Okay. I figured it was time to post my journey (or the first leg of it anyways). I had surgery Wednesday morning with Dr. Jaim Ponce and Dr. Christian Rodriguez Lopez with Mexico Bariatric Center. I remember talking to them for a few minutes and the next thing I knew, I woke up in my room.
I felt pretty good as soon as I woke up. I did have a lot of pressure in the top part of my abdomen, but I asked if I could take the gas x strips and that got rid of the pressure after about 30 minutes. My liver enzymes were good, and I’m pretty sure that’s what brought me out of anesthesia and feeling good so quickly.
Gastric Sleeve Success Story: James Heritage
Dr. Rodriguez Lopez came in a few hours later to explain the surgery. I had a variant malformation that prevented them from being able to perform the duodenal switch. I had a vein running less than 5 mm from my pyloric valve on the side of my duodenal switch. Then vein is typically on the opposite side of the duodenum. They ended up performing a mini gastric bypass instead and brought my small intestine up to attach to the bottom of my stomach to add the malabsorption technique to the gastric sleeve.
Dr. Rodriguez Lopez said that he really enjoyed my surgery because, in addition to seeing the variant malformation, I also had an abnormal amount of intra-abdominal fat. He said that he had seen people come in at 600 pounds with 10-20 mm of fat surrounding their organs. Mine was 50-60 mm. This is why I weighed more than other people who looked a lot larger than me. I carried it all in my inner abdomen instead of under my skin. He said the good thing about that was that I wouldn’t have drastic extra skin since the fat wasn’t between the muscle and the skin.
James Update
The last picture was me in 2008 at 215 pounds. The new picture is me on June 26, 2016 – 13 months out, maintaining at 180 (from 320) and 8% body fat (from 41%).