Gastric Bypass Surgery: Before, During, and After

OK, you’ve decided the best way for you to lose weight is to get gastric bypass surgery. What next? The first step is to find a surgeon who has performed at least 200 surgeries with a 99% survival rate. If you don’t have this information, ask the surgeon. Your primary care physician or your local AMA should be able to provide referrals. You will also want to know whether the doctor provides a support group with nutritionists and counselors. When performed by a competent surgeon, gastric surgery is relatively safe, bearing in mind that all surgery has some risk. Don’t expect to form a deep bond with your surgeon-you will probably see her for one office visit before surgery.

There are several steps to be taken before the surgery is scheduled. You must be cleared by a psychiatrist or sometimes a psychologist. You also need to be checked for sleep apnea and will have to spend a night snoozing at a sleep lab with a bunch of wires attached to you. A cardiologist will check your heart and another specialist will examine your lungs. You need to have a battery of blood tests. You will see a nutritionist shortly before surgery when the special diet is explained. A detailed diet will also be provided in printed form.

The gastric bypass surgery

It is still dark as you walk into the hospital. You shiver with cold and anxiety but you are quickly whisked into the pre-op area. You meet your anesthesiologist and have a brief chat with your surgeon. Nurses prep you. Finally you are wheeled into an operating room and told to count backward from 100. You make it to 95.

As you lie there blissfully unaware, the surgeon goes to work. Most gastric by pass surgeries are done laproscopically, that is, the surgeon makes four or five small incisions rather than one big one and operates by using a tiny camera and tiny tools. A very small section of the upper stomach is cut off and fashioned into a little stomach about the size of a man’s thumb. This little stomach is rerouted to the small intestine thus bypassing the stomach. The old stomach is stapled shut and the new one is stapled to allow a small opening at its base. The whole procedure takes about an hour or less.

When you wake up you will be given ice chips and ice chips only. No food or liquids are given by mouth the first day but you will not miss them. Pain is usually very minimal. As soon as you can think straight, you will be asked to get up and walk around. You might feel a bit weak but you will probably be surprised by how good you feel considering you have just had major surgery. The next day there will be more walking and you will get your first liquids which include a tiny amount of the protein drink that will be the mainstay of your new diet. You may go home on this day or the next.

After gastric bypass surgery

You will be sent home with a prescription for pain pills, which you may or may not need. Recovery time is from one to three weeks. Every 15 minutes you will take in two ounces of protein drink, diluted fruit juice, or water. This sounds like a chore and it is, but you get used to it. However, the protein drink, made from powdered soy or whey is yucky and most people devise ways of making it more palatable, for example adding sugar free syrups. Exercise is very important also so that your body uses its stored fat and not its muscle.

Gradually you advance from a liquid only diet to a pureed plus liquid diet and from that to small amounts of regular food. All food must be chewed slowly and thoroughly. If you eat too much or eat something too rich and yummy, you will have a very unpleasant experience called “dumping.” “Dumping” is what it sounds like but it is much more awful than the usual bout of nausea.

You are loosing weight! Lots of weight! Some people lose up to a pound a day but everyone who follows the diet and exercises loses weight. And as you begin to morph into a new body, you know the whole thing was worth it.

You will learn how to choose a surgeon for gastric bypass surgery, what the operation is like, and what happens after the surgery.