Serious Complication 9 Years PO
The slight difference is that I had one when I was 20, 2 decades before I was to have WLS and before any other knife had touched me. After the (regular) birth of my first child, I was hideously complicated, which OF COURSE was my fault for not eating right. At 3 weeks, the bowel flipped completely over while on 4th of July vacation in the mountains in CA. Way back when, my dad had one of the early motor homes. This was 1970, and I'm very thankful it was a 69, or I'd have died of fright coming down Mt. Lassen at high speed in a giant shoe box!
Turned out to be a kink that had started when Mr. Hands (he's the one wearing red in my avi) musta grabbed a handful of bowel on the way out gave it a twist and let go. Once they sedated me, it unkinked itself, thank goodness, but fast forward to today (he's 42 now), and I still have issues with random spasms. I've had every test imaginable in the last 18 months and some tests show an issue here, wait! no!, it's there, but now the symptom is here!
In the end, if you track back over time, LOTS of time, there are issues with random spasms in colon, bladder, what's left of stomach...... 3 bladder surgeries, and it still does its own thing.
Thing is, before this year took me out of circulation and I was oh-so-active on boards, we'd noticed the average time from first pain to surgery to correct SBO, was TWO YEARS! My symptom was not pain, so this no longer applies to me, but as grads become older, more connected - we see things the docs don't see.
It used to be I'd read papers in the WLS journals about lecturing us on dietary stuff with "unknown" pain. A local girl kept going to he local doc. 'd just read an article that showed a relationship between the method of WLS and internal hernia resulting in SBO. I went with her, while the doc kept telling her she didn't have an ulcer. I watched her double over and the color drain out of her face. I'd been silent til then.
I stood up, offered my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Michelle, too, and I came along to ask the questions she might miss. Was she done ante-colic or retro-colic? I just read an article about this." He asked who I was again, and answered the questions. The result was that he did an exploratory, found the problem and fixed it. But only because I was there to speak for her when she was far too ill and "white coat blinded" to ask for herself.
Congrats to those who insisted on more testing and go it fixed!
Michelle
RNY, distal, 10/5/94
P.S. My year + long absence has NOTHING to do with my WLS, or my type of WLS. See my profile.
The fear of complications used to scare the heck out of me...but I had done so well after my surgery that I just thought and assumed that I was one of the many lucky ones who just had minor vitamin problems and that was basically all. I became passive and ignored all symptoms and dissmissed them as vitamin related, since that's always what it ended up being... How naive! Everything is still quite surreal for me. It's been 2 months since the emergency surgery. I still can't describe what my symptoms really were if any that applied to this hernia! And there really was no pain that stands out as being associated...After reading the few posts here I am wondering if my menstrual-like pains were a symptom of my hernia and the twisting, flipping of my intestines...I did have chest pains though and I know my heart is in great shape...so maybe the pain just shifts and moves with the twists and flips! I have NO IDEA! And I have no idea how you get a doc to take you serious when they see nothing on any tests! One thing I am certain of is that i started feeling bad at least a year prior to the this emergency surgery...Us long termers are the ones who will shed light eventually with our misfortunes...So nice to see you Michelle! And I have learned so much from you over the last 5 years or so...Stay well!
however, the further-er I go, really, the SBO is the last complication I'd expect. But now, with the wandering spasms, it's scary.
One of the issues in trying to diagnose my own self (while waiting for the next doc appt or test), i couldn't match it to anyone else"s. No pain, so to speak, no bowel issues that jumped out at me. Just random nausea. The radiologist for one of the tests touched a spot and said the symptom for a blockage there would be NAUSEA, not pain. It's in an untouched part of my bowel, so in my guts, yes, related to my WLS, no. Next test says, "blockage? what blockage?"
And so on, test after test. Saw The GI, so they say last week, and he agrees with my history, it is indeed a wandering spasms that grabs hunks at will, causes odd symptoms that make my doc's think I'm crazy, then move some place else.
I spent the last many months trying to find a surgeon to find a single problem. The general surgeons were scared to peek. Yes, one does use general surgeons as life goes on, non-WLS. The bariatric surgeons wanted to change my surgery type. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! So, then I'm cut, I'm changed and I still have nausea? NO!
So, the endless waiting may have saved me from having an unnecessary surgery that might have caused more problems than I have.
Yeah, it took some serious nausea to take me off line for about a year. It's nice to be missed. I agree the pain may be like mine, shifting with where food is or is not. Can you get a test with barium FOOD? There is such a thing.
Thinking your heart, sometimes the GI junction can mimic heart. I got sent to cardio when I pointed to the GI junction area. Nice to know my heart is good. lol
Michelle
RNY, distal, 10/5/94
P.S. My year + long absence has NOTHING to do with my WLS, or my type of WLS. See my profile.
Tamilynn
Tamilyn...I really hope you find someone to help you figure out what is causing your pain...You might have a different kind of hernia...I was reading that abdominal hernias in woman are much harder to find than in men because there is no obvious bulge and when you lie down for an ultrasound, it corrects itself by slipping back into place and staying hidden...
