What a difference a sleeve makes!!!

Jun 16, 2009

I thought I would tell my story of how I got to have surgery so quick. I went to see Dr. Castro's on May 20th. I weighed 227 at his office.  For some reason, Dr. Castro gave me a fill. I think he went to check to see if my fill was there and felt he should give me a slight fill so I could lose weight before surgery.  I believe I actually lost 10lbs that week because I couldn't eat, my fill was too tight. On the 28Th Dr. Castro's office removed my fill. That evening I had esophageal spasms which felt exactly like I was having a heart attack. I went to the ER. They thought it was gas because it went away after I threw up. At this point, I didn't know it was spasms. The next day I had one again. I went to bed at 11AM and didn't get up until 7PM. I had another one at 7:30PM that was so bad, hubby called 911. The ambulance got there fast, but once they found out I had a lap-band, I guess they felt it was probably something with that but not life threatening so they took about 30 min to get me to a hospital that was 10 min away. I was still in excruciating pain (chest pain). 20 min after I arrived at the hospital, the pain went away. The doctor didn't know what it was but guessed about the spasms (remember, he was not a bariatric doctor). So I went home and looked it up and there it was, all the symptoms of a heart attack. Chest pain, nausea, chills, pain in the back.

So on June 1st, the following Monday, I went to see Dr Castro and told him what I had been through over the weekend. I brought my labs and things from the ER visits. Dr. Castro said he felt like I had a prolapse of the band or a slip. He did an upper GI which confirmed that I had intermittent prolapse where my stomach was slipping up through the band causing a "pelican pouch" that was so severe,it was putting pressure on my diaphragm and causing my esophagus to spasm. He ordered surgery for the next day. They had already received approval from insurance and now because it was an emergency, they would probably pay for all of it. (Have not heard from insurance yet).


So here I am on day 14 exactly 2 weeks after surgery and today I got to eat mushies. I have lost 22lbs (I couldn't count this morning and told everyone I lost 25 DUH!) Anyway, 22lbs is awesome!
So I have basically been on liquids one day short of 4 weeks. Now I have 4 more weeks of mushies and then I can finally have solids!!

0 Comments