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Surgeon TestimonialAndrew DeWitt, M.D.First impression: Excellent. Caring, patient with questions, very frank about risks. Emphasizes aftercare for best chance of success. Open about his personal statistics with complications/mortality. At some appointments there was a very long wait. I assume this is a combination of overbooking and a complicated and sometimes unpredictable general internal surgery schedule. In the year I have been seeing him, the wait time has been reduced greatly, even running ahead. Regardless, HE'S WORTH THE WAIT.
Impression over time? Still excellent. Very thorough and careful. Very patient and caring, with a great sense of humor.
Office staff: Remarkable! Excellent!
Like least? Sometimes the wait is a pain, but I see that as a hazard of a busy general surgical practice. He's not running a WLS mill, that's for sure!
What should future patients know: You're in good hands with DeWitt & his staff.
Aftercare: Strongly emphasized! Carraway has a bariatric coordinator who works closely with DeWitt's patients, and they have support meetings monthly in addition to other activities and online contact.
How did he address risks: He was open & frank about the risks, nothing sugar coated, both in general, and particular to my health & family history.
Overall rating: 10+++!
Surgical Competence or Bedside Manner Better? Both equally great. Kat C's JourneyClick Here To View
Describe your behavioral and emotional battle with weight control before learning about bariatric surgery.Overweight since childhood. First diet in 5th grade. Mother put me on all her diets thru jr & high school - Atkins, Cabbage Soup, Stewardess Diet, Military Diet, Grapefruit Diet, Scarsdale, and Weight Watchers several times. Tried it ALL. Lost a little, then gained it back plus. I also went thru an outpatient eating disorder program. Overeaters Anonymous saved my life initially, helping me get out of compulsive overeating. Once I stopped the compulsive overeating, tho, I was still 200 lbs overweight, and pain & mobility probs made effective exercise impossible. |
Back, and Forth
posted on 12/10/07 9:01 am
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Well it's been ages since I got on here. I guess it's no coincidence that I've been slowly gaining over the past few months, and have stayed away during that time. I have poked my head out at various support group things, but I have not been active on these messageboards in quite some time. So I'll get the hard part out of the way up front. I'm up to 188 as of Saturday. I had said 180 was my drop-dead-oh-no weight, but lucky for me I have not yet dropped dead. Instead, I've been pumped full of steroids to deal with both my lower back and my right rotator cuff, both in very bad shape. And I've been pumped full of different steroids to deal with my skin condition, hidradenitis suppurativa. I've been way out of my exercise routine because a) I got out of the habit, b) it hurts both my back & shoulder to work out & I have yet to regroup in the gym to deal with this, c) the hidradenitis suppurativa has been flaring up very painfully also, and c) lately, exercise messes up my blood sugar, causing me to crash, sometimes in the gym.
So there are my "reasons." Excuses? Feels that way. I am not going to gain any more weight. I plan to hold on through the holidays, and up my exercise, however I can do that without pain. I have to keep the steroids going, at least for my skin condition, because I really have no other options to deal with the pain right now, and it's been terribly painfully flared up. What I can do is make better food choices at each of my 6-8 small daily feedings. The endrocrinologist I saw about the blood sugar stuff told me that I need to "eat constantly if that's what it takes" to manage my blood sugar crashes. It's good to have somebody following this for me, but the options for dealing with it are pretty limited. And I have been rather grumpy about the whole thing, which hasn't helped me make the best food choices.
All that said, I still have no regrets. I am turning into a compulsive shopper! I have had to make lists of only what I need, or I find myself wanting to just load up. I really need everything at any given moment. I realized last week that I had nothing to wear for cold weather. So I took some time and built up a small winter wardrobe, only to have temps here soar into the 80's, leaving me with nothing to wear! C'est la vie.
STARS of WLS had our annual holiday party this past weekend. If you click the photo above, the link will take you to the rest of the photos on flickr.com. I see my Tusca-loser friends every now and then, and try to keep in touch locally. But overall, what time I spend on the computer, I tend to be working, and not doing much surfing for fun.
I am still feeling ambivalent about the plastic surgery, but I'm going to see a counselor and work on examining my fears and getting on with it. Having the excess skin removed would probably go a long way toward improving the HS, which seems to be getting worse instead of better. So much for the docs who insisted that all I needed was to lose weight to fix that up!
OK well this is just a quick update. I should go update my stats, which I see I have not touched since July. Eeek! Well, I gotta be real. I'm 21 lbs up from my all-time lowest. Funny, I mentioned this to Dr. Dewitt all down on myself, and he got mad at me for being down on myself. I mentioned my gain and he was all, "So what! Most people have 10-20 lbs rebound from their lowest. You're doing great!"
Still, I don't feel so great about it.
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Schmeesa commented on 12/31/07 8:53 am 
