I ended up gaining 92 pounds. To put that in perspective I gained about 48% of the weight that I lost.  One thing that the doctor didn't tell me was that Severely Morbidly Obese people gain more like 40-50% of their excess weight loss weight back starting around the forth/fifth year post op. Actually, I was told that I might gain 10-20%. What a lie.  Anyway, I wasn't happy with myself and I hated that no matter how much I dieted I still continued to gain weight. In addition to weight gain I really wanted to not dump, which I did frequently.

The following is from my own RNY to DS revision experience. It's long and it might scare you, but use this information to educate yourself in what can happen. It doesn't mean it will, but it just might.  You need to count the cost of what could happen to you. I think that many people who want revisions walk around thinking that a revision is a walk in the park and for some it can be, but for many it isn't.  Twenty five to thirty five percent of RNY to DS revisions suffer from gastric leaks. That is one in three or one in four people. Revisions are risky and require a skilled and vetted surgeon to perform them.

On August 10th, 2009 (Monday)  I underwent revision surgery from an RNY to a DS. There were issues immediately after my surgery. My heart rate was out of control and for some reason my normally low blood pressure was in outer space. I was heavily drugged on pain medication and placed in the critical care unit following my surgery. I was given medication by a cardiology specialist which after a day did bring down my BP and heart rate to more normal levels.  My husband brought up to the CCU nurse that my heart rate and BP seemed high. Though nurses had been in and out of the room no one was checking my vitals. I think were it not for my husband checking my vitals I might have had cardiac arrest.  After my heart rate and BP were normalized I was sent for an upper GI the next day. I repeatedly failed the GI. The gastrograffin contrast did not exit into my stomach, but rather remained in my esophagus. The next day my bariatric surgeon, Dr. Greenbaum came to visit to me to tell me that I needed to have another operation.  I knew something was wrong because I was throwing up old blood, saliva, and the gastrografin contrast. Basically, the contrast nor anything else would go down into my stomach and would remain only in my esophagus I was told and that there was an area in my stomach that had been necessarily over sewn because it was a weak spot along the old RNY staple-line. That area got very swollen and as a result the contrast from the upper GI was not going into my stomach, but rather backing up into my esophagus. The next day (Wednesday) I had a second operation. Sutures were released and my pylorus, which seemed not to be working had to be stretched. I was returned to CCU and in the end I spent 9 days there. I was moved to a regular room on a Wednesday and was to be discharged 2 days later on that Friday, but my incision got red and hot and started leaking sero-sanquenous fluid and had to be opened in two places even though I had two JP drains. My incision was packed daily and dressed. Due to the draining of my incision I was not allowed to leave the hospital until the following Wednesday making my first stay at the hospital 17 days. I came home with a PICC line, a J-tube and home health care nurses to assist with the enteral feedings and thrice daily IV antibiotics as well as dressing changes. I was not allowed to eat anything (NPO), and only allowed small amounts of water and or ice. I was not allowed to eat and allowed only small amounts of ice and water. I had been NPO the entire 17 days I was in the hospital and would continue to be NPO for a total of 55 days. The days that followed my return home the arm I had the Picc line in started to hurt like hell and by Sunday night (home only 4 days)  my temperature went up to 102.6. We knew that something bad was going on so I called Dr. Greenbaum's office. His answering service connected me directly with him. He told me to pack a bag and get back to the hospital. It turned out I had a subclavian blood clot (a DVT) caused by the PICC line. The PICC Line was also superficially infected and was removed, but because I needed IV antibiotics at home I had to have another one put in my other (left) arm. I was put on Warfarin and Lovonox while in the hospital. I spent another week in the hospital and was discharged. I came home on Warfarin and again started to settle in. In total I was on blood thinners for 3 months. Four days after I got home I got a visit from the visiting nurse so she could packed and dress my wound. I went to bed later that evening my husband came up a few hours later to hook up my enteral feeding (I had a J-tube) to discover that my night shirt was soaked. He took the dressing off of my incision and discovered white viscous ick (gastric stuff) everywhere.When I raised my head to look ick would come bubbling out of a hole in my incision. Once again I called the doctor the next morning and back to the hospital I went. I ended up getting a gastric leak in the area that had been previously swollen and operated on previously. This in turn caused a fistula which was draining out of the open incision. I spent another week in the hospital again. I came home with a Wound Vacuum pump. Total time in the hospital over Aug. and September was about 27 days.

For 60 days I wore the wound vac pump while it sucked out ick from my stomach and helped close my incision. In mid October the J-tube was  removed and I was put on full liquids. The PICC line was removed at the beginning of October. I had been moved from being NPO except water to clear liquids to full liquids to actually eating. Unfortunately when I did eat anything that wasn't pudding or yogurt consistency I threw up. From October to April 10 I was moved back and forth from full liquids to soft foods. I had a lot of food intolerance. Most meats were impossible for me to eat. Most of my protein came from cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and protein drinks. 

For a total of 17 months I dealt with the now chronic gastric leak and fistula. In the end I had internal and external fistulas (5 in all). In April I was put on TPN (IV nutrition) and made to go NPO once again. This was only supposed to be for a couple of week, however, it it's turned into 6 plus months.  In June I got sepsis from the tunneled PICC which was in my jugular vein and being used to infuse the TPN. That PICC was removed and a Groshong cath was inserted into my subcavian vein just above my left breast and was there from June to December. In September I underwent a Enterocutaneous Gastric plug procedure. The plug was supposed to plug up the fistula and the gastric leak, however, it the procedure failed and didn't work for me. Frankly, at this point and knowing what I know, the plug never had a chance since I had so many internal fistulas. In October I went back to the GI surgeon who I had been referred to by Dr. Greenbaum. He said that surgery was the next step, but told me that I potentially could come out of the surgery without a stomach. Even though the potential outcome could mean a total gastrectomy I decided to have surgery.  December 15th, 2010 I underwent another surgery to excise out the gastric leak. While the surgeon was inside of me he discovered three additional blind fistulas. One that went from my stomach to my colon, which had to be repaired as well. The other two were tributary fistulas and were causing internal abscesses which had to be cut out. I had two external fistulas (fistulas that went from my stomach to the outside of my body) that were cut out as well. I ended up having a lot of strictures around the lower portion of my stomach that was causing poor blood flow to my lower stomach. I had a stricture around my pyloric valve that was so tight that the tip of a pen could not have penetrated it. This was why I was throwing everything up that wasn't pudding consistency. In the end I lost another 1/3 of my stomach. I sadly lost my pyloric valve and had to go back to having a pouch. Some of my intestine had to be cut out however, my intestines are still a DS configuration.

As a revision I am an anomaly, but you should know that sometimes things do not always go the way we think they will.  You must count the cost of having a revision. It bears repeating; think twice, cut once.

So, in the end I have lost (this time) 145 pounds so far. I'm close to being at my goal of 150 and close to being at my surgeons goal of 140 pounds. 

I'm able to eat now and rarely throw up anymore. I have no more medical appliances in my body. It's been a long year and a half and there were times when I wondered if I was going to make it to the next day, however, I'm finally at a place where I am enjoying my DS. 



Peace,
Maddie

Hi, thank you for responding.  Yes I do have a quite a few questions for you regarding the reversal. 
Did you have the RNY Gastric Bypass Surgery? 
Can you provide what your symptoms were that made you decide to have the surgery reversed and have you had any complications from the reversal? 
Do you know how the reversal procedure is done? 
How hard was it to get your insurance company to approve the reversal? 
Do you feel better and healthier since you had the reversal? 
Also, do you know or have you heard of any doctors / surgerons in California that do the reversals?

Any information that you can provide would be greatly appreciated.  I am having so many complications that it's driving me up the wall and everyone keeps on telling me that I just need to give it more time and hopefully it will eventually just work itself out and the pain and symptoms will go away, but I know on the inside of me that something is wrong and it's just not being detected in my blood work.  Again, thank you for your reply as I am trying to gather information and start researching now before anything gets worse.