OriginallyAnyone have GS conversion to DS with no gall bladder

I'm 5 days post op after having GS conversion to DS plus gall bladder removal. Anyone experience this and how long was recovery and what are you able to tolerate in foods now? I'm having extreme diarrhea after any lil meal. I'm just eating Greek yogurt, unsweetened applesauce. I really want some egg's but I'm not sure they will stay. Any advice is greatly appreciated

GS done 10 years ago

Diarrhea is pretty normal right after surgery. Probably has nothing to do with the GB removal. Your body needs time to adapt to it's new configuration and malabsorbtion. The sleeve is really just a diet with a smaller stomach. What you have now is brand new and much more powerful. Diarrhea should be treated. Ask your doc for meds. I took Imodium with no problems.

After surgery that changes your intestines, changes in your elimination occur. When I had my gallbladder out, my surgeon said he did not expect me to see any changes, because I did not eat any fats. When my sister had hers out, she had a bad time with diarrhea. She was used to eating butter and fried foods. She had to learn not to eat them.

After RNY, I have had problems with constipation and with diarrhea. I have Imodium, stool softeners, Dulcolax, Miralax, suppositories, Pepto Bismol, Citrucel, Benefiber, magnesium supplements, milk of magnesia, Ex lax, GasX, Smooth Move tea, and magnesium citrate.

There are periods where I am fine with one magnesium tablet, or a small dose of Miralax. There times when I need other treatments. I think of my body like a car that worked perfectly well until it was in an accident and repaired again. It has never completely worked like before the malabsorption surgery.

With DS, you are going to be eating a lot of fat. Because you have no gallbladder, you are going to probably need something to balance your system so that you do not have chronic diarrhea. You need to work with your surgeon and see what it will take to regulate your system again.

DS is a much greater change to your intestines than RNY. You will need to find out what foods and supplements keep you closest to normal bowel movements. Your new normal will probably be different than your pre-surgery normal.

People who have had DS can give you much better information than I can.

I still have my GB so I'm sorry I can't help you with that. I'm assuming you're on soft foods or are you still on pureed (sorry it's been a long time for me). Depending on the instructions you got from your surgeon, a soft scrambled egg should be OK. Literally start with one small bite and see how it feels. Did you get resleeved? That's going to help with restriction. If you didn't you'll need to take things slowly on your own. Like others have said, your intestines are newly rearranged and need time to heal. Follow your surgeon's guidelines with food progression.

You now need to focus on protein. Have you looked into protein shakes at all? Other good soft DS friendly foods besides soft scrambled eggs is cottage cheese or ricotta cheese. Greek yogurt is great because it's high in protein.

Our surgeon routinely takes the gall bladder out as part of their DS, so all their instructions are premised upon that, but they are little different than I see from anyone else on these forums (my wife had her DS 15+years ago; I still have my GB as I only had the VSG, where they normally leave it in unless they feel stones in there during surgery.) Eggs should be fine if they are on your prescribed diet at this point, though they are one of those foods that some will have problems with irrespective the WLS they had.

People can tolerate different things at different times during their progression, and there doesn't seem to be any correlation to what was done surgically (GB, no GB, DS, RNY, VSG, etc.) so it is just something of an experimental time. Our general direction was to try new foods one at a time to test for tolerance - if they went down fine, great, but if they didn't, try it again in a week or two. So, it is really hard to tell what you will tolerate when based upon someone else's experience.

The diarrhea may just be a function of liquid in/liquid out at this point, though there may be some lactose intolerance creeping in (though Greek yogurt is usually well tolerated) At this early stage your GI tract is still figuring out how to work again (as are the little buggers that make up your gut biome) so most anything can be expected for a while; I was constipated with a fluid drive for a while in the first week or two.

Hi,

I had my gallbladder removed in 2007, and DS surgery in 2013, so not at the same time, but that's probably inconsequential.

I can tell you that what you're experiencing was similar to what I experienced after just the gallbladder removal. Loose stools, needing to rush to the bathroom 20 minutes after eating - to the point that crisis situations could develop if I were out and about.

If you're concerned you should bring up the concerns with your medical professionals, but for me, several months out was like this - it improves over time.