Most of you know that I have been going for tests several times a month since the month of May. I will be having the stomach surgery to help me lose weight. The most common name for these surgeries is bariatric surgery. These kinds of surgery are called restrictive surgery because they limit the size of the stomach. A normal stomach can hold 3 ounces but with restrictive surgery the stomach can no longer take in that much food and. At the beginning, after the surgery, the stomach may only accept an ounce of food. Later when the stomach stretches it can absorb more.
There are different types of bariatric surgery. My liver doctor absolutely refuses that I get the stomach stapling done. He says my liver is damaged and because of that I could die on the operating table or the surgery could work but later on the liver which is now forced to work differently may reject the operation and then I can die of liver failure.
A friend of mine who had bariatric surgery several years ago just died from liver failure. It is very scary for me to think about. As it stands, I am getting more and more medical complications which can lead to death as well.
My liver doctor will recommend lap band surgery. He told me that it is less evasive. They will place a ring around my stomach which will slow down the process of digesting food and in turn I will eat less. The tightness of this coil or band can be adjusted so that is a good thing. However, the cons are that I will probably lose less weight than the stomach stapling.
I will be eating less because if I do eat more than the stomach can now accommodate, I will vomit. Of course like any surgery complications could arise such as developing an infection.
As I already mentioned the whole reason to be concerned with which bariatric surgery I can have, is because I have developed fatty liver and I now have non-alcoholic cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is scarring of the liver. When a diabetic such as myself has cirrhosis it is because the sugar in the blood has affected the liver the same way as alcohol would.
In June my doctor sent me to his office in an HIV/Aids clinic. Knowing I was going to that kind of clinic certainly scared me. However the clinic also dealt with hepatitis and the doctor at first suspected I might have hepatitis C.
Hepatitis C causes inflammation of the liver.
According to C.Health, “Hepatitis C is a common cause of liver inflammation, liver disease, and liver cancer in North America. Almost 250,000 Canadians have hepatitis C, but many are not aware that they carry the virus. This is because many people who are infected with the hepatitis C virus do not have symptoms.”
Meanwhile, I sat in the waiting area knowing that many people sitting there were carrying the Hepatitis A, B, C virus or Aids/HIV. It turns out in my case I didn’t have any of those diseases. But I do have too many lymph nodes. My liver doctor has found this out through a CT scan.
He told me I had too many lymph nodes and sent me to a hematologist. The hematologist reiterated that I had too many lymph nodes and is scheduling another CT scan. He doesn’t know the cause of the numerous lymph nodes yet either.
This time I sat in the waiting room with people who have cancer or are there for a diagnosis or testing for cancer.
It does get pretty scary and I only hope that I don’t have cancer. I don’t know if I would be able to deal with it.