Vitamins

Hi all...this isn't a quesiton but a message. Please listen to your doctors, take your vitamins and eat right. My aunt had gastric bypass 7 years ago and she has never done what she was supposed to. In her defense, they've come along way with this surgery but back when she had it, they didn't teach you the do's and don'ts like they do now. She's never taken vitamins and never worried about protein. Then some time ago, she started purging after she ate because the things that she ate (all the wrong things) didn't agree with her and she didn't feel good so she would stick her finger down her throat and throw it back up. Therefore she was getting NO nutritional value from anything. Well, long story short, she's been in the hospital since the beginning of Nov. It finally all caught up with her. She was in ICU for two weeks and almost died two times. Once they even called the Priest in. She had developed tears in her bowels and it all seeped into her abdomen and she was full of infection. They did emergency surgery two different times and they feared that she wouldn't make it through either surgery. She had ZERO nutritional value in her body. nothing!! The Doctor said that it was like trying to drive a car with no gas. She didn't have enough in her to fight infections or to heal wounds so it was touch and go for a while. She now has a colostomy bag and a feeding tube that goes into her old stomach. They were hoping that by going into the old stomach, her body would start to absorb the nutrients that they were pumping in through the feeding tube and it worked. :) She is doing soo much better but she has a long recovery a head of her. She comes home tomorrow but she will be home-bound for the next 10 months. We don't know how long she will have the colostomy bag or how long she will be on a feeding tube but she went from 93 lbs to 118 so we are all thrilled about that. She was smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day and drinking 3 to 4 pots of coffee so they have her on the patch for the smoking and hopefully once she gets home she will do all that she is supposed to do to get well again. She's a miracle because she was knocking on deaths door. At one point she was on a ventilator because her lungs just weren't strong enough to breath for her and that was really hard to see. They had to keep her sedated because its so uncomfortable so for a week she didn't even know we were there. She's been a sick lady. And as much as I've hated seeing her like that, I needed to see what my future could be like if I don't do what I am supposed to do. The doctors told us that they can only do so much for us but we have to help too by doing the right things. Hopefully she will take this as a wake up call and realize she has a second change.

We greatly appreciate your interest in helping us build our Q&A database. To discourage vandals from posting garbage, however, we require people to register before posting.

You must be logged in to post an answer. Click here to log in.