you just never know...

so i have this friend.... you know... the kind you've known for what seems like forever? yeah well, we've known each other about 9 years or so i guess. long time. so not too long ago i found out that she had gastric surgery - the sleeve to be exact. she had it back in may (the beginning i think) and she didn't want anyone to know. she was keeping on the dl completely. and things were all good with it... until they weren't.

she got to where she couldn't keep any liquids down and kept having to go back into the hospital for dehydration. that was like the whole month of may i guess. then she finds out that somehow they bruised her liver while they were in there or something and caused some kind of hematoma that was causing mad issues and pain everytime she moved.

then they told her they thought it was her gallbladder and that she needed to have that taken out. that was about a month after the sleeve procedure i guess. that's when i found out - the day she had the gallbladder surgery. i went up there and visited her and stuff after it was over and she seemed to be doing pretty good. in a lot of pain (who wouldn't be after two surgeries in about a month???) but doing ok.

she went home about two days after that and was still having issues keeping her meds and liquids down. i guess she was home for about a week or so and boom! back to the hospital again with more excruiating pain and dehydration and etc.

that time they said apparently she had a perforation in the stitches that created the sleeve. oh no, right? so they put a drain in there to keep the bad stomach stuff from leaking out into her body (they said that would have been deadly if left going on for too long) and put in a pic line to feed her (aka feeding tube) because she wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything at all. they said they hoped the hole would heal on it's own and did a wait and see kinda thing. well... it wasn't happening.

so they came up with this plan to go in and put a closed stint over the hole to keep the stomach fluids from reaching it or leaking out into her body and allow the skin (and the hole) to heal. so they went in there to do that on friday morning. and it wasn't laproscopic either. it was a total open procedure!

well, when they got in there apparently they saw that the stint idea wasn't gonna work so they said they took some fatty tissue from her intestines and used it to "patch" the whole. then the doc said he "had to make a judgement call" and decide how many drains to put in to relieve pressure and etc. he went with one.

out of surgery he put her in the icu so that she could more attentive and personal nurse care since she would need it. things looked good they said.... but then saturday (midday) her heart rate and blood pressure started getting really elevated (way too high they said) and she started having major issues breathing and talking. we were all freaking out and so were her doctors. they took her to have some scans done and had to plan an emergency surgery that night to "go in and see what the problem is" since they couldn't figure it out from the outside.

while we waited for the or to get prepped and etc. she whispered to us how scared she was and we all cried so hard. no one thought she was gonna make it through this surgery. this was her fourth one in two months time.

they went in and found that the patch had somehow come undone or something and so they repatched it. they also found that she had another perforation. they weren't able to tell us whether that one was there before and they missed it or if it was a new one. but they said they fixed one, too. then they put in three drains. and she made it through.

they put her back in the icu and left her on the ventilator. they said that she was on so many pain meds that if she didn't have the vent she would stop breathing on her own. they also had her totally sedated so she could rest and let her body heal.

the next day after the surgery she was doing pretty good. her heart rate and pressure were way down and she seemed to be going uphill. then today apparently she's taken another turn downhill. her heart rate and pressure are back up again and they don't know why. today the doctor talked about putting her completely under anesthesia (would that be considered like a medicinally induced coma or something?) to keep her resting cuz she keeps semi waking up and trying to talk and cough and stuff but she's still intubated so she can't.

he said she's got a "long road ahead of her" and will probably be in the icu for weeks or rather he can't tell us more than that. honestly he seems like kind of an ass to me from the way he's acted and comments he's made.

another thing that doesn't sit well with me is that her doc is the one that i would never ever go to. he's the one that my gastric doc has to correct the mistakes of. i once suggested her getting a second opinion but she was too stressed to consider it and i don't think my doc is affiliated with the hospital she's in.

i don't know what to do. i feel so helpless and scared. i just want to rank all the tubes out (she's got like six plus going into her) and make her better. i wanna see the smiling, happy, bubbly girl she once was. not this sick and barely alive patient in the icu.

and in the midst of all that i'm angry. angry at society and the world today. angry that so much pressure is put on us all to be "skinny" or whatever. i mean, sure we do gastric surgery for health reasons, too, but c'mon ya'll. you can't even look at a damned lane bryant ad without thinking "there's no way she's plus sized!". 

my friend is so beautiful! imagine j-lo only with some curvage going on. that's our nickname for her, too. and pair that with her awesome personality and outgoingness and etc.... well, none of us are ready to see that - or her - leave anytime soon!

my husband is like "that could have been you. that could have been your surgery that went bad." and you know... he's right. it could have just as easily been me who had these issues and me fighting for my life in the icu two months after my procedure. it makes me feel grateful (dispite my weight loss pitfalls and slim regains here and there) that i'm here and well. reminds me that no matter if i never get smaller than the 193 i am now, i should be happy with that because it could be a lot worse.

i want my friend to get better but i'm scared that she might not.