AnaBanana

i actually don't have a stent. if it doesn't heal by nj tube, stent or surgery would be the next step. i'm kinda interested in the clamps, not sure if he would do it, i would have to probably be sent to a specialist in canada.

well. i was having issues with my nutrition so the dietician switched formulas for me. i really tried to convince the doctor to take the tube out but he talked me into waiting. he's going to send me for an upper GI series next week to see if the leak is closed. he wants me to wait the whole six weeks. i pouted but he's right, 2 more weeks isn't a long time, so i guess i'll find out if the leak closed next week. if it hasn't i dont know what we are going to do. stents or surgery. yuck. thanks for asking you guys <3 ps. i have never had a tube feed without a vsg but one thing i can admit is that i have no desire to eat at all. it must be loss of grehlin because i dont crave food at all. actually i take that back, i've craved drinks. iced tea and flat pepsi. never touched it though lol. i'm a very good girl.

i have an appt with the doctor next monday at 2:45. not sure if he's gonna pull the tube out, or send me for an upper gi to see if the leak is gone first. i've had the tube for almost three weeks, so technically 3 more weeks. hope it heals faster than that since they did that glue thing 5 weeks ago. can't wait to drink water! i'm so craving iced tea!

well it's been three weeks on the tube feed. i am feeling okay. i have no hunger so i am not suffering by not eating. it's pretty easy to feed yourself. i'm throwing in 100grams of Protein every day mixing my powder with lots of Water and using cans of promote, kinda like ensure. all my Vitamins are good. i eat a cracker with my medications. the only thing that i can't deal with is gaviscon, every time i take it i throw it back up (gently). don't know why my tummy hates it, but i don't like the acidy feeling when i take a pill.

i hope not. i've been bypassing my stomach thru an NJ tube straight down in to my intestines for almost 2 weeks. that wouldn't be very good. i was hospitalized for three weeks and on a lot of morphine, i'm out of the prescription they sent me home with. i'm thinking this is kinda what the pain would have been without painkillers. yanno? but i will get an xray to make sure my tube is still sitting in the jejunum and it's not irritating anything. dont get the leak tests to see if it's healed till later in january unfortunately. unless i go to the hospital and make a scene, which i'm good at when i hurt.

hey. i do have a contained leak. but i'm not sure if this is at all related. sometimes when i sleep i end up on my left side and wake up with the most horrific shoulder and upper abdominal/back/side pain. i still have some morphine from the hospital and while it seems to lessen the pain i can still feel a sharp pain under my left rib, right close to my sternum. like i said i'm not sure this is from the leak. if i were leaking into my body then i could imagine the pain would be harsh, but since the leak is contained it shouldn't really be painful i'd think. because it's not irritating other organs. i had this happen a couple of times before surgery woke up like someone stabbed me in my side. i went to the ER and they could not find anything wrong. could this all be muscular/diaphragm pain? when i burp it hurts my shoulder and that spot right under my rib. anyone have this strange occurance?

thanks. i think it's shoulder pain from sleeping funky on my couch as i have to prop pillows up when i have my tubefeed on at night. i went to my mom's tonight for a few hours and sitting upright on her comfy couch got rid of all the pain. came home and laid on the couch and voila! pain is back. i will see my doctor though just to find out, maybe i have shoulder issues, i don't suppose ignoring my other body parts during this leak fiasco is a smart thing to do lol.

everyone thought i was being a baby here at home. i know i ate too fast which caused me to vomit a lot. i wonder sometimes if vomitting caused the leak. like it was still healing and the extreme heaves i had popped a staple. i'll never know. but yeah, every time i had a new type of 'pain' i had never experienced i'd go to the hospital. they would take me in right away, one time i went and had a bowel impaction, another time it was just bad gas. then the leak thing. so there was always a reason and once i figured out what it was if i had that pain again i would be like 'okay i need to get on some gasx like right now' or 'i need to get a suppository and laxative'.

that's awful thicvik. i'm so sorry. don't be afraid to get your own surgery. you just gotta be really aware of how you feel after surgery. if you get any fever or fast pulse or weird new pains go to the hospital and get a scan immediately. even if you feel something isn't 'right'. like i mentioned, my leak was 'contained'. so i was very very lucky not to have developed sepsis or abcesses. still, i was never quite right after surgery. i had pain and i had a seriously hard time keeping food down and threw up a lot. my leak was found by accident. amazingly. i am not sure if it was on it's way to getting worse, or slowly healing. i just thank god that i didn't get mega sick. i am home now. and on a tube feed with a tube in my nose down to my jejunum for the next six weeks. it's uncomfortable and i have to consume 1900 calories a day to heal this sucker (makes me feel kinda sad cuz i probably won't lose weight but who knows, i'd rather heal than lose 10 lbs). and you never know. i'm getting straight nutrition in my tube so i might not gain anything at all. i had a really difficult time trying to get my doctor in my hometown to listen to my mexican doctors advice. five weeks ago when this leak was found the mexican doctor suggested a NJ tube and when i saw the doc here he pretty much ignored that advice. did the glue. the glue takes six weeks to work, yes it causes me to form a scar over the leak, not plug it. he finally got a hold of another bariatric surgeon here in canada who said the same thing as my surgeon in Mexico. nj tube for six weeks. so i started this four weeks too late. now i have to wait till the end of january to get this taken out. so my doctor in mexico knew what he was talking about. i'm pissed off at the disrespect he recieved from my hometown doctors. i won't complain though. im glad i got the tube because i trust my original surgeon. thank you for thinking of me. its been a whirlwind of emotions. some days i feel like i regret this, some days i worry i won't heal, some days i want to rip this tube out and pretend nothing is wrong. i feel really light headed and im filled with major anxiety. they took me off all my anxiety pills cold turkey in the hospital and i'm just back on them so i'm having a hard time readjusting. i'll keep you all updated. hopefully this will be a happy ending.

Sorry for the last post. Havent used the site on my phone so I quoted and hit reply before I could answer. Ive been in the hospital the last two weeks. IV fluids, cipro and flagyll anti biotics. Three days with an NG tube to suction all my stomach secretions (interesting colors coming out that tube) and now I'm on a nasal jejunum or NJ tube for the next six weeks. Ill catch up more when I get home from the hospital.

Triple post

Triple post

ahh, sorry i thought they found it right after your surgery (i misread the extra days in the hospital as time you had to stay after surgery). isn't it weird how our bodies do things to protect our organs? like abcesses and capsules. i remember my doctor feeling my stomach to see if he could feel any bulges or hard spots, it must have been for an abcess. luckily i didn't have one. i have a feeling the leak drains back into the stomach because it has no where else to go, as it's not draining into anything. i wanted a follow up upper gi, but my family doctor said do what the surgeon says he doesn't want to upset anything prematurely. you healed in a decent amount of time. your team really knew what they were doing. i hope mine does. i got my surgery in Mexico, the specialist my GP hooked me up with is supposed to be really good. he has horrible 'bedside manner'. but i'm trusting him. Im in canada, in a place where they don't really do vsg's for WLS but, they do partial gastrectomies and whatnot so i guess that's the same really.

i had pain too, but mostly when i slept on that side. that's why i can't really figure out if it was a leak symptom or muscular. i don't have the pain anymore though. so who knows. a ct scan will see a leak yes, they gave me one to check for abcesses and saw it in that. i'm not saying you have a leak but it's really great you are checking it out just in case. i would have really never known i had a leak if i had not had the test. this is a picture of the leak, it's at the esophagus/stomach junction and you can see it spreading out a couple of cm. i am not sure how it's 'encased' so that it's not leaking into my body, but hoping that in the next few weeks while waiting to see the specialist the glue heals it. http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=30uel8k&s=5#.UqJQTNJUf-s Kraney wow you have been thru lots. so glad they found your leak right after surgery. i was expecting the same sort of treatment, and was suprised with the glue thing. i guess because they didn't need to drain it. it makes me wonder where a contained leak really goes. it's contained but it doesn't get bigger? you would think it would balloon out. it's very confusing. glad you are better.

thank you. i emailed my surgeon last night and was really anxious and they assured me i will be okay. i saw my GP today too and he told me that i would have probably never known i had a leak if i had not have gotten that upper gi. he called it a pandora's box situation. sometimes overdiagnosing is more of a hassle than the actual issue.

wow i didn't think i'd get responses so fast! cowgirljane - i know right? this is a strange leak. at first the surgeon thought the radiologist read it wrong but i sent him the film and he confirmed it. i don't know how long i've had it. could have been since the beginning but since it didn't form any sort of abcesses or leak directly into my body causing infection and making me sick, i guess it explains why some people don't find their leaks for a long time. thank you for your kind words, i'm sure i will be okay, i just fear the 'unknown' you know? i gotta stop reading about other leaks because no two are really alike. rj's/beginning - i check my temp like 8x a day, i'm gonna wear out the battery! lol. i'm really trying to keep an eye on things like that. same with my pulse, which is regularly pretty high, but i would probably notice a higher pulse with difficulty breathing if things got bad. thank you for the advice, at least i know i'm doing something proactive! lipsticklady - aww that's really nice of you to say that. keeping a positive attitude is so important. i need to reread the things you write when i'm feeling down or scared... southernsoul - thanks, i will keep you all updated. i see my GP tomorrow and will get some copies of exactly what they did and then double check with my vsg surgeon and get his opinion. i just want to feel i made the best decision (they gave me three choices: do nothing, glue, or stent..) i went with the glue because i heard the stent was a bad experience, i didn't want to do 'nothing', and the glue was kind of the happy medium. the doctor who did it said it was an 'uncommon treatment but proven'. so i will trust him, my GP set me up with him immedietly and asked me to trust him.

i wrote this almost two years ago, i ended up having surgery and now i have a leak too!

you might feel like crap at first while you are healing from surgery but in the long run you will feel so much better. this is the trend i see with people who have had surgery. i'm having surgery with dr. aceves in june hopefully. he is the only one i feel 100% confident about.

i can also imagine the first 10 days you were really taking it a lot easier and now you are starting to be a bit more active because you have recovered from the actual surgery, which might start moving things around inside (muscles etc) and it's gonna ache a bit till it heals completely. hope you are 100% soon! and grats!

yeah i would think complications of band to sleeve would depend on indiviual scar tissue/damage results etc. so each case is different. i really think strictures and most leaks are not the patients fault but the doctor's technique, IMO. surgical complications like blood clots could be higher if you have clotting issues, infections are kind of a toss up between sterile conditions and luck to me. although i think you take antibiotics after which is good. if you have gerd you need to get on it before and after surgery especially... if you have a hernia hopefully it will get repaired, as i know that can cause GERD etc to be worse before and after surgery, same with gall bladder problems.

if you can get off the tums/rolaids type of stuff, those are notorious for causing rebound reflux. try some eater's digest tea or something with peppermint or licorice in it for the meantime till your meds kick in.

i get sciatic pain and i found this exercise that REALLLLY helps! almost instantly. try it!

yes it's good you are documenting.

i suppose that's all you can do. you seem to be a very caring helpful type person. all we can do really is listen and have empathy for the person who is going through the problem. iirc jasleeve doesn't have a lot of outside support so is practically living on here, telling her story as it happens and it is probably very therapeutic.

yeah those are the ones i'm talkin bout.