Hi I am having my sleeve surgery on Nov.16th. I have to have open suergery instead of laperscopily due to other abdominal surgeries.

I wondered if anyone else had their surgery done this way, why, how and did everything go ok?

Thanks,

hls50

I had open surgery too, also because of prior abdominal surgeries. My surgery was August 31st.

The hardest part is ... it's nearly impossible to tell if whatever you're feeling "right now" is from the sleeve surgery itself (removing part of your stomach), or from the fact that they cut your gut wide open. Every little twitch or minor ache, I have to ask myself ... is this on the SURFACE (the skin/muscles around the large incision), or is this on the INSIDE (the stomach alterations)?

The nurses in the hospital will (innocently) treat you like a laproscopic patient. You're the exception, not the rule. You'll have to point out to a few of them that you had the open surgery. Just a minor adjustment, nothing serious to overcome.

It's more likely you'll have a little more pain than other patients. After all, you had a huge incision, not several tiny ones. You may have more follow-up doctor visits, or more frequently. You may even be set up with a home nursing service, specifically for wound care. I had that. They visited a few times, made sure the wound was healing well, and taught me how to care for it.

You will be more likely to wake up from surgery with a JP drain, and you will be more likely to have it remain in place longer than the laproscopic patients. My drains stayed in for six weeks, but my case was extreme, said the doctor.

You may get lucky like me ... when they made the large incision, they had to cut through some nerves. Those cut nerves resulted in a good deal of numbness around the incision itself. I still can't feel a touch on the skin, I can only feel it if you apply pressure. I think, for me, this made the recovery process much less painful.

You will find yourself reading most of these threads, always thinking "That may not really pertain to me". You will see people talking about healing times (yours will be longer), about lifting restrictions (yours will be larger), about range-of-motion precautions, and you will always be a little "different". You may even have different nutritional requirements, because you have a lot more healing to do.

You will see people asking "Can I ride a bike? Take a flight?", basically asking "How soon can I do XYZ after surgery?". Whatever the answer, you will have to apply some mental adjustment because you're different. Just get used to it, whatever the typical "thing" is, you won't always fit into the typical.

Please feel free to reply here with questions (or message me directly) if you need a fellow open-surgery patient to bounce some things off of.

Oh and don't be scared of all this. All in all, there was MUCH less pain than I was expecting. Healing and recovery was MUCH easier than I expected. You'll be OK.

HA. See what I mean about being "alone in the crowd". Nobody else responded.

amw157, I can't thank you enough for your reply to my post. It really has given me a lot of comfort. I would love to keep in contact with you. My surgery is in November 16th and on the 14th I have to have a procedure where they put in a filter to help keep blood clots away, did you have this? Anyway, thank you again and look forward to chating with you soon!! Lynn

I did not have the filter, but I've seen many people on the boards who have. If you believe what they say, you will look back later and say "it was no big deal at all" about the filter.

Bear in mind, my surgery is probably a little different from yours. I also had most of my abdominal wall reconstructed during surgery. They were going to repair many small hernias in my abdomen, but when they got inside, they decided to replace a whole big section of abdominal wall instead. So I have a 14 inch scar, and I have no belly button anymore. The sleeve was small potatoes compared to the abdominal wall reconstruction.

You'll probably have it a lot easier. And you'll be fine.

When you say you had other abdominal surgeries, so they did an open incision, does that mean like for example, delivering a baby cesearean section (c-section)????

Also you say they reconstructed your abdominal wall, would that be an extra fee to the WLS ? And will your belly button always have to go with reconstruction the abd wall.

For me, I had a ruptured colon back in 2006 (due to diverticulitis). They had to do emergency surgery to stop the sepsis, and ended up removing about 15 inches of my large intestine. Because things escalated so rapidly, I woke up with a colostomy bag (and a huge incision). About three months later I had another surgery to reverse the colostomy.

Both those surgeries really complicated the WLS. My surgeon said I was his only patient on the day of surgery, he expected an 8 hour procedure, half of which was to remove internal scar tissue that had developed as a result of the prior surgeries.

The surgeon actually could not be sure WHICH WLS he would be able to do, until he opened me up. So I didn't know whether I had a sleeve or a Roux-en-Y until I woke up. He wanted to see with his eyes how much large intestine was left. If there wasn't enough, then I was not a candidate for Roux-en-Y. There wasn't enough, so now I have a sleeve.

Oh yes it was an extra fee. Heck, there was an extra SURGEON. One guy was the WLS surgeon, but I had a plastic surgeon do the abdominal wall reconstruction. That was his specialty. The WLS guy said it wasn't his kind of work, and that I should have a specialist. The two of them worked together to clear the scar tissue.

oo ok . i see. i hope my c-sections wont get in the way of WLS Sleeve.

Thank you

Shuga, I have a huge c-sec scar. From my belly button all the way down. (A 10.9 oz baby in distress so it was an emergency c-sec.) It didn't affect my WLS. All the work for WLS is done above the belly button line, so you should be ok.

Shuga, I have a huge c-sec scar. From my belly button all the way down. (A 10.9 oz baby in distress so it was an emergency c-sec.) It didn't affect my WLS. All the work for WLS is done above the belly button line, so you should be ok.

Ohh ok thank you!