pixystix0116

I had complications after surgery that resulted in a 5 night stay and a blood transfusion. I was in real pain I'd say an 8 or 9 on a pain scale. I still have pain and I'm 2 weeks out but mainly at my drain site. I now have developed gas under my right shoulder and sweet baby Jesus I thought I was having a heart attack.

I know that pain is temporary, and that in the end this will all be worth it. I have faith in the surgery and in the plan. But, for those who have been through it, on a scale from 1 to 10 how bad does the surgery and recovery hurt? How long until you felt human again? I have never had any form of surgery besides the removal of my wisdom teeth and so this has me feeling a bit anxious. Thanks in advance for your responses!!!

I know that pain is temporary, and that in the end this will all be worth it. I have faith in the surgery and in the plan. But, for those who have been through it, on a scale from 1 to 10 how bad does the surgery and recovery hurt? How long until you felt human again? I have never had any form of surgery besides the removal of my wisdom teeth and so this has me feeling a bit anxious. Thanks in advance for your responses!!!

Thanks so much for all the responses! This makes me feel a bit better. Aug. 25th can't get here fast enough!

My mom had bypass surgery about 12 years ago. It honestly saved her life, but it caused so many problems for her that I KNEW I would never have it done. Years later, I heard people talking about the lap band and I knew that wasn't for me either. I had never put much more thought into surgery than that, even though I had been overweight my entire life and since the birth of my son, had been getting progressively bigger and bigger.
I still kept trying to lose the weight on my own, to no success (or temporary success) and was getting more frustrated with myself by the day. I couldn't play with my very active toddler for long and had just been diagnosed with diabetes. Then a friend of mine, who is considerably smaller than me said she was scheduled to have sleeve surgery. It was like a sign that smacked me in the face. I came to the conclusion that my situation was more than I could accomplish alone and that I needed help. It was sort of a "failure" thing with me, but I have never been one to ask for any type of help without thinking of it as being something I should be able to handle by myself.
Choosing surgery is not admitting defeat and I think that is what I really had to wrap my head around. There is nothing wrong with asking for help when you truly need it. For me, the decision came down to my son. If this help that I am getting is going to give me a longer healthier life to spend with my son, I am more than okay with that.
Remember that this is a tool for the rest of your life and not a quick fix. You need to tell your husband, so that you guys can use this tool together. Otherwise, you may be setting yourself up for failure.

Today is my first day home after my surgery and my only 'real' pain has been from the gas. There's some trapped under my left rib and in my shoulder. But I'm walking it off! My pain level in the hospital never went above a 3 or 4 on the pain scale. I only hit the morphine button once and that was right after surgery. I was in worse pain after my last baby was born and I had my tubes tied, honestly!
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I was pretty lucky as well. I don't think I would call anything I felt "pain" as much as I would call it discomfort. I was fortunate that my surgeon was doing a trial on a new type of "inflation" machine that works a bit differently than the typical machines.
Most of what I see people mention is the "gas pain". This is because the surgical team "inflates" your abdomen with a machine using (I believe) CO2. once your abdomen is inflated, typical machines continue the pressure to keep it inflated, and once the abdomen is full the gas begins to escape into your tissues and other parts of the body that can cause pains after surgery. This is one of the reasons it's so important to walk walk walk as soon as possible after surgery.
The machine used on me was a trial and it inflated the abdomen, and once inflated, it actually backed off the pressure until enough CO2 escaped that it needed to kick on again. I had no gas pains and really no pain to speak of at all.

I had the worst experience. Once I woke up I was pushed to walk, totally normal, but I physically couldn't. The pain was way to great. I actually spent the whole time in the hospital going back and forth between pain meds and anti nausea meds. I walked maybe three times and then of course to the bathroom. It turns out my pain pump was actually leaking and doing me no service whatsoever, so that's part of it, part of it was I reacted badly to a particular pain medicine. I was sick over 25 times during the night. That was Thursday-Friday evening. Once I got home I felt a little better but was pretty stationary. I really struggled. Then on Sunday evening I really picked up, I mean not so much I was normal but so much I was going upstairs and just feeling less general pain. Honestly though it was okay. I made it through. I also think I was an outlier, a major outlier. My doctor was really surprised by my pain, everyone sort of was. Any way you look at it though now I'm almost perfectly fine and I feel a bit better each day. So it was rough for a number of days but I'm over it and still pleased! Don't be scared!
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Thanks so much for all the responses! This makes me feel a bit better. Aug. 25th can't get here fast enough!

It's an understandable fear.
Most of us had the same concerns.
Here's the thing.....It's likely gonna seem way more significant of an issue to you now....pre-op. Once you've had the surgery and are losing at an accelerated rate......everything seems to fall into place. You can decide then what to do. It's a done deal then.
Telling them ahead of time will give them time to each weigh in, pun intended, and talk you out of it....or give you a list of horror stories that their cousin's best friend's neighbor's uncle's car salesmen's wife had with her wls.
You've already told the folks that matter to you....the ones that you've planned this with. Everyone else will be reactionary after the fact. You'll be feeling so much better about everything by then that you'l decide with ease what say.
For me, it was easy. I started at a high BMI. I lost 55 on the work up to surgery.....and took 3 weeks off due to healing time for an abdominal hernia repair along with my VSG. I forget how much I'd lost that 3 weeks after work....but it was enough that folks were noticing and commenting. I planned on losing 200+ pounds in this first year and it was easy for me to be honest with them in stating that I had wls and was following a low carb diet. All of my coworkers knew of my back problems and understood why I was motivated to have the surgery. I've received nothing but positive comments and questions about the surgery. I've had several conversations with people who are very interested in the surgery for their own personal reasons. 3 of them are now entering my surgeon's bariatric program. One guy's daughter, another guy's wife and a young man is going in himself. I can't wait to see their relief once they take a seat on The Loser's Bench.

On a scale of 1-10, a 4 the day of surgery, then a 3 for a couple of days. I didn't need pain meds (they gave them the first night once and that was it). I walked around within an hour of coming out of anasthesia and followed my surgeon's order to the letter. He specifically told me to do as much as I could when I had energy, rest when fatigued, and resume normal walking etc within 4 days.
I had two natural childbirths, a c-section, gallbladder removal, and ovarian surgery prior to this. I am no stranger to pain. I think that your own level of anxiety has a lot to do with pain threshold. I'm not fearful of pain but I was fearful of complications so I did all I could to minimize the risk of something happening.
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I was same as @higher.
The first couple hours I was nauseous from the anesthesia. But no actual pain. Ever.
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I didn't really have any pain. The worst it ever got was a 1-2 on the pain scale when I got in and out of bed or up from sitting. More like a pulled muscle than anything especially painful.

I agree that everyone is so different. I had the sleeve and a hiatal hernia repair. Day after surgery I felt sore in the sense that I had done a bunch of sit ups that I'm not used to but that quickly faded. The worse pain for me was at the drain site. For some reason, it really hurt me making it difficult to walk and breath. The minute it came out was instant relief.

Thanks so much for all the responses! This makes me feel a bit better. Aug. 25th can't get here fast enough!

Okay, if there is one thing I have learned from this surgery is that EVERY patient has a different story, so read all you want, but yours will not be the same. The pain of the surgery does not hurt much. I am 9 days post, and the only pain I feel is a little bit of my large incision tenderness. The gas pain however after surgery was awful for me. I was up and walking as often as I could, but it was pretty bad still. I was nauseous to the point of dry heaving for about 5 days after surgery (not typical). I feel great now, I just tire pretty easily and so am only working half days, so I can nap/rest. It is just getting used to how my new stomach feels and getting all my Fluid in. Best of luck to you in your journey!

Hi! I was in the same place you were: the closest thing to surgery I ever experienced was wisdom teeth removal.
Waking up sucked. A lot. But it was manageable. I was able to walk a bit within a few hours, but it didn't feel good. The first evening was not very pleasant, and I was unable to sleep for some reason - even when they gave me a sedative shot. But once they gave me the shot, for whatever reason it eased my discomfort drastically, and from that point on any pain was pretty minimal. By the next morning my dad and sister were surprised at how much better I looked.
Some of the other ladies that had surgery the same weekend weren't quite as fortunate. My advice would be to make certain you stick to the pre-op diet (if you're given one) pretty religiously and really prep yourself in advance by cutting out all caffeine, carbonation and most sugar long before you go in for surgery. You don't want to be going through withdrawl at the same time you're recovering, and I honestly think that played a big role in why I've healed up so nicely.

Thanks so much for all the responses! This makes me feel a bit better. Aug. 25th can't get here fast enough!

I had minimal pain from the sleeve surgery. I had an abdominal hernia repaired at same time and that was really the only source of pain.
I was up walking an hour or so after waking up in the recovery room.....and up every 3-4 hours throughout the first 48 hours.
I've had two knee surgeries, an ankle tendon repair, two prior hernia repairs, tonsils removed and some other minor stuff. I felt way more pain doing the back-to-back MRI scans (awkward/painful positions) on my ankle than I ever did with my sleeve surgery.
I would go through the sleeve surgery again without hesitation.

I survived my knee reconstruction, which for 3 days postop hurt worse than unmedicated childbirth and hydrocodone barely touched it.
I've heard nothing from anyone here to indicate that this surgery is even remotely that bad. So I figure I'm good.

I was fortunate. I wouldn't have really called anything I felt "pain" except for a bit in my shoulder due to the gas. I would describe it more as soreness, discomfort, fatigue.

@@pixystix0116 - I can only share my experience, everyone is the same in that we are all VERY different.
So with that said, let me tell you what I did to prep...I walked for at least an hour every day. I went to the gym 3x a week to lift. I was very faithful two weeks before surgery on the diet, got rid of alcohol, caffeine et. al.
Surgery day came, because I was in as good shape as I could get. Surgery took less than 30 minutes. I was up and walking within minutes. The first day was rough only because of the dang IV and the drain plug. After both were removed I didn't need any pain killers. Would walk all the time. I had the surgery on a Tuesday. Flew home Friday morning (added an extra day, because I always plan for the worst case). But Saturday I went to an University of Oklahoma football game and my son's fraternity "Dad's Day" celebration.
So pain on surgery day 1 - eh 5, after that 1-2. So much better than when my appendix burst. That took nearly six weeks to recover from.

August 9th!! That's just 5 days!!!! Already have lost 13lbs on my 10day liquid diet....
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Mine's coming up so soon. August 15th. It's starting to feel real.

Aug 25th for me. So nervous but so ready !!!
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