Exploratory Surgery in the morning
At this morning I left for the last of my scheduled diagnostic tests. This morning it was my pleasure to swallow 30ish ounces of barium in the process of having an upper GI. Everything looks good. This is maddening because I can’t time pain or symptoms to coincide with doctor visits and tests. It is always “Well it hurt really bad yesterday…” When I met with the surgeon about an hour after my upper GI was complete I told him about my frustration and stressed how awful it is to live with pain like this and my willingness to do whatever it takes to be well again. “There are a few more tests I can think of that we could try, but even those tests might not show what is wrong if it is something like SMA or internal hernias. But if you want to avoid exploratory surgery I could schedule them anyway.” Said the helpful bariatric surgeon. “Who said I was trying to avoid exploratory surgery? If exploratory surgery will show what is wrong and will let me skip more waiting and pain then I vote for that option.” I respond. “Well then I’ll see you on the operating table tomorrow.” He replies with finality. “Tomorrow?” I am shocked. Nothing has moved this quickly for me so far concerning medical matters EVER. “Yes, tomorrow. We’re going to do our best to get to the bottom of this tomorrow.” He then proceeds to draw me a diagram of what they are going to look for, get the paper work in order, and send me down to pre-registration where I get insurance mumbo jumbo taken care of and then get poked and sent home with special soap to scrub up with before my exploratory surgery in the morning. So tomorrow is the day. 3-6 incisions depending on what they find/don’t find. If they don’t see anything blatantly obvious to fix (which is a small possibility) or if they see for sure that it is SMA I will get sent home with a G tube sticking out of the “old” part of my stomach to drain the liquid that is getting backed up when the duodenum and artery get kinked up. That’ll last for 1-2 weeks depending and after that it is back to surgery either to fix the SMA if it wasn’t fixed before and remove the G tube, or just to remove the G tube and re-check everything depending on if I had pain or not after the first surgery. While the surgeon is in there tomorrow he’s going to look at the connections for the RNY, my “old” stomach, my pancreas, and for bruising around my roux limb (the part of small intestine that connects to the bottom of the pouch), duodenum and artery. If anything pops out he’ll fix it so I’m not even sure how long the procedure will last. I am just looking forward to this being OVER. OVER OVER OVER. I’m exhausted folks. I feel helpless and nervous but confident that we’re going to get to the bottom of this tomorrow. I report to the hospital at tomorrow morning, so I imagine I’ll be in surgery around depending. I am supposed to be discharged the same day but I’m not promising to be up to posting tomorrow night. If I don’t post my husband will (he’ll look like me since he doesn’t have an OH profile to post with so he’ll be using mine, but I assure you he is much manlier looking than me in person J so try to be as nice to him as you are to me). Please pray that tomorrow is the beginning of the end of this ordeal for me. I want to be my cheerful post-op self living my happy and healthy post-op life in a pain-free way so getting to the bottom of this will go a long way to help me do that. You guys rock my hospital socks off with all the encouragement and support you’ve given me thus far. I appreciate that more than I can convey and because I do I’m going to leave it there and stop typing. Thanks for everything!
Amy 293/140 - AT GOAL! 
