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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. |
Still Here!
posted on 10/4/07 9:58 am
Yes, I'm still here! I had walking pneumonia for a couple of weeks and it really did a number on me the whole time. I'm just starting to feel better. A weekend at the beach helped! My husband and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a trip to Dauphin Island. Couldn't have been a better time! Gorgeous weather. Just a great trip. Very relaxing.
I need to get on the scale and see what's going on. I am sure I've put on a few pounds, my black pants were uncomfortably tight. My surgeon told me to expect to gain some weight given all the steroids I was on for awhile, and I ended up continuing on them orally to help clear up the pneumonia business as well. At last check I was 177 I believe. That's ten pounds above my lowest weight. I can live with it.
Funny. They are starting another "Biggest Loser" competition at the office, and they made sure to tell me about it so I could participate if I wanted to. My first impulse (which I did not follow thru on) was to say, "ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT? ARE YOU SAYING I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT?" Heheheh. For real though, you know, I am not interested! Sure, I could stand to lose a few pounds. But I have spent the last two-plus years of my life all about losing, losing, losing. I have just gotten to a place where I figured I was "done" only to be faced with this question, "Do you want to do Biggest Loser with us?" The answer is going to be "No thank you!" For all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that I consider myself to have an unfair advantage :-)
OK well I wanted to stop in here and do a little update to say I'm still alive and still doing well. OH medical stuff...
The endocrinologist/diabetes specialist I saw basically told me if my hypoglycemic incidents continue to get worse, to keep tweaking - to keep eating smaller and smaller meals closer and closer together, and to even eat "all the time" if I have to. He used the word "GRAZING" to describe what I should be doing. GAH! But it's OK. I have done well eating about every 3 hours, small meals or snacks. NEVER a full-sized meal, because it seems to be the quantity of food that drives the severity of my reactions, strangely enough. In other words, I have a reaction pretty much every time I eat anything, so I'm minimizing symptoms and frequency by eating very small low carb meals more often. Since seeing the doc, I've only had two crashes, both close together, the night we got back from our trip. I suspect that my lack of diligence on hydration was the cause of that (dosing in the car for long stretches, not drinking anything).
One thing I'm fairly certain of: a side effect of WLS for me is that it has reduced, if not totally eliminated, my "margin of error" for maintaining a healthy state physically & nutritionally. If I slack on water even one day, I pay for it in some way, whether it be headaches, severe blood sugar crashes, etc. I've got to be more vigilant than ever.
OK gotta run - duty calls. Just wanted to check in!
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