i was banded on feb 24th 2009 and so far was okay until saturday 11th april. food gets stuck occasionally but the pain and stuck feeling generally pass about an hour after eating. this is fine.

however, on saturday i ate a packet of dorritos which i shouldnt have. i threw them up almost straight after finishing them. this was at about 7pm at night.

not long after that i was in extreme pain. this pain is still here even after almost 2 and a half days.

i have not been able to hold down any food or liquids since saturday night. i am exhausted.

on the sunday morning i went to the local hospital because i was worried that the band had slipped. they took an x-ray but said they couldnt see anything wrong with the band and that they could not 'hear' an obstruction in the band area.

i know it was stupid, but i really need some advice. i haven't been able to sleep, and the pain is very intense. i have tried to take calpol but it generally comes back up.

the vomit contains my stomach acid as well as the liquids i have tried to consume. any milk i have tried to drink has curdled into what looks like cottage cheese. also, the vomit has started to turn brown as of monday morning.

any advice would be helpful.

thanks

My surgeon met me after midnight in their office on a weekend night when I had a similar situation. For me it was an over-fill but still if no liquid can stay down it's something that should be dealt with now! We can live without food for a while but not water.

well its now 10pm at night, i will give my surgeon a call first thing in the morning. i may be able to go to one of their closer offices, depends on where the surgeon is at the time. if not, i guess i may have a very long drive a head of me.

does anyone have an idea where the brown vomit is coming from or what it is?

thanks for your help

and you don't sound nagging,beth (and its three to four hours drive, not 3/4 of an hour) lol

I honestly don't know what the brownish Fluid is. I had my gall bladder removed and had gotten to the point where all I could toss up was bile, and it wasn't brown. I worry that it MIGHT be blood or something.

And sorry, for some reason I thought you were an hour away. I would bet he could recommend somebody closer if you can't get out there. But definitely, I wouldn't wait until Thursday. Frankly, I probably wouldn't wait through the night since this has been going on since before Saturday. You could find yourself in dire straits pretty quickly with lack of fluids. For the time being, I would recommend something like Pedialyte or something like that which gets your electrolytes up.

Search on line the symptoms of dehydration and see if you are experiencing any of the signs. I am not a medical person just a mom and spent the night with my daughter in the ER when she was experiencing dehydration due to a problem she had with her gastric bypass early on. I believe they gave her a "banana bag" and 3 other IVs of fluids. I'd post it for you if I was better at cutting and pasting, sorry! Keep us posted Nancy.

I agree with Luluc. My surgeon is 6 hours away from me, and I'd be on a plane in a second if I was in your situation, Blue.

I'd be at the local hospital getting a drip put in for hydration in the mean time...

MY band Dr. is 6 hours away. I had VERY similar things going on last Sept. NOTHING would stay down. I tried to let ice melt and absorb through the tissues, to stay hydrated, and there was no way! It too was a weekend of course!! And my DH was out of town. So I called, and my Dr. called me back, he had me go to my PCP here locally to check my hydration levels.

They were DANGEROUSLY low!!! I was borderlining renal involvement! So my PCP spoke with the band Dr. and they decided I needed immediate IV fluids, and I rec'd IV fluids for 3 days until I was at a point they thought I would be safe to travel without fluids for 6 hours.

I got to my Dr, they X rayed, and the band looked fine....but everything STILL come up! So I did the swallow test....and it ended up to be totally not band related, but I had a twisted intestine!

I had emergency surgery-------they were able to manipulate it back rather than resecting it. I was on a pretty wild high caloric/diet for awhile, getting myself well again.

Usually dried blood in the vomit this way looks like coffee grounds. If it is bright or a true red, it is usually a tear in the esophagus they told me. Now keep in mind this is MY experience, yours may be totally different!

Sipping a teaspoon of Water at a time is not going to be enough to keep your body hydrated and your electrolites balanced.

I think you should call your BAND SURGEON, and have them be in contact with a physician in your area. Messing around with something like this could cost you your band-------and if you end up infected, it could be even worse!

If you begin running a fever, or if your family feels your mental status is affected in any way, go straight to the ER-------and ask that they contact your band surgeon directly.

Good Luck I know how miserable that is.

Blue...I have to jump in on this. I have been following this thread since you first posted and you have gotten some great advice.

When I was 20 yrs old and in college there was a night I woke up and started throwing up a brownish bile. I IMMEDIATELY called someone to take me to ER. I ended up being transferred to a University hospital for more than a month. Nothing to mess with. My medical problem was pancreatitis from a previous injury two weeks prior. No prior symptoms until the vomiting incident. Scared the crap out of me. I was in very bad shape by the time they admitted me. I am not saying that you have the same problem but our bodies are trying to tell us something is terribly wrong when symptoms are presented like yours.

Please press your surgeon to work with you on this and get to a local hospital A.S.A.P. Check back and let us know how you are doing. Take care and PLEASE take our advice on this!

CALL YOUR SURGEON ASAP! All the advice you have been getting here is right on!

Let me reiterate all the advice to call your surgeon. In the meantime, however, look through the drugs the hospital gave you on discharge and see if you can find any anti-nausea ones. My doctor gave me two types - one was a pill which I was to take if I got into trouble with PB'ing and the other was a wafer that I was to put under my tongue if it got to an "emergency" situation and I couldn't swallow Water or the pill. I used that once after getting stuck and then PB'ing for 12 hours straight (dunno why I let it go that long!!). It worked instantly and gave my stomach the chance to rest and let some swelling go down.

You don't need to have a slip or an obstruction for you to be in real trouble. After all this time of being dehydrated and throwing up, your stomach is badly swollen and that won't go down for some time. It's the swelling that is making it so sensitive and you need to get that under control so that you can at least sip water (one sip at a time). If you don't have the medicine, get your local doctor to prescribe some for you. It really does help.

I agree with what Fanny Adams said.

My band doctor suggested that I take liquid children's motrin (this is on the no-no list for bandsters for typical use). This was to be used to bring down some of the swelling in my stomach when I got in the same situation as you in the past until I could make it to the office. This worked well but I was warned never to use this as a standard medication, only in case of emergency with a pb issue. However, you should talk to your band doctors office to see if they would approve it for this use.

Good luck. I have been where you are before and it is absolutely miserable. I am surprised you are still in relatively good spirits. When things were rough for me, my husband and I both called off work and drove 4 hours for an emergency visit to have it fixed . . . and then it was instant relief. Please be very careful, because once swelling starts to where you can't tolerate any significant liquids, it just tends to keep getting worse until it closes off completely. Please keep us all posted.

Blue, I'm hoping by your lack of posting that means you're off to see your surgeon. Please let us know how you're doing as soon as you can. We're all worried about you.

This same thing happened to me Sun AM. First swallow of the day and with my blood pressure pill, and it got good and stuck. I couldn't even keep my own saliva down. Called my surgeon's nurse Mon. By that afternoon I was vomiting bile. I'm figuring that's the brown stuff you're talking about. He saw me that evening and I got completely unfilled. Instant relief! I had gotten so swollen that I couldn't get anything to stay down. I see him again in 2 weeks and we'll start my fills over again. In the meantime I'm to take it easy, drink lots of fluids and very slowly re-introduce soft foods back after a couple of days of liquids. Then I can slowly start to see how regular solid food does. He says everything should be okay but only b/c I got in to see him ASAP.

Please, please, don't mess with this. It's serious. Not even factoring in your band, the dehydration alone is nothing to mess with. I lost over 5lbs just overnight with what happened to me. I wasn't severe enough to need an IV but after several days I would have been.

Take care and let us know how you are!!!

alright, i am not long back from the hospital (yes i did go, lol)

they said there was an obstruction and unfilled me. i was told the obstruction was gone and that liquid was passing through. (they had me do a swallow test to see if there was a blockage and that liquid went through)

however, due to the amount of vomiting i have done my stomach and esophagus are quite damaged and i still cannot seem to hold much liquid down before i vomit. food isn't going down either.

the doctors at the hospital said that there was not much they could do there that i could not do at home. my mum and i believe that if i had stayed at the hospital on an IV i would have become too dependant on it. i was already becoming dependant on it rather that drinking normal fluids.

they have given me two anti-nausea medicines, no idea if they are working though. i will keep taking them just in case.

so, at the moment i am still vomiting but no where near as much as before, and cannot hold much liquid down and no food. the new part, is i know have to start toning my muscles where they have wasted away from being in hospital. oh well

thanks for everyones help.

Claire

the doctors at the hospital said that there was not much they could do there that i could not do at home. my mum and i believe that if i had stayed at the hospital on an IV i would have become too dependant on it. i was already becoming dependant on it rather that drinking normal fluids.

???? You can become dependant on IV Fluid like you can get dependant on oxygen......that is, not at all.

they have given me two anti-nausea medicines, no idea if they are working though. i will keep taking them just in case.

If you're still vomiting, they're not working.

so, at the moment i am still vomiting but no where near as much as before, and cannot hold much liquid down and no food. the new part, is i know have to start toning my muscles where they have wasted away from being in hospital.

WTF, Claire?!? Are you residing in the United States? Because before I get all worked up on how incompetant your docs have been, I want to be sure there's not a cultural difference (Foreign doctors vs. American doctors).

But here's the real issue.....Is this a for real post? Does it seem normal to you that you cannot hold much liquid down and no food? And that the solution is to start toning your muscles?

alright, i am not long back from the hospital (yes i did go, lol)

they said there was an obstruction and unfilled me. i was told the obstruction was gone and that liquid was passing through. (they had me do a swallow test to see if there was a blockage and that liquid went through)

however, due to the amount of vomiting i have done my stomach and esophagus are quite damaged and i still cannot seem to hold much liquid down before i vomit. food isn't going down either.

the doctors at the hospital said that there was not much they could do there that i could not do at home. my mum and i believe that if i had stayed at the hospital on an IV i would have become too dependant on it. i was already becoming dependant on it rather that drinking normal fluids.

they have given me two anti-nausea medicines, no idea if they are working though. i will keep taking them just in case.

so, at the moment i am still vomiting but no where near as much as before, and cannot hold much liquid down and no food. the new part, is i know have to start toning my muscles where they have wasted away from being in hospital. oh well

thanks for everyones help.

Claire

:ohmy:

At this stage in your recovery, what on EARTH are you doing even attempting food?? Does your doctor know you are trying this? Most of us have been given the advice that if we experience so much as a small "getting stuck" or PBing episode, we should switch to liquids for the rest of the day and only very slowly introduce solids again the next day, if we are confident we can handle it. If it is a bad episode, 2 days on liquids then a day on mushies before solids are tried seems to be the standard doctor's advice.

After a severe episode like yours, I would expect you to be going right back to your post-operative care regime. That is, 3-4 days on CLEARS ONLY, a week on full liquids, a week on mushies and THEN try the solid food again (and ONLY if all signs of vomiting have completely disappeared). I can't believe that you haven't been told something like this by your doctors and/or the hospital. Please consider doing it anyway - it can't hurt and may very well save your band. You're going to do yourself a serious and long term injury if you keep on vomiting like this!

*is very worried for you*

I agree with both Fanny and Plain----this is not how you should be reacting! The meds are obviously not working, or you are pushing it too hard.

My advice would be to find out based upon your weight what amount of liquid you need to avoid dehydration, and I would work to get that amount and that only for a couple of days. Let your stomach rest. Everytime you throw up, it swells and the iritation begins all over again. The goal should be not to throw up again. If that means surviving for a week or so on nutrtitious liquids, then do that!

Drink some ensure, and broths, but keep it in small sips--and liquid ONLY until the swelling and irritation heal enough to try to handle soft mushy food, and slowly work your way up again.

Right now it seems you are in an evil cycle of vomit and swell------and with Dr.'s who are not concerned enough about the situation.