I have to have exploratory surgery due to abdominal pain.

I had my RNY in December 08' My gallbladder was removed in 2005. I have a sharp pain that comes and goes in my upper left abdomen. It's like a stabbing pain that makes me keel over and cry. The pain last anywhere from 1-5 mins. It happens atleast twice a week. I also am not losing weight as quickly as I should be accourding to my surgeon. I get constipated feel sick to my stomach a lot. I do not know if this is related to the pain. I've had a cat scan done and everything was normal. I had and EGD and a Colonoscopy and all it said was I had internal and external hemmroids. My surgeon has finally decided to do exploratory surgery to find out what is going on. Any ideas what to expect of what this could? How long will I be in the hospital? What do they do for this kind of surgery? I'm only 21 and terrified please help!

Ask him to get copies of his SOARD (journal) and look for articles on SBO, small bowel obstruction.

Internal Hernia
Peterson's Space
Whether you were done retrocolic or antecolic might make a diff in where the problem is located, if it is SBO.

Adhesions can cause a bowel to act odd before it completely flips over and kinks. Here's a pretty good pic of what an adhesion looks like. It's grabbed the bowel and gradually pulling it. In this pic, they caught it, but left alone, chances are that bowel would've flipped over like a garden hose, thus stopping flow of food. liquid AND blood supply.

http://www-medlib.med.utah.edu/WebPath/GIHTML/GI030.html







http://www.adhesions.com/comp_6.html


Take it seriously.

I am in the same boat...I am scheduled for exploratory sugery on Nov. 11th..I have been having what I call attacks for almost a month now...severe abdominal pain that last about an hour to 4 hours...but comes and goes...when it first happened my surgeon ordered a ct scan that showed nothing...he put me on ulcer meds and I was fine for 3 weeks..then I had three nights of severe attacks...after another ct scan that shows nothing he has decided to do surgery to go in and take a look around...it is so weird because it comes and goes...I have not had an attack since Tuesday but want to get to the bottom of the problem...the pain is a "10" when I am having an attack...my surgery will be same day...and I will get to go home that night....I hope that this is the right option for both of us!

 Michelle,

Good luck to you on your exploratory surgery.  I had the same symptoms but I lived with mine for 2 years and the most excruciating pain I have ever felt when an attack would occur....come to find out I had adhesions.  These can not be caught easily, if at all with CT and X-rays.  They can also be life threatening so you are doing the right thing by getting them checked out.

Good luck to you.

Just to add a bit of info onto my last post, I had RNY surgery.  I've also had 3 endoscopes, found an ulcer and stricture, which they said they fixed.

I still have horrible heartburn, I take 80mg of Nexium a day, and still have some issues with heartburn.  I've also had the opening from stomach to intestine widened in the 3rd scope, which didn't do much, as I still do alot of vomiting and getting the foamies.  I also get alot of constipation, followed by diarreah once I do go. (Usually have one bowel movement a week)

My calorie intake is pretty much a joke at this point, as food hurts.  I'm pretty good about getting my liquid intake in, but food is another matter altogether.  I probably take in 400 - 600 calories on a good day, 0 - 200 on a bad one, and there are alot more bad than good lately.

My original weight was 333 lbs. and my goal was 169.  I'm still losing, without trying due to the food issues.  I'm down to 148 as of this morning.

And, yes, I have told all my dr's this info.  They're as lost as I am on everything.

I had my surgery in Feb. 2008.  I started having pain in my upper left abdomen and extending around the back to under my ribs in August 2008.  Since then the pain has become a daily, all day long issue.  I've had a CT scan, showed nothing (although they did mention some swelling but didn't follow through with what it was), a bone scan that was normal, several ultrasounds and X-Rays, all showing nothing.  I'm having to take more and more pain meds now, just to get through each day.  I need idea's to bring to my dr. to end this.  I'm not suicidal, but there are times I think I'm just going to take a knife, dig around where the pain is and then they HAVE to fix whatever is wrong in there.

Any idea's would be welcomed, I'm desperate for this pain to be done.

I had the laporscopic explatory surgery done last month.  It lasted about two hours and I was out within two hours after that.  The bariatric surgeon just found out that I had an Immune deficiency so he did not want to do any fancy stuff.  But he did look around inside and said everything looked ok.  So I am guessing if they see something wrong, they would fix it.  My surgeon asked me before surgery, if he see something wrong, does he want me to fix it and I said yes.  He also asked if he see's something that is causing a problem because of my bypass, do I want him to reverse it.  I told him only reverse it if he see's somehting causing a problem with my gastric bypass.  But the day he did the explatory surgery, he did not reverse anything until I find out about my immune system.  I slept most of the day after I left the hospital.  I had four small incisions which healed well and the stitches were taken out the following week.  Explatory surgery is the way to go by doing this laporacocpic. But hopefully they will do it by laporscopic, because if they see you need to be opened because of other complications, then they will do so, but they are suppose to ask all these questions before you have the explatory surgery done.  Good luck.  I will be probably getting mine reversed in the near future because of all the issues I have had which you can read my posts if you are interested.  Again good luck!

Well I think, finally, after over a year of pain and frustration, the doctors have finally figured out what has been causing all my pain in my upper left abdomen area.

To give a short synopsis of the last week... I started having agonizing pain in the same area as normal, on Wednesday, Deember 2nd.  Taking massive doses of my Oxycodone and hydromorph contin wasn't touching it.  I managed to make it to the end of the day at work (thank god my boss didn't mind me sitting by the cash and only getting up to wait on customers lol)  I figured maybe I was constipated, since it had been almost 2 weeks since my last bowel movement.  I stopped at the pharmacy on the way home from work, and picked up a bunch of things that would help with that.  I loaded up (way too much of everything) and took some more pain meds and laid down with my heating pad on high.  I was able to sleep for about 3 hours off and on.  I woke up and was actually able to make a trip to the bathroom, but didn't move much.  I did, however feel better.  The next day I was back to normalish pain, so didn't think anymore of it...

Friday morning I woke up at 4am in agony.  I took some pain meds, and more laxitives and even resorted to an enema (ughhh).  Nothing moved : /

I called in sick to work that day, and headed down the doctor.  He recommended a couple other things to try for constipation, said come to the emerg on Saturday if it was still bad.  I suffered through Friday, didn't sleep that night, and headed into the emergency dept at 6am on Saturday.

My regular doctor was on call, thank god.  He had the nurses try an enema, which proved futile, did an X-Ray and an ultrasound, which showed a large "pocket" in the area I was having pain.

They admitted me to the hospital, so they could fly me out the next morning.  I flew into Thunder Bay at 8am on Sunday, they did a CT scan, which proved useless.  A surgeon came to check me over and started prodding around.  After slapping his hands away everytime he got near my pain area, he says "AHA!!!!... I think I know what this is"  He left and came back with a syringe of Xylocaine.  He told me I couldn't move at all cause he needed to do a test to be sure of what he was thinking.  He prodded the pain area, then injected the xylocaine into the most painful spot.  Within a few minutes I started feeling some relief...

It turns out what this pain is is a form of Neuropathy.  Nerves that are being aggravated by scar tissue.  The solution to the pain is having Cortisone injected into the nerves to deaden them.  I'm unsure yet how long this will last, or how often it will need to be done, but I was almost in tears because finally I had a real reason behind all this damn pain I've been having.

I did some reading online once I got home last night, and found that this is actually something that does happen with gastric bypass.  It seems to stem from malnutrition, lots of trouble with vomiting and lost weight very rapidly.  I fall into all those categories.  I was never told of such a risk before surgery (not that it would have changed my decision to have it), but knowing could have saved me over a year of terrible pain and way too much in the way of pain meds.

This is a link to one of the articles I found online www.endonurse.com/hotnews/4ah1413038.html

(Holy smokes, "short synopsis" wasn't so short lol)

Has anyone else heard of this condition, either before or after surgery?  Has anyone else gone through it?  Anyone have anything to add on the condition or the treatment.  I'd be most interested to find out.  I'm having my first cortisone shots tomorrow morning (Tuesday, Dec. 8th)

How are you feeling these days? I have had my own complications, but fortunately nothing like that!
As a nurse, I try to educate myself about complications so I can be an advocate for others who have complications after WLS.
Hope you are doing well now.