I met with the Infectious Disease doctor that my surgeon referred me to. Officially, what I have is a Staphylococcus aureus infection. Apparently it likes to stick to surgical mesh.
I really liked her, and she and the surgeon have worked together on several cases identical to mine. Each patient they've worked with has been on oral antibiotics for a few months to a year or two before doing the surgery, and then she prescribes 2-3 weeks of IV antibiotics post op. Every patient has been cured.
Things I don't know yet - if this is going to be one surgery to do it all or multiple surgeries to do the removal plus reconstruction, and also what material they would reconstruct with. Also, if the IV antibiotics are inpatient or outpatient.
Also, everybody agrees that the surgery would be safer and the outcome would be better if I did a sleeve gastrectomy and lost 50-100 pounds prior to removing the mesh. But also that nobody is going to do that surgery while I have an active infection.
One further thing I'm looking into is doing one of those crazy managed liquid diets (like Oprah did 30 years ago) and then doing a gastrectomy after the mesh removal. The problem isn't losing weight. the problem is maintaining the loss. (See also, what Oprah did 30 years ago.) So I'm going to talk to somebody in bariatrics about the sensibility of doing something like that given all the other factors here.
So now I'm on doxycycline hyclate. It's making me mildly nauseated, but I can live with that for a few months if I need to. It's buying me time to plan when we do the surgery and to talk to the bariatrics people.
Bob and I agreed that overall there's no point in delaying this significantly. After I spend a week or two on these meds I'll decide if I feel well enough to travel - I'd like to go see my parents for a week in August or September, and then Bob and I have a trip planned with his family in October. I think we'll either try to schedule surgery for early November or January.
I really liked her, and she and the surgeon have worked together on several cases identical to mine. Each patient they've worked with has been on oral antibiotics for a few months to a year or two before doing the surgery, and then she prescribes 2-3 weeks of IV antibiotics post op. Every patient has been cured.
Things I don't know yet - if this is going to be one surgery to do it all or multiple surgeries to do the removal plus reconstruction, and also what material they would reconstruct with. Also, if the IV antibiotics are inpatient or outpatient.
Also, everybody agrees that the surgery would be safer and the outcome would be better if I did a sleeve gastrectomy and lost 50-100 pounds prior to removing the mesh. But also that nobody is going to do that surgery while I have an active infection.
One further thing I'm looking into is doing one of those crazy managed liquid diets (like Oprah did 30 years ago) and then doing a gastrectomy after the mesh removal. The problem isn't losing weight. the problem is maintaining the loss. (See also, what Oprah did 30 years ago.) So I'm going to talk to somebody in bariatrics about the sensibility of doing something like that given all the other factors here.
So now I'm on doxycycline hyclate. It's making me mildly nauseated, but I can live with that for a few months if I need to. It's buying me time to plan when we do the surgery and to talk to the bariatrics people.
Bob and I agreed that overall there's no point in delaying this significantly. After I spend a week or two on these meds I'll decide if I feel well enough to travel - I'd like to go see my parents for a week in August or September, and then Bob and I have a trip planned with his family in October. I think we'll either try to schedule surgery for early November or January.
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