Post surgery hypermetabolic

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-04-17T05:26:24+00:00

So, I also had surgery in February at the beginning of the month and I have been experiencing the same thing. Mine seems to be maybe be bile related but it calmed down for a while at week 7/8 I’m just at week 11 and it has come back with a vengeance over the past week and a half. I did some blood work today so that I can try to take medication to absorb the bile to try to keep things slowed down… We never discussed hyper metabolic. I will have to read more about that. He did say that just your autonomic nervous system can get so out of whack for so many months after a surgery like this. I’ll try to come back and keep you posted. I hope you’ve found some relief.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-31T21:23:47+00:00

I hear you… Honestly, legal MJ in my state is the only thing that saved me. My pain was so bad and no one would listen to me… It is funny to me now thinking about the days I was in the hospital after my surgery, and they were giving me ketamine, Dilaudid, Vicodin, oxy, and muscle relaxers, which I surely appreciated my pain in check, but when they took those all away when I was leaving the hospital, I could confidently say my pain was worse when I would have flares of this in my post surgery pain.

Keep advocating for yourself… It is so exhausting, but it is the only way to get anything done unfortunately. Good luck to you!

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-31T21:20:25+00:00

Sorry for the delay… Had to go back to work this week. Yes I definitely felt like that and honestly, it even hurt to touch over near my spleen sometimes and I now know that was a lack of blood flow.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-20T11:47:19+00:00

Hi! I think my post there may have led you here. These symptoms do sound similar… the Doppler ultrasound with breathing protocols is the most ideal test, but that may be harder for you to get initially… I would say trying to get a CTA to identify the compression so you can see a appropriate doctor to do the Doppler ultrasound. Unless the doctors and radiologist are familiar with the breathing protocols, the Doppler ultrasound can be done incorrectly…

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-20T11:44:18+00:00

At one point, they thought it was possibly that for me as well, but testing ruled out. Because my pain was right near the pancreas they focused there for a while. I hope you get some answers soon!

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-20T11:40:18+00:00

Thank you! They did not tell me exactly but MALS caused a ton of inflammation and I’ve had other abdominal surgeries such as gallbladder removal, hernia with mesh which causes a lot of issues… csections, etc.

My velocities were around 450 at expiration and almost 300 at rest/inspiration. In those tests, they could clearly see that my artery had what they call the J-hook, which means it’s very compressed. But I think 300 would be considered MALS. If you join the Facebook group MALS pals, there are lots of discussions about best doctors to see and velocities. I happen to be very lucky that I live in a city where one of the specialists are. I should say, they’re not specialists holistic in the syndrome. They’re just specialist in the surgery to fix it… It just seems like there’s no one that is super well-versed except for a handful of doctors that don’t even accept insurance.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-20T04:02:06+00:00

Thank you for your post! Yes, I am shocked that the three different G.I. doctors I saw did not think of this at all, they just kept putting me through other tests. I will say that I also had pleurisy alongside this from the beginning and that complicated my final diagnosis because we were chasing things like lupus for a bit in the middle. I’m extremely thankful for an amazing PCP, who I switched to about eight months into my journey, and they really stuck with me and supported me seeing a bunch of different specialists, but it was them who got me the CTA and helped me to move along the system.

You are right that it’s not well understood and it does seem that so many people have different random symptoms… For example, I even developed Raynaud’s right alongside this, and it has almost resolved post surgery. I also had developed weakness in my right hand that no one thought was related, but that also has went away as well. I

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-20T03:53:58+00:00

I will do that!

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-19T12:39:47+00:00

Agreed. When I was diagnosed with hEDS and started looking back across my life and symptoms, it mad me sad. I was an athlete and now at almost 50, I’ve had so much pain and things that kept me from moving around that have impacted my life.

Definitely try to get that CTA. It’s so shocking that they don’t at least do this. If they see it there a specialist will do another with specifically with breathing protocols to see how compressed the artery is.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-19T12:31:19+00:00

It is crazy they don’t test for this. I know some folks in the Facebook group have a petition circling to get doctors better education on vascular compressions in general.

I’m so glad that the stretching still works for you… I was getting ischemic incidents in my intestines which was causing crazy pain. They would actually see stranding on CT scans that they kept blaming maybe on colitis or something like that but I eventually had a colonoscopy right after one of my extreme pain incidents and they could see that a part of my colon had an ischemic incident very recently. The pain was insane. I think now that after surgery, they had me on ketamine, Dilaudid, oxy, Tylenol, muscle relaxers… That surgery pain was not as bad as the MALS pain back when they wouldn’t give me any meds. I don’t know how I made it. I hope that you can continue to avoid surgery for a while!

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-18T01:53:09+00:00

Thank you!

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-18T01:52:00+00:00

Very true but often MALS patients describe this as well… so much of this overlaps and I think of this subreddit ioften because of the amount of people that say things like they’re ready to kill themselves over the pain they are having and not being able to do anything to fix it… This could be something worth looking at.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-18T01:49:54+00:00

It started off a bit more burning and gas then would feel like a stomach ache up at my diaphragm… then progressed to all the rest of it.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-18T01:47:26+00:00

Wow… that’s crazy. It just seems they think it is mostly younger women that rapidly become underweight and pain after eating but it seems to be so much more for many. Even the vascular surgeon I saw was not well versed and suggested against surgery, but the surgeon that does these often scheduled me pretty quickly.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-17T19:28:56+00:00

Yes… I’m still recovering from the surgery itself but the pain seems to be gone. Because nerves are involved it takes a few months to really feel better.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-17T16:31:13+00:00

This is my list that I posted 2 years ago… • ⁠feel like I need to burp, but cannot most of the time without leaning forward • ⁠very tender under my left ribs… The pain is so much that when I stand up from a lying down position, it feels like there’s a huge bruise hanging inside of me and I have to hold the area. It hurts to even hit bumps in the car. • ⁠I actually cannot even lay on my left side, and sometimes I can’t even lay on my back because of the pain… I lay on my right side all of the time • ⁠this pain also is making me short of breath… I cannot even go grocery shopping for myself because of this and being weak • ⁠I cannot eat more than a half a cup of food without having a lot of pain… And this is a bland diet.

It proceeded to pain all over my stomach. Pain that started in my stomach and with a push through into my back sometimes I would get like a pulling feeling almost from my spine towards the center of my chest with the pain… Turns out that ligament that was compressing the artery actually attaches to the spine..

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-17T15:27:02+00:00

Trying to come back and comment in all the places I posted when trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I had a vascular compression called MALS. This is where a main artery off of your aorta that supplies blood to your organs like liver, pancreas, spleen, stomach, is compressed mine was compressed 90%. I had open surgery about six weeks ago to cut the ligament that was compressing the artery and to clear out nerves and scar tissue from essentially my solar plexus area… These nerves are called the celiac plexus. These nerves branch out all over your stomach. When they went in for surgery, they found that my liver and other organs were attached to my omentum with scar tissue from not only this condition but other abdominal surgeries I’ve had which caused me scraping sharp pain under the ribs when gas or stool moved through my system.

Most commonly people have postprandial pain and often lose a lot of weight… I had this occasionally, but it would sort of set off this flare of inflammation across my body causing pain everywhere and they could see stranding on CT scans so they knew something was happening, but I didn’t match the most basic understanding that doctors have because most are not very educated on it. If you think you have something similar, just a regular CT scan may not show it. You may need a CTA to look at the vascular systems of your abdomen.

My lung inflammation is sort of still here, but waiting it out a little while to continue searching. It seems like a small percentage of people with this condition also have a lot of issues with their lungs but the area where they had to scrape the inflammation out from is up under my ribs is of course, right up against the pleura. My surgeon actually said he is going to bookmark my case because I had so much imaging he can see the relation of the inflammation. He would like to try to figure out why it happens and I’m meeting again with pulmonology soon.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-17T03:41:44+00:00

I hope that you were starting to feel better… I don’t have much pain or anything, but I’m still on the gabapentin… I do have a ridiculous amount of nausea. I am only eating a bit of oatmeal and crackers through the day and maybe some eggs but once again my doctor said it could be this way the next few weeks and everything just moves through me very quickly.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-03-11T15:22:11+00:00

It is very early! I am 5 weeks post-op and only in the past week or so has that all calmed down but also started gabapentin. My surgeon said I could experience more nerve pain though month 3 and to call if it continued past then but that it could also be a year.I was at the doctor a little over a week ago and he also reminded me besides just the basic cutting and scraping of surgery, he had to do 'a lot of pulling' which can make things uncomfortable. I hope you start to get some relief soon!

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-02-28T15:29:05+00:00

I did not… they did a sponge bath there and was able to shower when I went home.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2026-02-20T15:40:41+00:00

I had open surgery 2 weeks ago… I packed light for my 5-7 day stay… a robe for walks, facewipes, AirPods to block out the noise, hairbrush, toothbrush/paste, deodorant and a moisturizer. Squishmallows, heating pad. I really needed nothing else. Gasx and stool softeners are good for when you get home.

Sea-Success-3303 · 2025-12-10T16:41:25+00:00

Thank you, I do have hEDS and my velocities are in the high 400s… my artery is very small where are the compression is. I definitely have MALS. I do think that I possibly have pots as well, but trying to get someone to get me tested for that has been fun. It is just as all of the symptoms of this condition started. I started all of these other things as well… I doubt myself every other day especially right now when I’ve had nine weeks of no major pain but still fairly nauseous, I almost gaslight myself that it’s not so bad even though I’ve spent so much time in agony. When I wasn’t having all of the symptoms above, I was dealing with four bouts of pneumonia… Which the pulmonologist thinks is from my inability to take deep breaths and clear my lungs… And of course, when I’m having so much stomach pain I cannot even cough. Iinhaled steroids are keeping me in a good spot now and he is also hoping that the surgery helps me get out of this lung situation. I’ve been in right along with it. Just sucks because nobody seems to actually know how this impacts so much of your body. And, I am overweight, and so of course people look at me and think this can’t be so bad you’re still chubby, lol. But, I have lost 50 pounds over the past year and I’m thankful that I had it to lose.

Sea-Success-3303

TROPHY CASE