My band is gone. I'm scared, but knowing what was happening to my body from it is really frightening.

I hadn't been feeling well for 10 days. I went to the ER and by the symptoms that thought is was my gallbladder. I was admitted and surgery scheduled for the same evening. The surgeon that was able to to my surgery also practices bariatrics. We briefly spoke in pre-OR. My labs led him to believe there was more than just my gallbladder infected.

Surgery was to be 1.5 hours. They awakened me 4.5 hours later.

When the surgeon scoped my stomach he could see that a lot of the band had eroded Into the stomach. From outside the stomach, he started cleaning off the abscess that had form, with gunk trailing down the fill line, heading for the port. Once he cleared some of it, he discovered a once inch hold in the stomach, which was by then flowing abscess and infection through the abdominal cavity. Thru the laproscopic incisions, they had to clean and flush over and over  

So now here I am, in the hospital, day 6 of a probable 7.

There are already millions of bacteria in the abdominal cavity, and now all of the infection caused from the eroded lap bans. Treatment plan is currently IV antibiotics lots of them to hit all the major strains. Labs show it is a strep. No food or drin****il tests show the stomach is healed not leaking, which could be a few more days.

I'm allowed ice chips, as few as possible. Once discharged from the hospital I will be self administering IV antibiotics for the next 8 weeks!!

I had always been the once to be positive about the band, it worked well for me with a total weight loss of 140 pounds.

So not sure what to do next. I'm pretty used to how I've been eating to be at the weight I am, and hopefully won't need any other WL surgery. Time and effort will tell.

0 comments

I just wanted to say I wish you good luck and much success with your band. I am almost at 6 years with my band and while I have had two slips with it I can say it has been the best gift I ever gave myself. I know Many, Many people do not have much good to say on the bands and I do understand it does not work for everyone as well as having some hard side affects making it impossible to live with. It like anything we have done is just a tool put in place to help us start on the right path but I have yet to see any surgery that is a 100% of a fix without draw backs.   I can only speck for myself here but I lost over 150 pounds from my band after my slip happened I went back up a little while I was getting myself back in check and so far I have been able to hold tight at 142 still lost.  I know in time the band will have to come out but until such time I am grateful for the kick start it has given me in LIVING LIFE and Learning to LOVE MYSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!      

I just had my band removed 2 days ago, it had slipped & the dr said it was a bad slip. I had it put in almost 6 years ago & did lose 60 lbs but I've had a lot of problems eating, vomited often. I haven't been able to eat solid foods for over a month without vomiting, nothing would stay down. I had 2 Upper GI's, I think the dr missed the slip on the first one. I am very happy to have the band out and will work very hard not to regain the weight as I don't want to do any more surgery. 

I wasn't happy forever.  I had some serious issues which lead to having that plastic demon pulled out and VSG done because that's about what could be done with the good tissue remaining.  I'm very fortunate I didn't suffer a full erosion and instead caught it early while talking about a revision anyway.

I'm none to pleased with the plastic demon's results, the lack of accountability it gave me, and the slider food addiction I developed to eat around that thing.  My personal opinion is that the band is not a positive WLS that eventually everyone will face some trouble with.  It's hard to think I didn't realize that strapping a piece of plastic around my stomach was not at one point going to cause me issues.  The doctor told me I'd die with that thing in me... not even close I made it 8 years and I wish I'd had it out earlier.

You may not be happy forever.  complications   barretts esophagus   acid reflux