What to say about the first two weeks after surgery? Most of us will have had a major procedure at least once in our lives, and the recovery is roughly the same. The anesthesia takes time to wear off. The body adapts to a traumatic incursion; blood sugar fluctuates rapidly; the immune system gets busy trying to simultaneously battle the inevitable opportunistic bacteria and healing the wound. My wound is about four inches long. Even hours after surgery, it looked no different from a large, slightly irregular paper cut stretching from an inch below the sternum to a half inch above the navel. My surgeon was kind enough to stitch it up from the inside, plastic surgery-style. In a year, it'll be a slightly off-color mark, barely noticeable (I hope!) on the beach.
I pleaded for forbearance: please let me try some pureed food ... something substantive, like grits or oatmeal.My relationship with food changed immediately. At first, I wanted none of it. I could barely tolerate the smell of anything with more than a gram of sugar on it. For two days in the hospital, I lived off intravenous fluids. For four days at home, I ate nothing and drank only a little. Before the surgery, I had been a voracious consumer of the Smart Water brand. I use voracious advisedly: I was diabetic, and therefore constantly thirsty. I could gulp down 16 ounces of water in a single swig. After surgery, I can't stand the expensive mineral water. My GI tract is profoundly offended when I drink it, and it usually responds to the incursion by forcing it back up. It's never pleasant to learn that your body now objects to certain types of water. Fresca, which no longer tastes as refreshing as it once did, and caffeine-free Diet Coke -- these I could handle well before I was supposed to be able to handle them.
By the Saturday after surgery, I was sick of drinking only codeine. Having arranged for my partner to take some time off of work to care for me, I granted him dictatorial powers over my life for those few days. I pleaded for forbearance: please let me try some pureed food ... something substantive, like grits or oatmeal. He said no; I went behind his back. The oatmeal stayed down. It's become the staple of my diet for no other reason than that my new stomach seems to process it well.
Over the next few days, my food choices expanded. I had half a small cup of Greek yogurt. I was able to digest pureed chicken, which, surprisingly, retains its taste, especially if it is cooked fresh. I cheated a little, mixing some light salad dressing and shredded cheese into my two ounces of strained tuna fish. It stayed down. Salad dressing was totally contraindicated until six weeks after cutting. But not for me! I rejoiced in my triumphs over the wisdom of bariatric surgery doctors everywhere.
These are the early victories we celebrate. They compensate for just as many defeats. Getting out of bed was extremely painful for a week. I weighed more post-surgery than I did pre-surgery -- it took two painful, dyspeptic days for the water weight to skedaddle. During my waking hours, I had hoped to spend the post-surgery respite catching up on some light reading. I found I could not concentrate on a newspaper headline. I tried watching TV. The food commercials didn't bother me, strangely: I felt disconnected from the reality they were selling. I popped in some DVDs, but found that laughing was as painful as moving from a sitting to a standing position. For every Arrested Development sight gag I happened to enjoy I felt as if someone was stabbing me from within.
My mind wandered to darker places. What am I missing at work? Why did I do this? Why do bariatric patients have a higher chance of dying in their first post-surgery year than others? What if the pain never goes away? I really, really crave a piece of pizza right now...
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Facinating stuff for personal reasons---I too, have been struggling with weight issues my entire adult life. Question: how overweight were you? My understanding is that this surgery is for those who are morbidly obese---garden-variety obesity (say, 40 or 50 lbs) does not qualify. And why this surgery rather than lap band?
Thanks, Stanley, for putting this out there. My only sister had gastric bypass a couple of years ago. Before she was 25 years old, she was quite beautiful - then there were 30 years of obesity during which it seemed to me like she was imprisoned or something. And now she is back to being very beautiful again. It is like a miracle. It seems to me that there are very subtle things that go on in the relating to those who are close to us who undergo this surgery. I look forward to reading more of your experience.
Best of luck to you, Stanley. I had Gastric Bypass almost exactly three years ago and am literally half my peak weight. It's changed my life so much for the better, despite a few complications that have since been cleared up. At this point, I can pretty much eat anything I want, just not as much of it as before. Hang in there, it'll get better and easier and the pounds will start flying off. I lost about 90 pounds in 90 days and then continued to lose about 10 pounds a month for about another 8 months or so.
Just be sure to pay attention to your body. If you get any abdominal pains, be sure to tell your surgeon. Twisted bowels are a complication in roughly 5% of cases and they can be deadly if not treated. If you haven't already had your gallbladder out, there's probably about a 50% chance you'll need to get that done within the next couple years, but that surgery is a piece o' cake compared to the bypass, plus you'll be a lot skinnier by then.
Anyway, take care and best of luck.
Good luck and congratulations on how you're doing so far. Probably the toughest part is behind you now.
Like other commentators, I can relate. For about 30 years, my weight gradually climbed and about a year ago, I finally turned it around. A lot of things got me to the point of decisive action, like looking in the mirror and realizing I could no longer suck in the gut and convince myself that it didn't look all that bad. When my doctor suggested I was a good candidate for lap band surgery, I didn't want to believe it. But I looked over the pamphlet, and by coincidence 60 minutes had a story about gastric surgery that weekend.
The only thing, as I looked at the qualifications for surgery, was that a serious diet program had failed. That really struck me, because I never really tried formal diet and exercise, I was deluding myself that by trying to eat the right things in some loose way would work.
Anyhow, you can look forward to 3 phases of reaction from other people as the weight comes off.
1. No reaction -- change is gradual, people don't notice when your hair grows day to day - but cut it off and they'll comment. So people who don't know what you're going won't comment until the difference in appearance is actually noticeable.
2. "Are you losing weight?" Some type of positive encouragement; very gratifying. At maybe 20 pounds, people sometimes are tentative. If it's an illness, or you haven't really lost weight, it could be awkward. But then, when the change is undeniable:
3. "You look great! How'd you do it?" That's the best part. I haven't gotten tired of hearing that yet. Makes me think people are really wonderful... because when I was fat, nobody ever said, "Gee, you look awful, why don't you do something about it?"