I've got an ulcer! (not caused by the WLS)

Sunday morning, I fainted. I was sitting on the edge of my bed and fell forward and hit my face on the TV tray (I keep next to the bed) and cut my lip and bruised my forehead and knocked my glasses out of adjustment (not breaking them, though). My husband was right there when I fell, and he tells me I was only out for less than a minute; he didn't even have time to call 9-1-1. (But this really scared the sh**t out of him!)

After recovering, I went downstairs and ate a little food (protein drink), thinking it might be low blood sugar, but I still stayed so weak that I ended up going to the emergency room. They found I had a low blood count and I had been passing blood in my stool. (I didn't take it seriously when I saw I had a BM with black stool on Saturday, I thought it was just a reaction to some very spicy food I had eaten earlier in the week.)

They admitted me to the hospital, and because of the low blood count they gave me 2 units of blood Sunday night. Monday afternoon they did an upper endoscope and found I have an "acute duodenal ulcer bleed". I was given two types of medicine (Prilosec & Carafate) to help heal and avoid future ulcer problems. I was kept in the hospital one more night (on that darn hard hospital bed with an IV needle sticking in my arm, it was hard to get comfortable enough to sleep through the night).

The gastroenterologist told me that the ulcer is located just past my pouch in my small intestine. (He assured me that he's done lots of these endoscopes to gastric bypass patients.) He suspects that there might be some bacteria there that caused the ulcer, he took a biopsy sample, but I won't have the result of that for a week. He didn't think it was caused by stress or spicy foods, though.

I got to go home this morning (Tuesday), the doctor actually said I could go back to work tomorrow, but I think I need to be sure, so the doctor gave me a release from work for tomorrow too, and if I feel good enough, I expect to return to work on Thursday.

Now that I'm home with the discharge instructions (you know what I need to do for myself now that I'm out of the hospital) I got to figure out a schedule for the medicines (that I need to take on an empty stomach) and my meals & vitamins. It's much more restrictive than before, and because I don't want to mess up on these meds (I really do NOT want this ulcer), well, it really keeps me on my eating plan. NO eating between meals on this plan! That's a good thing, I guess (LOL). Also, because they only fed me clear liquids, I might have lost a few pounds this week. Another good thing!

Tomorrow I want to try to get back on my exercise schedule. I hope my husband feels comfortable enough for me to go back to the gym tomorrow, he's a little protective of me. As I said before, seeing me faint really scared him! After all, he thought this WLS surgery I had almost 14 months ago was really going to improve my health, and it did, overall, but neither of us expected me to develop an ulcer, and a bleeding one, at that!

I need to go back to my PCP (primary care physician) next Tuesday for further follow-up, and to find out the results of the biopsy.

Oh, yeah, tomorrow I really need to get my glasses re-adjusted. I did kind of smash them a little, and they're really out of adjustment. I've been using my old glasses, but they're not quite as good a prescription as the ones I smashed.

--Sandi H. (Citrus Heights)
Surgery by Dr. Leo Murphy (San Diego)
weighed 315 at orientation (May '03) -- BMI 60
252 at surgery (06/03/04) --BMI 46.1
last weighed at 174.5 (07/23/05) --BMI 33.0
(I've lost a total of 140.5 pounds!!!! 77.5 pounds since surgery.)
I'm 5'1" tall.