One year and ten weeks post op

There has been something of a breakthrough in my post op life during the last two weeks.

 

Diarrhoea was still present and on Wednesday last week I saw my dietician at St Brieuc.  She weighed me in at 71.5kgs - the same as my home scales.  She was happy with my food diary - I have to complete the diary for a week before I see her - and that I was now including pretty much everything in my diet.  She wasn't happy with my continuing diarrhoea and suggested that I didn't wait for my appointment with Dr Lechaux in December, but see him before that.  She asked what I was drinking.  I explained again that I had a refrigerator which dispensed ice and chilled water.  She said that she thought that the very cold water I was drinking might be the problem.  I haven't drunk water with ice since, but have had the chilled water.

 

Before I left the hospital I popped into see Dr Lechaux's secretary and she said she would get him to 'phone me. He did 'phone and asked if I would email Dr Robert Rutledge, a mini gastric bypass surgeon in Nevada, USA, who has done more than 5000 of these operations, to see if he had a possible solution to my diarrhoea.  I emailed Dr Rutledge and heard back immediately from him suggesting a revision of the bypass.  I wrote back, worried, asking if this was a reversal.  He replied that it was an amendment to the length of the bypass.  If I was losing too much weight then it needed shortening and vice versa.  He described it as an easy operation which didn't take long and referred me to a youtube video of his.  I forwarded the information to Dr Lechaux and he replied today saying he would be contacting me regarding a revision.

 

Since stopping the iced water I am now starting my third day of limited diarrhoea.  I go to the toilet when I wake up and then not again until I go to bed.  In fact, last night I didn't, so it was twenty-four hours until I visited the toilet this morning.  Consistency marginally more formed but mainly mousse-like.  Is this a breakthrough?  Could all my troubles really be down to drinking water with ice cubes?  

Well - six days further on and the effect of stopping iced water has not lasted.  I shall wait to hear from Dr Lechaux. 

After my mini gastric bypass last year I was ambulanced back into hospital because I got a clot in my right leg.  Having now seen the vascular chap at Guingamp he has referred me to a vascular surgeon at Clinic du Littoral for 17 October to discuss having the vein removed as he says it is dead and liable to clot.  I would now want to have this operation before any revision to avoid another post op clot.
 

 

 

One year and eight weeks post operation

Well - I've finally reached the point where I have lost exactly half of my pre op weight.  I never really felt that this could happen.  It is an incredible thing and I am stunned by the reality of it all.  

I originally weighed 143.1 kg and now weigh 71.5kgs/11st3½lbs/157½lbs.  It seems unbelievable to me that my skin could have held two of the people I am now, athough, as I have said before, my skin is very saggy.  I feel it looks like hanging unironed curtains!  Luckily not too much of the spare skin is hanging round my face so when I'm dressed I don't look so dreadful. 

I put on a new Asda size 16 t-shirt this afternoon to go up to the Clinic in Guingamp and it was a little too big.  I did wear it, but was aware that the neck gaped rather a lot.  I had a mammography today and although there always has to be a second opinion which they will confirm in a letter enclosing the mammograms, the first doctor who looked at the results said there was no problem that she could see, so that's good.

I then went on to a supermarket and bought three fleecy round/scoopy neck jerseys for winter, all the same but different colours, and a lightweight zip up fleece, so I feel equipped for colder weather now.

It seemed really chilly when I got home and it was just raining too - only 18.7°C outside - so I got a fire going in the woodburner and inside it's now 23.5°C so I'm a happy bunny.





 

One year and seven weeks post op

Weighed in a day late again this week and was 72.7kgs/11st6lbs/160lbs, so a loss of 2lbs.  My skin is hanging on me and as I wear short sleeved or sleeveless t-shirts most of the time, I am very aware of my awful looking arms.  Don't get me wrong - I am thrilled to be lighter and mobile, but my skin is looking awful.  On Monday, even my chiropodist remarked on the wrinkles I have on my face now the fat doesn't fill them out. 

I wrote to my surgeon, Dr Lechaux to find out what the Créon dosage should be as Dr Picot hadn't told my GP, Dr Quarck, what he wanted me to take, and Dr Lechaux had prescribed it for me before.  He wrote back to say 25,000UI gelules three times a day, so I had to pop into the surgery and ask for a new prescription just for Créon.  I picked it up yesterday afternoon and will collect it from the pharmacy on my way back from bowls training tomorrow.  Then I'll start taking the correct does from Friday morning with the Surgilene - vitamins - which I keep forgetting.  I'm going to put them in an open container on the worksurface each night so in future I can't forget when I come downstairs in the morning.

 

The Créon is presented as a plastic capsule filled with tiny little balls.  I am not allowed to swallow the capsule so have carefully to tip the balls onto a spoonful of yoghurt in order to stop them falling all over the place - then they get stuck inside my mouth, so I have to try to cover them with yoghurt too - not easy but possible.