So…What Was Bariatric Gastric Sleeve Surgery Like?

***Warning: If you are considering a weight loss surgery (WLS), please take my experience with a grain of salt. Everyone’s experience is different and everyone’s pain level is different. This blog is not meant to scare the fear into anyone. It is a realistic experience that I did not fib about. It is honest. I hope you take it for what it is worth but do not judge my experience with what you may experience***

Monday night, it was almost out of body the feelings I was experiencing. My anxiety was probably the highest it has ever been, something that I’ve had all my life. It was more than just a brick on the chest. I couldn’t focus on anything. I was un-rationally freaking out that my liver was going to be too big and they would have to do the huge incision on me. There were plenty of small freak out moments for me. I feel bad now about that night after it is all said and done-I took it out on Brian when he was trying to be playful with me to get me to relax. I just couldn’t stand the thought of happy anything-I hated my feelings and couldn’t control my anxiety.

My last ‘meal’ before surgery was at 8pm. Dad and Brian got sub sandwiches to go from some place in Omaha and they got me two soups-chicken noodle and some sort of minestrone. The restaurant strained one of the soups-chicken noodle which was delicious. I loved the broth. I ate every drop. I just wanted something different than my favorite ready to drink protein shakes. I tried to eat the minestrone but they forgot to strain it and it was too difficult to eat for me. I had no patience to strain it myself, with my own mouth.

I had to shower the night before, with a surgical soap called Hibiclense. I used it when I got all my piercings back in the day-I actually like the smell of it. I bought all new loofahs; I bought a brush for my back, I bought a loofah for my back and I bought a regular loofah for everyday use. I was freaking out in the shower about infections-what if I get an infection? What if I die of an infection? It was literally going from one freak out to the other. I had to just stop myself. There was no sense in worrying about that. Although, I did use half a bottle of it and washed my entire body three times.

Sleeping was next to impossible. I cuddled with Roto for the last time since he does tend to jump on me. I didn’t want to miss that moment with him. I couldn’t get comfortable. My mind wouldn’t shut up. It was as if we went to the Kansas City Speedway to watch the racing-it was the loudest event I’ve ever been to, until the night of my surgery. I couldn’t eat or drink anything after 12am. This was another worry for me because I drink at least a 100 ounces a day of water now. I also had a required pregnancy test in the morning-what if I couldn’t pee? Could I not have surgery?

I woke up, exhausted. I woke up having to pee at 4am. This was two and a half hours before I needed to be at the hospital. We were only 10 minutes away. I just stayed up, thinking about waterfalls of all things. I’m a moron sometimes. I completely wore myself down with exhaustion and worry. Of course, my first worry was-what if I wore myself down so much that I get sick? Oh, what will it feel like to sneeze? I may rip open my incisions. Okay-back on track, I had to shower a second time with Hibiclense. I took a long shower. This would also be the last time water could hit my chest/stomach area from the front for a while too-I soaked in that feeling. No pun intended.

We got to the hospital. I had a change of face. My best coping mechanism with any situation is humor. I am very, very funny. Going back to the bias/closet narcissist-I think I am fucking hilarious. I have a different humor hat for everyone I’m around. I like to think of myself of a perfect mixture of Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Adam Sandler and maybe some George Carlton. I check in and I immediately tell the receptionist, “I have to pee…like really bad and I just need this negative pregnancy pee juice out of me”. She smiled and sent the nurse right up. I peed! It was negative-weird!

They set me up in the pre-op room where I had to get completely naked and wipe myself with 3 packets of these super strong baby wipe looking things. It took me a while and I could tell the nurse was getting impatient because I again, was freaking out about infections. I changed into my gown, got my expensive surgery socks on and crawled into bed. She came and discussed history with me like my last period, when to expect my period (which was that day), any allergies…basically the same information I’ve been telling everyone from the get go. I interrupted her and told her I was exhausted and felt the worst case of anxiety, she said I needed to tell anesthesia which was coming very shortly. She started putting my IV in. Come to find out she lived in North Platte so we talked about that for a bit. Anesthesia came in and waited for her to finish up before they gave me their stories. She let me know that my pregnancy results came back negative-and my attempt to be funny, I said-“I knew that. Hubby and I haven’t banged in so long!” and I laughed, she chuckled but the anesthesia team did not find it funny. They ordered me a bunch of shots, including some anti-anxiety medication which worked WONDERS! The second shot I got was one in the stomach. It hurt like a bitch and it was one that she warned me it may burn as she is injecting it in my stomach. My response, “This doesn’t burn at all…(wait for it….) And there it is!” It felt like gasoline. It was some kind of blood thinner to make sure I don’t bleed out on the table. The third shot I got was an interesting one. At this point the nurse and I bonded a lot, we swore in front of each other, giggled and laughed at inappropriate things-I liked her. She made me feel better, or maybe that was the meds she injected me with-either way, I don’t care. She said, “Now this needle has a steroid in it that I’ve heard stories about. It will be going in your IV. The people I have injected admitted that there is a burning sensation. It is a sensation burning on your private area”. She injected it and within seconds, my vagina was on fire. Literally, it felt like fire ants were eating my vagina. I described it all to her. She laughed. She also said, “The last time I injected this was on an elderly lady. She said she hadn’t felt that type of sensation in YEARS!” I had to laugh and quickly forgot about the discomfort. I asked if it’s only females that feel that and she said, “Come to think about it-the males complain their head hurts/itches…like their head with a brain not the other one”. The nurse also warned me I would have a catheter inserted after I was asleep. I have no idea why but I was freaking out about this. I couldn’t stop worrying about remembering the pain of it while it is pulled out. She was a blessing in a uniform. The Physician’s Assistant came in to check on me-I also love her. She asked me questions, made me feel at ease. I was as ready as I was going to be.  At 8:15am, the final thing they did for me-they injected me with the night-night medicine and I remember being wheeled back, looking at the two flat screens that the doctor will look at while performing. Sleep hit me like a train.

It was 9:15am, I woke up in recovery crying instantly. I was in the operating room for an hour. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t control myself. I was in a lot of pain. I hunched over, yelling as best as I could with my hoarse voice asking for help. They kept telling me to calm down and I said I would if I had some relief. I don’t know what being stabbed is like but I imagine it is pretty fucking close to what I felt, with lots of twisting. Within seconds I was back a sleep. I remember waking up off and on starring at the people next to me in recovery. It was a whole room full of people. I imagined that’s what it would look like during an apocalypse, ‘the bitten’. Don’t judge me, I was drugged up. I hadn’t been thinking clearly for 24 hours or more. I looked at the clock when I was more coherent and it was 12:30pm, I was worried they weren’t telling my family I was okay. I overheard the nurses complaining that they had so many surgeries that day, they had no room to put the new patients. I was next to get a room. When I was coherent and walking around, a miracle had happened-I peed! I had no discomfort when I peed-I thought to myself, “This catheter thing was easy! What the fuck was I so worried about?” Well I asked the nurse because I when I peed, I had started my period and asked if it was from the catheter or my period. I said, “Nevermind-screw it just get me a damn tampon from my mom-this is a massacre”. I was due to start anyways. I prepared. The nurse informed me that they performed my surgery without a catheter with no explanation why. The second miracle had happened!

Finally I was upstairs on the 7^th floor. I was still. I was home for the next 36 hours. I had the best nurses. I respect them very much so. I feel as if I could be a good nurse but I couldn’t stand the site of that much blood or trauma. My grandma even told me while caring for my sick grandpa, “You are so nice. You should be a nurse”-well I probably shouldn’t be but I do care a lot, about people. My favorite nurse was Patrina. She was amazing! I feel I could have been her best friend. I am actually going to write her a recommendation to receive an award. My parents brought me a care package full of goodies like slippers, coloring books, flowers, and a game to play. I had a full set of stuffed animals to keep me company-my best friend Kylee got me a stuffed animal that looked like Roto in which I named Cooper (after her celebrity boyfriend Bradly Cooper), Kendra gave me sleeve-buddy in which I named Raven (because when I had surgery-its name was Ravenous but we removed the OUS-okay use a dictionary, you’ll know the joke about it) and Brian gave me his childhood ALF stuffed toy and sprayed the shit out of it with his cologne (all the female nurses kept saying how good I smell and trust me-it wasn’t me).  I also had a visitor from my best friend Jasmine. Unfortunately, I don’t remember her being there much because I had just gotten morphine but I love that she was there. I could hear her voice but not understand her. It was soothing to hear someone visit.

Brian said his goodbyes at 10:30pm that night. I had royally fucked up months ago in planning our trip to Oregon to get his surprise birthday present tattoo finished that we had started back in January. I marked Oregon down on the wrong week (the week of Aug. 17^th-19^th) and my surgery on the right week (scheduled this week-25^th). I found out after I scheduled my surgery that I put the wrong date down for Oregon-it was all my fault. I didn’t want to switch my date because if I did it once, I would find an excuse to do it again. It needed to be concrete. I told Brian I want nothing more than to fulfill what he wants to do and since I started the project by surprising him, he needs to go get it finished. We booked Heather in Oregon back in April to finish his tattoo in Wyoming but she moved and wasn’t able to do it until August. It was important to me that he go. I will blog later on this topic in depth as I need to get some words off my chest about it. It wasn’t until shortly after Brian and my parents left, I had a reaction to morphine. My IV became irritated and rash like. The nurse was pretty worried. My dad had shot a picture of me in the afternoon when I first arrived with a similar reaction but it was on my face. It ended up going away after 10 minutes but I will have to make note of it for the future. Brian would have stayed if needed. I needed him the night before, the day of and night of-then he was free to go! I knew I would be OK after that.

I slept pretty horrible that night after all my visitors left. I was up every 2 hours, asking for more medicine for my discomfort and sleep to be honest. My stomach was hurting a little, I wasn’t sure if my period had anything to do with it-I had actually stopped my period from several hours before when I first peed (see ‘massacre’ above) when I apparently started. I’m sure my period saw my insides and thought, “Oh shit-you’ve got a lot going on inside here. Maybe I’ll hold off a couple days”. Luckily it did!

I had gone through so many nurses during my stay. In following morning, I was finally able to pee and get some fluids out of me. I wasn’t able to drink a drop for over 24 hours. All I could do is wet my mouth with a sponge. I was sucking in the IV fluids like it was going out of style. The next morning-Wednesday, my goal was to drink 4 oz of water within an hour and then move to the bariatric fluids (which is this stuff called Juven-it’s basically like Crystal Light but meant to help recover the incisions on the inside of your body-tissue building nutrition). I couldn’t start that process until I saw a PA or a doctor-I didn’t get cleared to start this until 9:15am. I love my PA-I told her my concern with my liver and I told her my goal was to have the smallest liver the doctor had ever seen. She said, “That’s funny you mention that. As soon as he opened you up and we saw your liver, my first thought was-‘My goodness that’s a good size liver’. You would be stunned at how many people cheat during their 10 day liquid diet and what we have to do to compensate for a larger liver. It was great! Also you did not have a catheter because Dr. Hovey is experimenting with not using them during the gastric sleeve surgeries. This will help with decreasing infection and also cost effectiveness. You are only the second person to not have one during one of his gastric sleeve surgeries.”

Anyways, back to the water. I finished the 4 oz of water within an hour, felt sick full but not bad. I started the bariatric stuff and felt God awful. I had taken a two hour nap because I was so exhausted and Thanksgiving full. I could have thrown up but I was so scared what that would feel like. Come to find out after a nurse switch after my nap, I needed to drink 3 or 4 cups of 4 oz each of the bariatric fluid before I could get let go. I had to almost start back over. I was walking the floor like no one’s business. The other nurses on the floor would say, “Why are you the only patient doing what they are supposed to do?” or another one I got, “You are making grooves in the floor!” I was trying to stay on top of the gas they pumped me with. Before surgery actually happens, the techs pump some sort of gas in the body-the gas has nowhere to go other than travel. I still have gas between my shoulder blades and the tops of my shoulders. Walking helps this process very much! Kendra told me, “The only piece of advice right after surgery-you have to walk. Even if you don’t want to, don’t feel like it, you are tired-you walk!” I listen to her like she is preaching to a full house of church going people that need some help. Or an even better comparison-she is my Mr. Miyagi and I am the Danielson. Boy, was she right! Finally after I had almost thrown up due to being so full, I was released. I wanted to go back to the hotel. It was 8:30pm and we still had to make it to Wal-Greens to get my prescription liquid pain killer.

Roto was driving himself nuts because he couldn’t be on the same bed as me. I finally let it happen. I put a pillow on my stomach and let him sleep with me. He actually kept my mom and myself up because he was frustrated that he couldn’t be near me. My mom’s laptop was blocking his ‘bridge’ (the night stand) to get to me. He cared very much for me and was careful. I loved it. I needed it.

As a fun fact, my dad and I were curious how the surgery looked from the doctors perspective. We YouTubed a medical video of it. It was gross but honestly, surgery and medicine are truly amazing to me. It is amazing the things they come up with the better the human race. I have nothing but the most outright respect for nurses and doctors. If you are considering this surgery, I would not recommend watching this video. It is also something you shouldn’t watch if you have an uneasy stomach. My dad is notorious for being uneasy around blood or anything of the sort-he passes out getting his blood drawn. We both were fascinated by what my body just went through and the technology they used to do it.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people commented on my Facebook wall, private messaged me and also text messaged me with their love and concern. I appreciate that more than words. There is a saying that, “Blood is thicker than water”-I don’t always agree with that statement as nice as it may sound. Actually, I don’t agree with it at all-for several reasons I would rather not blog about. I have such a huge support system that have shown me they want me to succeed and do well in life. They have no relation to me, whatsoever. True colors really show in people and for those people that provide that support and love for me, I love you and it helps me more than words can explain.

Also, thank you to my unconditionally loving parents! I know this was a scary process for all of us but I am so happy that you’ve been there learning, experiencing everything with me and share my humor about my journey. You are truly troopers as I know I am goofy to deal with. Brian-you have been extremely supportive and pushing me when I’m scared the most. I know I will break down and thank you more later when I admit this was a fantastic idea. You all are the best!

This is all for a now! I will blog more on my journey soon! I have to update on my food progress!!!!!!