Gerd - redo Nissen

This is my story ...

I had the Nissen in 2000 - it was scheduled for the laprascopic but during the op, the surgeon discovered that my liver was too big for my body (not enlarged) and was also attached to the diaprahm - so I ended up with laprascopic scars and the open Nissen - if he woke me up asked if he could slice me open I would have not had it done, as I asked him prior to the op to make the smallest cuts possible - so this is a psycological problem for me - I hate the scar. My op was 2.5 hours I had a nose tube for a couple of days, lost an incredible amount of weight (normal weight 45kg - after the op 39kg) and had double pneumonia. I was very good with the post op diet, did everything the doc said I should do, but during my recovery period I experienced problem with water, it made me sick, the doc's answer was - don't drink it.....

Well it is now 11 years later, I've had many scopes testing the wrap, all dr's say it is perfect, but I'm not and have an appointment with a Prof in November - been waiting since March for this appointment as this doctor is so busy - he is a specialist in Pretoria and apparently trains all SA doctors on this procedure. I have had the Heli Bactor Pylori virus - tested postive 2x although after this years scope I tested negative - thank you for that.

I can vomit, I suffer with a very uncomfortable feeling on my chest bone, have such bad heart burn that the food / drink actually comes back into my mouth - the same happened prior to the op. I'm always nauseous and hate the sick feeling I'm getting, actually don't want to eat as I don't want to feel nauseous. Even Ice Tea does its mouth wash without my approval - lol.

Anycase, I am ready to have this op redone - I will actually ask the prof to do it again for me as there was a time that all felt ok, I can also only imagine because of my case that maybe the wrap has come loose but because of my liver being in the way, alllooks like it's ok. The doc that did the op said that my hernia was quite big although the test showed it was small. So maybe with my liver having re-attached itself to the diaprahm which the doc said it will do again, there is nothing that can stop that, I can only think that it is keeping everything nicely "tugged in " which is probably not the case.

I certainly don't want to drink anti-acids for the rest of my life.

If you have had the re-do op, please let me know what your opinion is.

Thank you

Mousy-
Welcome to Healing well. I have a softball player who's nickname is Mousy!

Anyhow, I had a problem with my first nissen somewhat to your issues. I finally convinced a differebt surgeon to red ot since the 13 plus dikations in about 5 months didn't help. He asked me right before going to the OR what I wanted him to do if he didn't find anything wrong or if he did what I wanted. I had been seeing hime about 3 times amonth for 4 months and told him I trusted his judgement. Oh, this was schedules as an exploratory surgery.
After I was n recovery he stopped by to talk and said he was very glad my wife and I kept after him to do the surgery since my original was done wrong and the only fix was to take it down and redo it. I had an extended atay at the hospital because of complications that couldn't be helped. He thanked me several more times again for urging him to take a look. He said I also was the talk of this teaching hospital for a couple months prior to a=nd after surgery. Hr even a lengthy meeting with other surgeons who does this surgery and made sure all his students were in the OR to see what the problem was before and watch as he fixed it.
Everything was perfect for 2 years and unfortunately a repair to fix a torn esophagus ruin that wrap and I had a 2nd redo 8/24/11. It took almost 3 years for me to find someone to fix the original because all the GIs I saw said it looked fine on an EGD, but that surgeon found a very small issue on the 4th barium swallow he ordered.

So please be your own best advocate with this. It sounds like your are though.

Take care,
Bill

So it is now day 5 after the op - it was lap but --------- my liver is totally attached to my stomach and all the doc could do was just to loosen it a bit from the stomach - he could not re-do the op, I had a drain, which drained well about a cup full at a time, I was as nauseous as ever and on the slow nasty liquids diet for 14 days before I'm aloud to go over onto a soft foods diet.

Quite depressed that my liver is creating such a havoc in me. So basically the op was unsucessfull :(