Surgery Video

The camera starts when he starts freeing the stomach from the fatty tissue, and continues filming all the way through to them blowing up my stomach with air to check for leaks. It's 26 minutes long from start to finish--that fast!

I had such a curiosity to see what my insides look like! I'm glad I got to see it! My liver is really a gorgeous shade of mauve, and my fat is orange, and my stomach is red/grey, and the film over my diaphram is silvery. I thought pretty much everything inside was pink or red.

Anyway, after he freed the stomach, he cut off one lobe of it using some kind of a sonic cutter, then the bougie (the guide for my new stomach shape) came down my esophagus and he started cutting/cauterizing/stapling my stomach as he went from the bottom of my stomach to the top, getting tighter and tighter as he worked upward. This is to create a lot of restriction to help me to eat less, and to help food get funneled downward.

My surgeon said my surgery was pretty routine, with the exception of perhaps a little more bleeding than is usual (which was pretty easy to get under control). Oh, except one funny thing, when he got close to the top of the stomach nearest my diaphram I got the WORST case of chain hickups I've ever seen! It's all on video!

There's so many motions that go on inside--I saw the peristalsis of my intestine, I saw my heartbeat in the vibration of the walls of my abdomen, and I saw hickups from the inside! How weird is that?

If anyone is interested in seeing the video to see what happens, just send me a message! It's kind of a big file, so maybe I can get it up on Youtube 'cause its too big to send in email.