Bye-Bye Mr. Lap-band... Hello Mr. Sleeve, Revision Surgery is done!

Hi Everyone,

I had my surgery last Friday and I am now officially lap-band free but sleeved.

This time I took a very different approach, I completely ignored that I was about to have surgery, didn't read any blogs, forums or articles the weeks prior to surgery and just let it happen. And I am glad I did.

I was very brave. We arrived at the hospital at 8 AM and everything went pretty fast. Before I knew it all the pre-op stuff was in progress, they put in the IV, my surgeon arrived, he talked to me for a few minutes and I was pushed in the operating room. Surgery started at 10 AM. Inside the operating room was a whole lot of activity going on and I only remember saying "Wow, now I am really getting kind of nervous" and immediately the anesthesiologist put some liquid in the IV and said: "This will help you to relax" and gone I was.

The surgery was kind of long... It took almost 4 hours :-( When I woke up in the recovery area I felt really bad. My mouth was sooo dry and I had the worst nausea ever. They kept me there for some time and brought me to my room many hours later.

The first day/night was horrible. The nausea meds didn't help at all... and since I couldn't pee they ultrasound-ed my bladder throughout the night. This was actually the weirdest feeling ever. I wanted to pee but whatever you normally do to release pee didn't work. I had no control over it.

The daytime-shift nurse really helped me to resolve this on Tuesday. She was the sweetest and most caring nurse I have ever met in my life. Every time I peed she got all excited and gave me high-five. Luckily I didn't need a catheter!

There was no way that I could have gone home after only one night in the hospital. I ended up staying there for 3 nights. The entire nausea thing took some time to resolve and I was very weak for the first 2 days. I slept most of the time and didn't even have the energy to hold a conversation or to drink my protein shakes. I only felt utter gratefulness for these wonderful nurses that cared for me <3.

It got better every day and on Monday I felt really confident that I could handle all of it at home.

On a great note...up to today I never experienced any pain inside of me or at the incisions. It's more like discomfort and when I move a certain way I do feel sore, but no pain. In the hospital I took some painkillers because they seemed to help with the nausea, but very small doses.

My incisions look great. My surgeon used the same incisions that I had from the lap-band surgery and I do not even feel them. I remember that after lap-band surgery the port area was sore for weeks, not so with the sleeve surgery. I am totally amazed how neat the incisions look and how little pain I had through all of this.

I am really excited now... Unfortunately my scale hasn't been my friend prior to surgery. In the hospital I weighed in at 186.5 and that's 20 lbs more than my lowest lap-band weight :-(

Finally I am losing again and I totally missed that. I've lost 9.8 lbs within one week :-)))))

Honestly, I never expected to lose that much with my low starting weight (did I really just write that?)

Can't wait to update my ticker <3 It's really exciting!

I hope all of you are well and life treats you good in lap-band or sleeve land!

Love & Hugs,

S.