msak
I had my VSG in Tijuana at Excel hospital by Dr. Contreras. I arrived in San Diego 9/11 and driver picked me up. He drove like a maniac while talking on the phone. He took me to the wrong place, which really worried me. It was like a little clinic and I was thinking OMG he took me to a hack shop what is going on!? Eventually after talking on the phone to Dr. C he got me to the correct place (Excel hospital) and Dr. C greeted me once I arrived. He was actually waiting for me to get there and by the time I got there it was quite late. He was very nice and spent quite a bit of time talking to me. He was very good at making me feel comfortable with him and the staff and the surgery and all my worries melted away. I felt like I could trust him.
That night they did the pre-op testing and prepared me for the surgery I would have in the morning. Most of the staff did not speak English, and I found that I could not understand as much Spanish as I thought. I had the surgery around 8 or 9 am. Once they took me to the OR I felt even more confident about the surgery. I found out that Dr. C’s anesthesiologist had trusted him to do his WLS. His anesthesiologist showed me his scars and answered some of my questions and concerns before surgery. I woke up and had quite a bit of back pain and I believe that was the first thing I said when I woke up. I was assured that it was just gas pain and it would go away. I remember hearing someone screaming in pain once I woke up. It seemed like there was always other patients around me when doing tests and things. It was different than the US hospitals in that way. Not as much privacy. I think the second thing I said was to ask them to take me to my room, and they did (my room was private).
A while afterwards Dr. C came to my room and told me that the surgery went very well. He was also very proud of himself because there was really no bleeding during the surgery and he said it was because he is very precise. He said there would not be any blood coming out of the drain he had put in. For a long time there was nothing coming out of the drain, but eventually it did. Then he said he would come see me later in the night, but he never came. I kept waiting for him to come because my pain in my shoulder and back was really bad and the pain meds did nothing for me. Eventually I got to speak to an English-speaking doctor. She called Dr. C and then gave me a shot in my upper arm and that helped the pain for a while.
Every time I saw Dr. C he reassured me that the pain was normal and I should not worry and that it will go away. I was kind of bothered well more disturbed that the nurses never really wore gloves and I never seen anyone wash their hands. Also bothered that there was no paper towels, gloves, or soap (staple items) in the rooms. They did give me bar soap when I asked but I had such a hard time communicating and felt like a dumb American most of the time. I thought I knew more Spanish and would be able to pick up on things more but was not able to. I was in two different rooms, so I am assuming all the rooms are that way. I was in more pain than I expected. I thought they would give me some really good pain meds to knock me out but the pain meds were no good. It felt like knives and needles in my back and I could not really rest because lying down made it worse. I paced around in my room a lot quite miserable. It was like at 3 in the morning and I was crying then the nurse finally gave me one of those shots in the upper arm that helped my back. They were putting wet towels on there, which did nothing but make my bed soggy. I was kind of upset because Dr. C made little of the pain and just said it will go away in time. I am thinking what do I do until then while I am miserable? I was expecting it to be so much easier because everyone usually says they did not have much pain.
I asked Dr. C if it was okay to go home early and he was fine with me leaving. I left believing that my stomach is safe and the pain will go away. I had to buy a whole new ticket which costed 400 some dollars to get home early, but I was anxious to get out of there and didn't really care. I figured if I was going to be miserable I might as well be at home because they were not giving me good pain meds anyway. Dr. C drove me to the airport and on the way talked about my discharge instructions. He waited at the airport with me for a long time too and I thought that was nice of him.
Once I got home I still had the pain but I was able to go to school and do normal things for about a week. I think I have a high tolerance for pain, which really did not help me. Then I started having a harder time getting to class. Walking was too much for me. I got out of breath really quick and found it very difficult to even get to my classes. The back and shoulder pain went from feeling like I had knives and needels to feeling like a bear had bitten chunks out. My temp was quite high. I called Dr. C and emailed him for quite a while and he said blowing up balloons and drinking enough should take care of the problem. It did not.
I went to the local clinic here and they had me get an X-ray taken. They found that it seemed I had pneumonia, so he gave me some antibiotics for pneumonia. I took those for three days hoping that that would solve the problem. I was still having severe back and shoulder pain. After the 3 days of antibiotics was up I called the Dr from the local clinic and he said I needed to go to the ER because the antibiotics did not help me.
Once I got to the ER the Dr’s kept asking me the same questions and treated me like I was mentally ill for going to Mexico and having this surgery that they knew nothing about. They did a leak test and found that I did not have a leak, but once they ran some more tests they found that I did have a leak at one point because there was an abscess filled with fluid right by the staple line. They did many CT scans and X-rays.
The first thing they did was a procedure to drain the abscess by the staple line, and the procedure was successful. They stuck a tube in my back while I was awake! OUCH! I had only had Tylenol at that point but eventually they gave me morphine and the did numb the area, but it was still really painful. The stuff that came out was brown and disgusting looking, and I guess they said it smelt really bad. Then they tried to drian the fluid that had accumulated around my lung, but it did not really work. They put two other tubes in my back for that but it did not work because the pus was in pocket like structures and it only allowed them to drain one little pocket at a time which would be very ineffective and inefficient.
So I had a leak and some of the Dr’s also believe that the lining of my abdomen had been nicked as well because I had a lot of fluid in the left side of my abdomen and all this fluid had affected my lung. Some of the fluid had turned into a peel like consistency and it was covering some of my lung, my diaphragm, and my heart. I ended up having 2 lung surgeries. The first surgery the surgeon had to peel all that stuff off and clean out all the stuff in my lung. The surgeon put two huge drain tubes in as well. I woke up with a tube in my throat. This was to try to make the lung stronger because all the pressure from the fluid had made it collapse. The scariest part of the whole thing was that when I was waking up from the 1st lung surgery I could tell what was going on around me and could hear people talking but I was paralyzed. I could hear them talking about me. One of them said “Who would go to Mexico for surgery?” and she also assumed that I went because I would not qualify for surgery in America which is not true because at the time I decided to have surgery my BMI was around 40 which I believe qualifies! I was very offended and also freaked out because I could not move and could not open my eyes. I could hear my mom come in the room and my mom was talking to me but I could not say anything. It was totally freaky.
Then a day or so later I found out I had to have another surgery because there was a blood clot by my lung somewhere. It’s hard to remember all the details when you all drugged up on morphine plus they don’t tend to explain all the details to you all the time. Also my lung was still collapsed. I thought that I was for sure going to die now. How many surgeries can a body handle in such a short period of time? My main concern was to not have to wake up being paralyzed again. I told all the staff about the waking up being paralyzed and one of the nurses said she would make sure that that would not happen again because she would give me more meds. Also I was horrified about waking up with the tube in my throat again. The first surgery they tied me all up so that I would not be able to pull it out. Luckily I do not remember to much really about the 2nd surgery. All I know is they cleaned out more of the yuck and took the 2 tubes out that the 1st surgeon had put in and then put 3 more in to drain even more of the yuck out. After the 2nd surgery they also left the tube in my throat to make my lung stronger, but this time they left it in for a whole day. My dad had told them that I wanted to be knocked out if I had a tube in my throat (which I did), but the nurse said that I had told her that I wanted to be somewhat awake (which I did not). Luckily though she must have listed to my dad cuz I don’t remember too much of the tube being in my throat the 2nd time. They left it in for a day and I was basically knocked out for a whole day for that. I guess my sister and her bf were there and I was writing things down to try to communicate, but none of it made any sense. I don’t remember doing that. Also my brother and dad were there and I don’t remember seeing them or hearing them.
I don’t know what exactly went wrong during the VSG surgery and the doctors do not know exactly went wrong either because they were not there for my VSG surgery. Might have just been the rare one percent who had to have a complication.
