emilygrace

Get the anti reflux meds. I had it too and the nexium fixed it.

You don't "need" a cigarette, you just want one. Honestly quitting smoking is not physically difficult - it's all psychological. You just have to think about what it would do for you if you had the cigarette... nothing. It won't make you feel better, it will just make you want the next cigarette. Those smoking up until surgery, you must be brave.. there's no way in hell I would undergo ELECTIVE general anesthetic as a smoker. Craziness!

Souldancer, mine went all kinds of weird postop, so I'm sure it's just the effects of surgery/diet/hormones that make it late/different. I am almost 8 weeks postop and back to normal now.

Couple of things have worked - firstly, magnesium oxide tablets. Just take one and wait, don't do what I did and think it didn't work and take a second one.. I'm just sayin'.... Second, and this was unintentional - but there are sugar free fruit popsicles called Edy's Fruit Bars with real fruit. I ate about 6 of them over the course of a day, and had fairly immediate issues with having to run to the toilet and have ongoing diarrhea for several hours. Guess they really have fruit in them!

Only with vodka!

I thought "dumping" was the sensation when you eat high fat/sugar and get the racing heart, etc. Are you just talking about diarrhea?

I think there's an iphone app that uses GPS to mark where you left your car.

Are you sure you don't have reflux? Are you on any meds for that? Reflux can give you that gnawing feeling that gets confused for hunger.

Don't talk crazy.. I am 6 wks postop and have lost about 20lbs in that time!!

I could have written your exact post. I too got a surge of motivation pre-sleeve and lost a bunch of weight myself and it seemed so EASY that I thought maybe I should delay this and do it myself. But then I realized I am great at losing weight.. I just couldn't maintain the food and exercise effort at such an intense level that I needed to keep the weight off. Since having the sleeve, since day 1 really, I feel like I will really just BEAT it once and for all now instead of yo-yo-ing. It's such a relief. PS: I can drink fine, I'm 5 weeks postop.

Not sure how you mean, but I used a heat pack constantly for shoulder tip gas pains, and Gas-X for the gut wind pain issues.

Wow... not a good idea. Good luck.

If you're bloated, I'd check the sodium content of what you're eating too. You may need to reduce sodium and/or increase your Water intake (I know it sounds dumb but more water usually = less bloating in a healthy person as you flush everything out). Otherwise keep going.. it'll come off eventually!

I don't see the problem I have to say, if you sent the person there, so you and they and the office all knew that you had the surgery or were having the surgery. If they said, for example "Jane sent me here, she said you guys were great" and they, when explaining approval, said "Well here's what Jane did to get approved"... I would think you had effectively given your consent to be discussed by referring them there. They did not discuss any access of your healthcare protected information, and you had already confirmed by referring them that you are a client. Certainly feel free to speak to the office and make it clear that you just sent them there but your name is not to be used. I doubt you'd get far with an official HIPAA complaint.

That's great that you felt like it was the right choice to tell everyone; I didn't. I told my family and that's it. I just don't feel like it's anyone's business. I didn't discuss it when I was gaining weight, and I won't be discussing losing weight. Maybe due to being overweight so long, I'm super sensitive to criticism, and I just don't want to have to discuss my decision with other people who may or may not understand the choices I have made. It's good some people don't care who knows, but it's not necessarily a better way to be.

You do need to be honest with yourself and your surgeon/dietician. If you are a big snacker and esp of high calorie foods, then you may be more suited to a gastric bypass than a sleeve. A sleeve is more intended for those who eat a lot of volume. You will still be able to defeat the sleeve if you eat chips, icecream, chocolate all day long in small amounts. Don't get surgery if you aren't prepared to totally change your habits.

Depends how tight they do it too - my surgeon uses a larger (36) tube but pulls very tight around it, so there's swelling and he knows it will take me several weeks to tolerate solids. I am 23 days out, and I am tolerating small amounts of soft mush, yogurts, soups. Many things like chicken, fish, egg that I've tried, although soft, got stuck then made me slime until I threw them back up and felt instantly better. I am losing weight so I am not concerned.

Definitely agree the heat pack was what helped the gas pains for me.

Cindy, as a fellow ICU nurse who was also scared witless, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the process and everyone who was involved in my care. I really had no problems (apart from the horrid NGT which I wasn't expecting.. ugh!) and I found the nurses absolutely fantastic.

Sugar hit?

There's another forum, gastricsleevesupport.com and there's a person there who had a leak. I'm not sure if if was band to sleeve. The Aussie surgeons tend to wait at least 3 months between band removal and sleeving to allow the stomach tissue to settle before reoperating.

My BMI was 41 preop and my surgeon uses a tight 36 bougie that he then oversews. He expects us to be very restricted in the first several weeks. I am at postop day 17 and just tolerating some purees.

Wow that initial post was hard to read. I did have trapped gas in my left shoulder tip, actually felt like it was a big lump in there that was bruised. Went away after a few days with the use of heat packs. If I get wind pains now at all I take DeGas or GasX.

Don't worry, everyone I came across heard about how badly I wanted it out!! One of the silly nurses told me if the tape got wet in the shower it might fall off.. I said "oh, that would be terrible..." and I was VERY tempted to pull it out "accidentally"!!

Ruth, hi. I'm in Melbourne right now and got my sleeve done here, although I live in the US. You should check out gastricsleevesupport.com, great site based in Australia with lots of sleevers who have state-based meetups etc. I am only about 2 weeks postop, so I can't help on the stomach stretching, but I don't think so - it's just not physically possible to jam that much food in, I don't think. The scarline is very rigid too, so that wouldn't be able to stretch.