Stef

If your hospital bed doesn't have the trapeze bar to help get in and out of bed, request one. I tried getting out of bed without it once. Once. Never again.

To all the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys wannabes who think they've got this mystery all figured out, you should probably shut your yaps because you really have no idea what's going on here. None of us do. Pretending you do and using your questionable hypotheses as an excuse to kick the OP around is pretty sad. LasiWobs, I hope you get some answers on the 6th.

Now you have. My surgeon doesn't do that type of leak test. They perform a leak test while you're still under in surgery.

Not yet. I still really haven't got any hunger pangs yet, even when I watch cooking shows. It's kind of bizarre to not feel hungry even when I've been living on liquids for the last three weeks. I wonder when it's going to kick back in?

I was told I had mild gastroenteritis and a hiatal hernia but when they opened me up there was no hernia, so yay for that at least.

That's awesome, and so is your friend

My post-op appointment is Thursday but things have been great so far. No complications, no pain, no issues at all aside from some pants no longer fitting and being completely sick of this liquid diet

For the love of god, why are you being such a drama queen? Her surgeon's name has been listed in her profile this whole time.

From what I'm seeing, my surgeon has a pretty comprehensive program that is more centered on the overall well being of the patient rather than just get them in for surgery and on their way. It took a while to get things all the things done before I had a surgery date but I'm really pleased with the outcome so far and judging by how easy things have gone for me post-op, it looks like they know what they're doing. Something folks need to keep in mind during all of this is that you should never be afraid to ask questions, of people here or especially, of your surgeon and their staff. You're not here for them, they're here for you and you shouldn't take any forward steps until they've answered your questions and alleviated any concerns you have.

Yup. In the very first appointment with the surgeon, I got a checklist of things that I needed to have taken care of and that was one of the things on the list. Ont thing I forgot to mention was I was also required to spend a night in a sleep lab to be checked for apnea (which I already knew I had) and ended up with a CPAP machine.

D'oh! That sucks.

True, especially if all you were eating was Jello, broth and cream soups. Those would slide right through the sleeve and not buiild up enough to cause any stretching. You would almost certainly had staple failure before any of the existing sleeve stretched. Something is very not right here.

Yeah, the number of vitamins and supplements you need to take after surgery is pretty daunting. Unfortunately, there is no single pill you can take to cover all your needs. Besides, if such a pill existed, it would probably be about the size of a hockey puck. You can't take certain meds together because they tend to cancel each other out so you need to split them up over the course of the day anyway so an all-in-one solution wouldn't really work. Get used to taking pills, lots of them, all day long. I have one of those ginormous granny-sized pill carriers that holds a week's worth of pills split by day into morning, noon, evening and bedtime slots. Once you get into it, it becomes pretty routine. I don't envy you having to fly after this. I was lucky that I was relatively pain-free after surgery and felt like I could have gone back to work three days after I was discharged, but I was lucky. Take it extra easy when you're in SoCal but do all the walking you can tolerate and you should peobably be fine for the flight home. Good luck and remember that folks are here for you!

Any word yet, Emilee?

Wow, that's pretty weak

I just noticed in another thread where someone was asking about insurance approval that the string "H M O" (without spaces) gets replaced by a string of asterisks. What's up with that?

It depends how your surgeon's program works, they all follow different plans. For mine, there were several pre-op appointments. In the first, I met with a dietician, shrink and the surgeon. Next, I had an upper endoscopy. Then I had a pre-admit appointment where they drew blood for all the pre-op labs and finally I met again with the dietician staff and signed consent forms with the surgeon.

I'm 3 weeks post-op and it's been protein shakes and liquids for me so far (2 more days!). What were you eating in the hospital?

Try the Premier Protein shakes. Available at Costco, SAMS Club, Walmart and sometimes even on Amazon. I have been living on their chocolate shakes post-op.

It's even worse if you're diabetic and on Metformin, which already makes things a little more "urgent" than usual.

That sounds like a wonderful question to ask your surgeon or dietician, since they know your status, condition and dietary plan far better than any of us ever will.

It was nearly a week before my first BM and it was not a pleasant experience once it arrived. Many surgeons recommend Milk of Magnesia or some other stool softener to make things go a little easier. It's advice well worth listening to

You trusted your surgeon to cut you open and rummage around with your innards, maybe you should trust their post-op instructions too? Just a thought to help put things in perspective. Don't feel too bad, my surgeon has a 3 week post-op clear liquid diet. 4 more days!

I suppose it depends on what type of coverage you have (HM0/PPO/something else?) but my surgeon had approval the day after they called to check my eligibility.

Just have the one, but here it is.