nancyh
Feb/2006
I am soon to be 50 years old, married to my husband Gary since 1975, have 2 kids - Angie, 24 yrs. old, living in NYC, working as a costume designer and a son Daniel, a soph. in HS. I work as an RN at the local hospital - working night shift. My husband is a Baptist pastor and we have lived in the Chicago area for the past 21 years.
My weight history is like so many others - I was about 120# when we married and have gained every year since. The highest I ever saw on the scale was 301# which was 2 years ago. I started the bariatric program at 286# and was at 272# at the time of surgery.
I had difficulty and frustration with insurance approval - their plan states that you must be in their program for 18 months and show a wt. loss and cooperation with the program before they would approve surgery. If you had a BMI greater than 50, they could give early approval. Well, I started off above the 50 BMI, but as I was in the program a few months I dropped below that mark - which meant the prize was I would have to wait for the 18 full months. After a letter and help from the staff - approval was given after 9 months.
Surgery date - Dec. 8, 2005 - uneventful surgery - left hospital on the 3rd day. Lap-RNY - JP drained removed on 3rd day.
COMPLICATIONS - Three weeks after surgery, I began having temp spike from 103 degrees - up to 103.6 degrees. They would come every 4-5 days and I would have terrible chills and would be very weak for a day or 2 afterwards. After the 1st episode - I was admitted for 1 day for an IV and a CT scan and it was decided that I had some type of virus. When it occured many other times, I was admitted into the hospital for investigation of the cause. The blood cultures were positive for peptostrepticoccus and then there was fear of endocarditis which proved negative. I was in the hospital for 8 days of antibiotics and sent home on IV antibiotics with home health care. After another week at home I was readmitted into another hospital and it was found that I had an abscess in my spleen. A drainage tube was inserted into the spleen which helped, but complications from that was pleural effusion, which meant having to have fluid drained from around my lung by yet another procedure. I then ended up with pneumonia. What a trip! I finally went home after 12 days of that hospitalization and had another 5 weeks of home antibiotics. Not exactly what I had bargained for. (20 days extra in the hospital and 9 weeks of IV antibiotics)
Although I was losing weight during this time and actually had no problems with the GI aspect of the surgery - I had no energy and did no exercise whatsoever - not matching up to the plan I had made.
March 9,2006 - 13 weeks post-op 47# wt. loss - finally off of antibiotics and back to work.
April, 2006 - 4 months post-op - down 65#. Biggest struggle is with the hair loss. I have very thin fine hair to begin with and am losing hair by the handfull every day. I lost all my hair in 1999 when going thru cancer treatment - an have no desire to do that again. I still have my wig - but hated it then and even more so now - it had 10 times more hair on it that I ever had and it felt so un-natural. I plan to wait and see and use it as a last resort. I hope the hair loss stops soon. I continue to fight the taking of vitamins - it is a struggle every day. I have always had problems with chewable or liquid medications.
