Sunday, March 7, 2010

things didn't go quite as scheduled

Well, I had my gastric bypass on wednesday morning and everything seemed to go as planned. Wednesday was quite painful and I don't really remember too much except for a few visitors. Thursday started out well until about 9:00 pm when my pain meds weren't working and laying still was about a 10/10 pain rating. They checked my vitals and that's when the ball started rolling.
They finally started believing my student nurse about my pain when they discovered I was tachacardic (high resting heart rate) mine was 138! My blood pressure was on the lower side of 90's/60's. They immediately started running a battery of tests. I had an ekg or ecg, and a heart attack was ruled out. They brought in a portable xray machine, which was quite painful. I then was consulted by 4 surgeons.
They decided I needed emergency exploratory surgery. I signed my life away.
They told my wife where to wait and they wheeled me into the OR at exactly midnight on thursday night/fri morning. They told my wife to wait in the atrium and they would know within 15 minutes what was wrong, if anything.
Ang waited patiently for over 2 hrs before the surgeon reported back to her. He informed her that I would be fine but that they were lucky that they caught the error when they did.
They said they were lucky to have caught the issue when they did as it was a potentially fatal complication. I had a twisted bowel, and both my old stomach and intestines were distended and full of crap, literally!
They fixed the twisted bowel and they inserted a g-tube into my old stomach to drain the fluid out.
In the first 2 days they drained approx 2 liters of fluid from my old stomach and have since clamped the tube off and will drain the tube when the pain gets too severe, which they have done 3 times today. The dr's are also telling me that this tube will remain in my stomach for at least a month.
I am doing better, off my antibiotics and iv for the most part. I am on a full fluid bariatrics diet.

I will post pictures when I get home.

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