Dr. ordered endoscopy to see if I need revision-have some questions for you all

I had gastric bypass distal procedure done in Dec. 2001.  I have gained all but 30lbs back.  I was self-pay.  Moved to another state/no insurance/no follow-ups/had great upper stomach pains, w/in 3 months of surgery I had gone from 288 to 140.  After pains with no doctor to see the weight started coming back on.  Got married/had daughter, more weight came on.  Recently moved back to Merced, CA.  Have insurance-Interplan Health Group through my husband's employer.  Sought my original surgeon-no longer practicing but made appt. with his partner Dr. Swartz from Fresno, CA.  He recommended doing an endoscopy to see what is going on "down there" and then try for a revision (R.O.S.E.).  Went to make appt. for endoscopy and receptionist saw my insurer and said I would need pre-approval.  Said it would take 2 days.  It's been a week with no word yet.  Has anyone used Interplan and how hard will it be to get a revision through them?

By the way:  kept food diary for 2 months-dr. was shocked that i gained weight back.  can still only eat children's portions of meals-so I am not overeating.  I think something went wrong after surgery and I never had it checked.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Lori Chea

I`m very sorry that you had so many problems. Regain is a very frequent problem after RNY, you are not alone and it is not your fault.

Doing an upper GI is a great idea, but doing ROSE not - please read this board, and none of the non-invasive methods to fix an enlarged stoma (ROSE, stomaphyx, sclerotherapy) seems to help for more then a few weeks. People loose weight on the liquid diet after the procedure, but usually stop when tey go on solids and/or gain everything back. It`s usually not covered by insurence and a pretty useless way of wasting serveral thousands of dollars, just mho.

There are other, MUCH more effective revision option. The main are lapband over bypass, ERNY (making the bypass more distal), and revision to a full dudenal switch. The lapband over bypass will (only) limit your potion size and since that`s not your problem, it will likely not help. Same for ROSE and similar procedures, by the way. I recommend that you make an appointment with a very experienced revision surgeon who does both ERNY and DS revisions to explore what your options are. There are serveral great revision surgeons in CAlifornia - Rabkin and Kesheshian are just the names that pop into my head. You can find more info and a list of doctors on the DS board (docs who do the revision to a full DS can give you every other revision, too).

I agree with Lori, read and research all your options. Make sure you have a surgeon that is qualified to do all the options.

Good Luck!!

Check out Dr. Higa in Fresno.