The Meat of the Story

I was pretty dazed when I posted yesterday so I kept it short. I thought the Dr was going to tell me I had a bleeding ulcer and was shocked when he said my band had slipped. Here's more of the details as to how it happened.

I've been cautious and on the look out for tightness since day 15 of my cycle, which is when it has happened in the past. Thursday (CD 27) I noticed tightness at breakfast so I went with mushies at lunch time. Things went down slow but not uncomfortably. Mid-afternoon I had 1 oz of roasted almonds as a snack. I chewed them damn near to paste. Felt fine, for a while. About an hour later they came back up violently.

We think this is when the stomach slipped up through the band.

The rest of the day/evening I intermittently felt like I needed to burp & was nauseous with a dull ache off to the left just below my ribs. Despite that at bedtime I took a Flexeril (for my back) with 2 sips of water. Mistake, big mistake, and I could tell instantly. I sat propped up in bed burping, listening to my pouch gurgle and trying not to vomit for hours. Around 3am I burped and a little fluid came up, I happened to be in the bathroom so I spit in the sink. Even in the dark I could tell something wasn't right. I flipped on the light and saw what looked like potting soil/coffee grounds in the sink. I googled it & I learned that blood looks like that after being partially digested. Over the next 2 hours I vomited/burped up the same material 9 or 10 more times. Early on I had woken my  husband up and told him what was going on but he didn't fully grasp what I told him. When he got up at 5am and saw what it actually looked like and how much was coming up he immediately called the nurse advise line through our insurance co. She said to go to the ER. I had second thoughts since of course as soon as he picked up the phone I stopped vomiting and by the time he hung up 20 minutes later the nausea was subsiding. I really didn't think calling my surgeon's office (which is 90 miles away) would do me much good at that point. Hubby surely wasn't going to drive me that far unsure if I was still bleeding internally or not.

Nothing good can ever come from being too tight my fellow Bandsters. After talking with my Dr yesterday I realized that my band was too tight all along, not every day, not all the time, but I needed an un-fill and didn't know it. I didn't have enough slack in my band to accommodate my stomach on days when my body was retaining water. I would rather have had to use my head to curb hunger on days when I felt a wide open than get sick on days when I was nearly closed off.