hi all, if you remember i posted about a week ago regarding me and eating regular food just 10 short days post-op. i am now 17 days post op. some people scared me to death. scared me straight actually. i did stop eating. they scared me about leaks. anyways long story short. i only ate regular food because of the recent blizzard i wasn't planning on making it a habit. so i spoke to the head dietician at the hospital and she said it was fine since i stopped and since i felt no pain at all in the stomach. my question today is, since i stopped regular food and since i don't have a fever and i don't have any pain, do you think i'm ok ?? do i still need to worry about leak(s)? anyone out there ever have a leak before? what are the signs and/or symptoms. i know of fever, stomach and arm pain, should i be in the look out for anything else ?? should i tell my surgeon?? the surgical coordinator and the head dietician said i didn't have to bother the surgical doctor. since then i've started stage 3 foods. soft cheeses, Soups, etc. still Water and shakes as well.

again thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks to those who lend advice.

I think that you are just fine as you aren't feeling any ill effects. Surgeons' progression rates on their programs vary all over the place - mine had me on mushes, purees, soft Proteins (cheeses, tuna, etc) yogurts and the like from the hospital on out. It seems that the sleeve is a lot more robust than many give it credit for (hence a lot of the worry-tales about bursting your sleeve, etc.) Most of these stories come from RNY experience, as that pouch is a more delicate structure than the sleeved stomach, even early out. From what I have seen, those docs who have been doing sleeves for a long time tend to be more aggressive in their progression rates than those who are just getting into the sleeve business from the RNY (the DS uses the sleeve as its basis, so DS qualified docs can have been doing sleeves for 20+ years, so there is a pretty good experience base in that community that doesn't exist in the bypass/band community,) Since most hospitals have been doing primarily RNYs for many years, their programs and staff are largely programmed around its requirements as opposed to the sleeve or DS.

So, unless you are feeling anything wrong going on, relax and enjoy the ride; keep with your doc's program to the extent that circumstances allow. If you need to deviate, you can always puree something, or chop or chew it extensively (I never pureed anything, other than Protein shakes; even the chunkier soups just got the chunks fork-mashed.) The general rule is to try new things in small amounts, one at a time, to test for tolerance - people progress at widely varying rates even within different surgeons' programs.

Sorry to hear some people here scared you so much.