As a recipient of the original LSG surgery, you probably know all of the following pieces of advice to cope with your weight loss surgery. But just as a reminder, here are a few things to consider:
· The rapid drop in body weight can sometimes cause a few unwanted but completely expected side effects during the first 6 months of surgery. These include body aches, hair loss, mood changes, dry skin, and constantly feeling tired. All you need to do is support yourself both physically and mentally, and know this is a temporary phase that will pass very soon.
· For 2 weeks after the surgery, you would be limited to a liquid diet, and would gradually transition to pureed food, soft food, and then regular food in about 1 month. Do not rush the process of returning to hard foods so as not to risk nausea and vomiting.
· Eat very slowly and chew your food very well, since your smaller stomach does not have the same capacity for digestion as it used to.
· A smaller stomach means consuming less food and therefore less intake of nutrients. This means 2 things:
o You’ll have to take multivitamins to meet your daily requirements as prescribed by your doctor.
o You would need to do blood tests every 3 months to make sure you don’t suffer from anemia or vitamin deficiency.
· To avoid muscle wasting (which means weakening of your muscles due to loss of muscle fibers), you would need to not only take protein supplements, but specialized exercise to make sure you keep your muscle mass and strength.
· You would also need to moderate smoking, alcohol, and intake of some forms of medication such as Ibuprofen, Voltaren and Aspirin.
· Psychiatric therapy is a very important step in all bariatric surgeries but is doubly so with revisional surgeries since you’ve already had some bad experience and would need professional help to get you through that difficult initial period.