ChunkCat

I had the same experience as NickelChip on the GLP-1 meds. Saxenda I lost about 15 lbs on, when insurance decided I didn't lose that fast enough they stopped covering it. I gained the 15 back plus another 10 almost immediately. I then went on Victoza, no weight loss. I did Ozempic for two years, also no weight loss. And on both of them I actually gained weight until my highest weight of 320lbs. They did help my A1C levels but that was it. They all had unpleasant side effects and cost a ton. I'm 7 weeks out from a duodenal switch. I've lost 26 lbs since the surgery and while there have been tough moments I'm so glad I decided to go with surgery instead of trying more medication... I've lost 40 lbs since my highest weight! I've never lost that much weight with anything, ever, not even with keto plus the meds. Usually if I have issues with a doctor's office not returning my calls or responding to my messages, I eventually go in there and talk to the office staff in person and wait until they send a nurse out to deal with my issue. ? It is quite effective! I'm super nice about it, but still... I had a LOT of scheduling issues with my surgery and in the middle of it they lost their scheduler and I had to deal with some really rude staff on the phone. But it all got sorted out in the end! Hang in there!!

I'm so glad you are being seen soon!! I agree, if they are a licensed doctor, they should be covered, period. The insurance industry is a disaster in this country. I know what you mean about contracting and medical coverage. My partner was an independent contractor for a long time and I have pre-existing health conditions so for a while I could only be covered by the state specialty plan until the whole healthcare marketplace thing. It was so stressful dealing with rejection after rejection because no one would cover me, and the cost was obscene, even for crap coverage. When they finally went back to working for someone else it was such a relief to have the health coverage handled by a company again!!

Thank you!! I don't know what is with Cigna lately, they are doing with with my GYN office too! I sincerely hope someone does something useful and things get settled satisfactorily so I don't have to change 3 providers!!

I don't know how common this is with Bypass, but it sometimes happens with patients who have the Duodenal Switch because the level of malabsorption from the surgery is significantly more than with the Bypass. It usually happens a few years out because that's how long it takes to deplete the body of its stores. That's why we have to have lab work done frequently to monitor our vitamin levels and protein levels. Some patients end up malnourished when their vitamin levels drop too low or their protein levels drop too low. There are medications they can prescribe to help you better absorb protein but I can't remember what it is called, it is a digestive enzyme of some sort. A GI doctor would know what it is, your surgeon might know too. The liver is very sensitive and things getting out of whack can definitely cause it to be angry. I hope they do more testing and figure out what is going on... You have probably lost muscle mass as your body takes protein from your muscles to compensate from the depleted protein levels. Try protein shakes and protein waters that are made with whey protein isolate. It is the easiest form to absorb and it will help your protein levels go up. This is what DS patients are advised to consume, most premade shakes will be made with inferior types of whey that may not help your protein levels. Unjury makes some good ones, Syntrax is another brand that makes medical grade whey protein isolate. There are a number of them around!

I had this post op. I'm 6 weeks out from a DS surgery which reroutes the small intestines as well as a sleeved tummy. I swear for about two weeks everything gurgled. It wasn't gas, I wasn't gassy, it was this literal gurgling, bubbling feeling in my tummy. Sometimes when I drank water I'd hear this sound that was like water going down a drain pipe that was narrowed. I could feel water displace air. I suspect my stomach was so swollen inside I had this narrow tunnel for things to flow through and the fluid would get backed up and slowly funnel down. LOL It gradually went away after a few weeks, but the sound effects and body sensations were really funny!

I haven't had revisions, I just had DS surgery 6 weeks ago. But I have seen a fair number of multiple revisions around here and elsewhere... I'm sure if your doctor approved you for the surgery then you are good to go! But any surgery can be scary, so I understand the worries. Sleeve to Bypass revisions are pretty common. It is likely your surgeon has done a fair number of them. The weight loss is slower for revisions, but I have seen many end up reaching their goal weight, it just takes a bit longer the second time around. You don't say what your starting weight is or what you hope to lose... Advice is just like for any of the surgeries---take it easy. Trust your team. Drink your fluids in baby sips and get in as much as possible, this will keep you out of the ER hopefully. Stay ahead of your pain. Ease into food gently. Walk as much as you can. Rest when you feel tired and give yourself extra rest for the first few weeks because surgery can take it out of you! Remember that a lot of nerves have been cut and have to heal, so you may not feel any restriction for a while. Stick to the portions your dietician advises for the first few months until you are getting accurate communication from your healed tummy! And whatever you do, do NOT let yourself get constipated!! Take the stool softeners, take Miralax if you haven't gone in a few days and are concerned. The most common complications I see are nausea, dehydration, and constipation! Most of all, good luck! Have a really routine, easy surgery and an uncomplicated recovery! ❤️

When I read about this on Instagram I just shook my head... I have an uncanny ability to pick up weird medical experiences but you have a PhD in them my friend! I hope they quickly find out what is going on. I'm really thankful you were still in the hospital when that episode happened and everyone was there to bring you out safely. It is good that they have you on a monitor for a while. I'd want to know what caused it before another surgery too!!

OMG look at how tiny you are now!!! It just blows my mind how surgery can do that. We truly live with so many modern medical miracles... I wish you great care and speedy, thorough healing! ❤️

I agree with NickelChip, the only way I can feasibly see you dropping that much weight is to start your pre-op diet early and stick to shakes and low carb veggies. Sugar free shakes though, because that will allow you to go into ketosis and you'll drop water weight pretty quickly, which could boost your numbers. I don't recommend doing this unless you really feel you have to though. My insurance said I couldn't gain a pound before surgery. Does yours say the same thing, or is this your surgeon's requirement? Often surgeons will ask their patients to lose weight beforehand to show their commitment, I think this is kind of lame, since the whole point of weight loss surgery is that most of us have not been able to lose the weight on our own! It causes a lot of unnecessary stress before surgery IMO. I wish you luck in dropping the weight!!

Thanks for updating us!! I am so sorry they had to change their surgery plans... My 3 week liver reduction diet didn't seem to work very well either, my surgeon said my liver had not responded the way he'd hoped it would have, but he's a pretty skilled surgeon so he was still able to do my full surgery with it. I have read about a number of people with that issue that end up having to stage their surgery though... I really hope you do well with the sleeve, maybe you won't even have to have the second part done!! I'm glad you have the option to though... The feels are strong after surgery even when everything goes perfectly, so I can imagine you were feeling it with everything that happened, plus the meds coursing through your system! I hope your pain continues to ease. Keep updating!! ❤️

Have you tried things other than just walking? Like chair Tai Chi (or standing Tai Chi if your knee can handle it)? It seems gentle but it gets your heart rate up! Also, you could try just walking for 5-10 minutes at a time, a few times a day. Or whatever time feels best without stressing your knees. You can even do those walk in place videos on YouTube in your living room! I can sympathize with the knee issues, I've torn both of mine and sometimes they flat out won't cooperate! Plus I have pretty bad arthritis and fibro, so exercising for me is challenging. I have to be creative! And doing things a bit at a time is what works best for my body...

Perfectly normal. They can start coming off after 6-7 days, it isn't an issue. Don't pick at them though!!

I had the diet you have for two weeks, then the third week was shakes only. I don't recall how high my one meal's calories were, but I recall my surgeon saying that the general idea was to cut you down to 1,200 calories or a bit below, by the end of your daily total. So if you are around 800-1200 with your daily total you are probably fine. If your surgeon didn't give you a specific calorie count they probably don't care. I didn't weigh my food I just eyeballed the portions because I've been measuring my portions for years.

Following up with a GP is good for general health, but following up with your bariatric surgeon is crucial if you are still having complications from bypass. There are a number of things that can be causing your symptoms, some that can be easily corrected by procedures during an endoscopy. As far as the blood spike, do you mean your blood sugar? Some people that have bypass can develop reactive hypoglycemia which can definitely make your blood sugar levels bounce around and cause fatigue and such. I'm sorry you are feeling bad!

I've been told by a lot of vets to ride the weight loss down for as long as it lasts, even if you dip way below your goal weight. Usually the weight loss will taper off by itself unless you have extreme complications, and that breathing room will be welcome when you hit that rebound and gain some before balancing out. At least that was the advice given to me by DS vets that have maintained their weights for well over a decade, so I assume the same holds true for bypass patients. It is very rare to lose too much, but it is possible that your body's happiest set point is lower than your goal weight, and you'd never know if you don't let the weight loss continue until it naturally tapers off. I don't know what maintenance looks like for a bypass patient, but I suspect like Catwoman7 says, there is some measure of monitoring and portion controlling that will always be there, just like a lot of naturally thin women engage in to maintain their weights. I figure you either track your food (with an app), or you track the scale, or you track both. But most women I know track something regularly to maintain. I'm so excited for you being so close to goal!!

I replied on the other thread but just saw your pictures here. This is going to be an amazing surgery for you!!

Congratulations on your plastic surgery!! I'll be watching for your updates. I had DS surgery 6 weeks ago but I anticipate by the time I'm done losing I'll be wanting the same list you are getting done tomorrow! I hear the recovery can be hard when you stack them that way, but if they aren't doing the arms at least you'll be able to move them without too much pain. I don't know of any advice since I haven't had plastic surgery before, but I imagine you should be watching your fluid intake so you don't get dehydrated and stay on top of the stool softeners and Miralax so you don't get constipated!! Good luck with things tomorrow! Have a safe and uneventful surgery! ❤️

Oh NickelChip, I'm so sorry!! I was looking forward to seeing you go through your surgery and everything that comes after! I hope the new place reaches out soon, they are probably swamped with end of the year patients, plus a pile of patients due to this closure... It never ceases to amaze me how careless hospital admins and insurance companies can be about their patients. I recently found out that the network my bariatric surgeon is in AND my orthopedic surgeon are in, are more than likely going to be out of network come January because Cigna is being an asshat about re-negotiating their contract with them. And I was supposed to have a shoulder MRI and surgery in January. This is my second shoulder surgeon as the first one's practice behaved abhorrently regarding my bariatric surgery. Does Cigna care about any of this?? Nope. Are they losing sleep over this? Nope. I'm really glad you were able to check out the policy your husband will be getting in January and that it covers bariatric surgery. I hate that all your carefully made plans have been wrecked by idiots who allowed surgeries to be scheduled knowing they would never be done. They could have at least finished out the year! And called instead of giving you a chart notification... So ridiculous.

Aww, thank you!! Big hugs to you too! I'm doing great, I have been in remission for almost two years and the weight I lose from surgery will go towards decreasing my chances of reoccurrence so my oncologist was super happy to approve it! Hope your surgery went well and you are resting and sipping and walking! ❤️

Yaaay!!! Congrats!! If that was the last of your clearances, you should email your surgeon's office to let them know it has been completed and ask what the next steps are. Usually that prods them to get everything together to submit for approval.

I had to actually have GP clearance before surgery was approved, even though I wasn't having any issues. I had cancer about 2 years back and so they needed clearance from my gyn oncologist too. But it really is just a simple piece of paper they fill out and sign. It should be done in a day! Just get the papers from the surgeon's office and send them through your online chart to your GYN, they should take care of it pronto. Make sure they know it is holding up your surgery.

If you lost a bunch of weight pre-surgery your loss post surgery may be slower for a little while. This is because the body has to recalibrate and reassure itself it isn't starving to death. It also has to replenish glycogen and rebalance your fluids and on and on. It's a lot of hard work for it!! And slow to one person is not slow to another person. I'm 6 weeks post op a DS and have lost 20 lbs. I did not lose much pre-op. I have been stalled for several weeks because that's the classic 3 week stall where the body does its thing to recalibrate to lose more weight. I'm not stressing about it, I just had a very major surgery! My body has been working hard! It takes time to recover. You feel like you are starving because you aren't getting your fluids in by mouth. Trust me, once you are getting all your fluids in it becomes a challenge to find times to eat and drink everything you need in a day. Getting fluids by IV will keep making the scale jump by 10 lbs because they fluid load you to last a few days. You are probably losing fat, it just isn't showing on the scales because of the IV fluids. Make sure you take measurements too, those often change when the scale doesn't. I wish you much luck in getting off the IVs!

My dietitian explained the reason the diet progresses so slow is because there are a lot of sutures holding your stomach (and intenstines) together and you want those raw edges to heal together without the obstruction of bits of food getting in their way irritating them. You want nice, smoothly healed suture lines. I don't think you've done irreversible damage from going off plan, but I agree with the others, I'd examine why you felt you needed to go off plan, and I'd return to it. If you feel you've healed faster than others and should advance, call your team and talk to them about it. They might let you advance sooner, or they might tell you to stay the course. This surgery and the aftermath take a lot of willpower. We can choose to stay with the guidelines we've been given from our team, or we can do our own thing, but there will be consequences for each choice. If you bend the rules for earlier food progression, will you bend the rules when it comes to what you should eat as you begin to lose weight? Will you go off course throughout your weight loss phase because you don't feel like adhering to it? We all have those moments, it is understandable, we are human. But we have to be willing to confront ourselves when we do have those moments and look deeper into what is going on there that caused us to make those choices. Because one choice is one choice, but one choice made repeatedly is a pattern, and a pattern can either heal or hinder us.

I hope you have a very boring, routine surgery!! That's what I said to my surgeon on the day of surgery, it cracked him up. LOL I had surgery 6 weeks ago so it is pretty fresh in my memory. I woke up thinking "Man am I hungry!" then "Wait, why am I hungry!?" ? The ice chips they gave me were very welcome...

I live every day with the awareness that I could be gone in a moment. I have an extremely rare congenital abnormality in my brain that makes me at a very high risk for an aneurysm. When we found this out I had a long talk with my partner about how I felt about them, and about our lives together, and about my last wishes. I talked to all my family about it. I vowed then to live each day telling the people I love that I love them and value them, because odds are that when I go it'll be fast and I won't see it coming... Almost two years ago I got cancer. It is hard to face our own mortality, our minds aren't really designed to do that much or it drives us crazy. Thankfully I have a great therapist who helped me process the scary brain thing so we handled the cancer thing the same way... Every time I have a procedure that involves anesthesia I say goodbye like its my last time, with an open heart and a calm mind. My partner knows this. We talk about it every time. And talking about it makes it easier for me to go through whatever procedure it is because I know in my heart my loved ones know I love them and treasure them in my world. I am so grateful for the life I have with them. For some of us, this surgery makes us face our own mortality. I was scared of the surgery. But I was more scared of continuing to live as an obese person with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sleep apnea, etc... I knew that those things made me a ticking time bomb. So I did the scary thing and had my DS surgery. I'm so glad I did!! But the day of surgery before we left the house I said a private goodbye to my partner like I always do before surgery. I knew the odds were this surgery is very safe, but with my other conditions you just never know... It gives me peace to do that. I hope your letters give you peace so you can have your surgery with a calm heart that knows you've spoken the words you needed to say. ❤️