scarlettbegonias
My wls story is a long and tedious one.
I'll start at the start cause that's the best place to start!!
I was always the chubby kid,then I was the fat teen,I have some pretty heavy mummy issues her and her mother made me fatter,they were nasty pieces of work and as my eating disorder psychologist said" they did a real number on me"
I lost a lot of weight in my late teens- bulimia diet pills and weed will do that for you!
Fast forward 10 years and three kids later and I was the biggest I'd ever been , desperately unhappy and I knew I couldn't go on like that- I looked into wls and decided that either the band or the sleeve would be he way to go, I researched for over a year waiting for my private health insurance to kick in, in that time I came across two, yes TWO negative stories about the lapband so when I met with the surgeon and he told me the band would be brilliant for me and that I didn't meet the criteria for a sleeve( bullshit!) I believed him.
Surgery seemed to go well, I healed pretty fast was told that it was a textbook surgery and I'd do great!
After many fills very little weightloss and lots of nasty comments from my surgeon I found out my band and port were on a tilt?? When the vomiting started I was told it was my fault I ate too fast/ too much/ didn't chew well enough/ wrong foods/ too slow/ at the wrong times and with water- all of those things were false!!
Long band story short I went just over three years with vomiting every time I ate and sometimes I drank I lost a good half of my previously very lush thick hair my blood tests came back that I was malnourished some things didn't even register on there and I was permanently tired and scattered.
When the esophageal dismotility hit I knew I had to do something I met with a new surgeon who was great ,I initially wanted to Revise over to the DS but there a whole heap of controversy about that over here due to a couple of rouge surgeons and travelling OS wasn't an option at the time so we decided on the sleeve on the proviso that if i was stuggling we would look at the DS(yes my surgeon has done them)- band removal went smoothly even though it was an utter mess in there and there was a huge amount of scar tissue and i was unable to be sleeved at the time because it was too risky-He cleaned up as much scar tissue as he could and we set a date for the sleeve.
Healing was pretty good-I had to face my food phobias from my band but i saw that 10 weeks as a time to clean the slate and get myself into a good place for my sleeve.
Preop diet was great-optifast and green veg stuck to it like Glue!!
I was so ready for this i had all my ifo i was fully set up at home with everything i'd need afterwards.
day of surgery everything went well until they wheeled me into theatre....
I don't recall being in recovery which is odd beacuase i did for c-sections ,band in and band out,the only thing i remember was my surgeon saying something something complication something something verticle incision,when i finally came to in my room i had a (huge) tube hanging out my nose and a retarded amout of pain but i thought"thats cool im sleeved bring on my new life"
I got a message from my husband at 5.30 am asking if i was awake he needed to talk to me-i wrote back txt it he said no call me-thats when i started getting worried!
Basically they went in laproscopically and due to a comedy of clusterfuck like errors my surgeon slipped and cut my stomach horizontally-my husband was called in the middle of grocery shopping with three kids and told what was going on the surgeon wanted to switch over to an rny-my husband knew i didn't want that and wasnt going to make a non life and death decision for me-so they removed the peice of stomach that was damaged-about1/3 in the middle(wtf right??) and stitched me back up.
I spent a week in the hospital.
so here i am three weeks after my non sleeve still basically on fluids and in a little bit of pain facing the fact that i'll never be able to be sleeved as the blood flow will never be sufficent enough-my choice is plication(NO THANKYOU) or resectional RNY,I dont want a blind stomach,I want the part the produces gherlin gone or at least majority gone.RNY scares me,It was never one of my options -not taking NSAIDS if needed scares me-regain scares me(i know can happen with any) but im hitting the boards and im asking questions and im trying to rationally work through my fears and learn learn learn.
I meet with my surgeon and a new one in a week and a half-people have asked why im keeping this surgeon in the loop and there are several reasons
A) he's a great surgeon-usually!!
B) he's paying for whatever comes next
and
C) as my psych pointed out theres no way he's letting anything else go wrong surgically with me-One f-up is a risk you take, two is a totally different ball game.
wish me luck!!
