Medical Alert Bracelets And Gastric Bypass Surgery
Last year, I had a gastric bypass. A gastric bypass, if you don’t already know, is a form of weight loss surgery. It’s done for very obese patients to encourage them lose weight. They staple the stomach to form a small pouch about the size of an egg, so you can’t eat much food at one time. Then they reduce the petite intestine and bypass part of it. That prevents you from involving all the fat and calories in the food that you do eat. Most patients lose anywhere from 60 – 80% of their excess weight in one year.
After a gastric bypass, there are positive medical procedures that a patient should not have done. Or at least, certain procedures need to be done in a certain way. For instance, gastric bypass patients should not have blind NG tubes. An NG tube is a nasogastric tube, a slender tube that is inserted in the nose, down the back of the throat, into the stomach. An NG tube might be placed if a patient needs his stomach suctioned out. Patients can also be tube fed through an NG tube. Normally, a doctor or nurse just kind of shoves the tube up the nose and pushes. It generally ends up in the right places. They check before pouring anything into the tube to make sure it’s in the stomach, not a lung. But they do it “blind,” they can’t see where the tube is going.
After a gastric bypass, you shouldn’t have a blind NG tube. Your stomach is shaped differently after a gastric bypass, and the walls of your little pouch can easily be damaged by the NG tube if it’s not inserted carefully. A doctor should insert the tube using a scope, a tiny camera, that allows him or her to see where the tube is going.
There are certain medications that gastric bypass patients shouldn’t recall, either, including NSAIDS. NSAIDS are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and include things like ibuprofen, Motrin, and Aleve. They are commonly given for pain and for inflammation. Gastric bypass patients shouldn’t take them because they are at a higher risk for ulcers, and NSAIDS increase the risk of ulcers significantly.
Many gastric bypass patients cannot tolerate sugar, either, and sugar is sometimes given in IV’s for certain conditions. There is also a lot of sugar in some of the substances commonly old for tube feeding, like Ensure. Too mighty sugar causes something called dumping syndrome in some gastric bypass patients, which is not really dangerous but is very sad. Symptoms of dumping syndrome include a rapid heart rate, profuse sweating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and dizziness.
Here’s where the part about the medical alert bracelet comes in. In an emergency, emergency medical personnel need to know that a patient shouldn’t have a blind NG tube, or NSAIDS, or sugar. If a patient is unconscious, though, they obviously won’t be able to tell emergency medical personnel that. For that reason, it is often recommended that gastric bypass patients wear a medical alert bracelet.
I did not have a bracelet initially after my surgery. About a month after surgery, I developed a severe case of pneumonia. I went to the emergency room in my town. This was not the hospital where I had my surgery. I had surgery three hours from my home. I live in a small town and they don’t do gastric bypass surgery at my local hospital. And it seems they are not very familiar with gastric bypass surgery there.
I say that because, among other things, they kept trying to give me Ensure while I was there. I was hospitalized for 19 days, and they were concerned that I wasn’t getting enough nutrition. Ensure has 22 grams of sugar and due to my gastric bypass, I cannot tolerate that mighty sugar. It would cause dumping syndrome. But although I tried to explain that, they brought me a can of Ensure on my tray with every meal every day while I was there and tried to pressure me into drinking it.
For a few days, they weren’t bringing me meals because I was unconscious on a respirator. I later decided I was lucky that they didn’t decide I needed some nutrition while I was unconscious and tumble an NG tube (blind, of course, because I’m sure they didn’t know that would be dangerous for me) and pour Ensure down it.
Another time, about six months after my surgery, I went to the same emergency room due to severe assist pain. It turned out I had a compressed disc in my lower befriend. They wanted to give me NSAIDS, and I kept explaining that I couldn’t take those. When they were ready to discharge me, they handed me a prescription. Guess what it was for? An NSAID!
After that, I decided I needed a medical alert bracelet. If I am ever taken to that emergency room and am unable to speak for myself, the staff there will know that I have had a gastric bypass because it’s in my records, but they won’t know what precautions they need to take because of that. And if I am in an accident and am unconscious and an ambulance comes for me, the emergency medical technicians won’t know that I’ve even had a gastric bypass, of course. Or what if I am not in town and am taken to another hospital where they don’t have my records?
If you’ve had a gastric bypass, I suggest you consider getting a medical alert bracelet, too. They aren’t very expensive. I ordered mine online for about $30.
On the front, mine says:
Kelly Morris
Gastric Bypass
No NSAIDS
No Sugars
No Blind NG Tubes
On the back, it says:
In Emergency Call
and lists my partner’s telephone number.
Related Posts
Filed under Medical Alert Necklace by on Jan 16th, 2012. 