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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Band relocated!

This is a picture that I took looking down so it is actually up-sidedown from your perspective (unless you're standing on your head right now, and if you are WTF?).

So I had my band put back into its original place.  My band had slipped and my stomach had done some wacky BS.  I didn't really have any major symptoms with the slippage, except for belching that kind of smelled gross.  So when people saw the x-rays of my stomach they were kind of alarmed.  I guess it was alarming to them the way my stomach was doing weird things. (Sorry about all of the scientific jargon).

But as I said, I could eat and didn't have any major symptoms.  No vomiting.  Weight holding steady around 170.  I had to travel about 100 miles from Eugene to Portland to a surgeon who would see me since my band was placed in Mexico.  It took about three months from upper-GI day until surgery day last week.  The enormous bruise you see in the picture is because my stomach was damaged pretty severely, apparently. 

Since surgery, I am a total mess.  I can hardly drink, I was nauseated for the first four days, and parts of every day since.  I can't eat.  I have lost about 14 lbs.  I'm in the 150s, which is just bizarre.  I'm back at work because I have one of those shitty jobs that doesn't give me much time off.  I have zero energy.  I'm sure I am dehydrated.  I end up puking or spitting up most of what I swallow.  I've stopped taking all of my medications because they seem to make things worse.

The weird thing is that the incisions are no big deal, even with the monster bruise. If I could eat and drink, I would feel just fine.  My surgeon is worried about motility issues.  They noted during the upper-GI that nothing was really moving through my system.  In surgery, my doctor said there was a ton of food in there, both above and below the band.  So I am hoping things will get better real fucking quick because I seriously have zero energy and I'm tired of running to the sink or bathroom to spit up (or opening my car door at stop lights because my mouth has filled with bile).  I didn't feel like I had motility issues before really, other than the belching which may be related to GERD.  I had regular BMs, I could eat anything, I was seldom hungry.  Now I can't even drink a cup of coffee :(

Do any of you have experience with this sort of thing?  I've tried to do some research, but there doesn't seem to be a lot out there.  I'm feeling really alone.  Although I look really fabulous (except that I didn't do my hair).  Don't you agree?
Oh, and the best part?  My new surgeon's name is Dr. Mattar.  If you are a Spanish-speaker like me, you know that "matar" in Spanish is "to kill".  He's awesome, really, despite the unfortunate name (and he isn't Hispanic - he's Egyptian actually).  He's at OHSU in Portland, Oregon and he gave me his cell phone number.  He also called me personally on Monday to see how I was doing.