"Pre-Admission testing handled very profesionally and in a very organized manner. I was impressed.
Hospital stay was the stay from hell (from my perspective). Of course, I'd never stayed at a hospital before, so my expectations of general hospital care may have been way too high. ICU was absolutely wonderful, as was one day nurse I had in the regular unit. Rest of stay was a nightmare of some apathetic personnel and lack of coordination. Some nurses were terrific, however it only takes a little insensitivity from one or two nurses or doctors to make a stay seem horrible to a patient. My guess is that Westchester was average in general patient care and that my expectations were too high. If I ever have to stay overnight at any hospital again, I WILL have someone else with me 24 hours per day, even if I have to hire a private duty nurse. A helpless patient NEEDS an on-duty, on-location private advocate.
My recommendation is that if you HAVE to use this or any hospital, hire an aggressive private duty nurse for ANY time a family member or close friend can not be with you.
As an additional comment, WMC rooms were very clean. Maintenance responded within 30 minutes to numerous calls for cleaning up spills. Nurses always responded within 10 minutes or less to calls for help. Now, they didn't always solve the problem, but they always showed up. For example, I complained on two separate occassions, numerous times that my dinner and my breakfast never arrived. The nurses took my complaints cheerfully, but the food (clear liquids) never arrived. My husband snuck clear liquids into the hospital for me because they didn't feed me those two times! All of the problems I encountered could have been solved by having my own private duty nurse."
"4/18/01 I have an appointment to see Dr. Cerebona on 5/22. He's a 3-hour drive from my home, but he's the only doctor in my CDPHP network that does Lap RNY. It was very hard to get through to his office on the phone [the phone number on the profile was wrong], but everything is set up now. I'm excited!
5/22 I met with Dr. Cerabona today. I liked him a lot! See my profile comment. He gave clear, concise descriptions of the surgery and drew pictures for me. He treated me as an intelligent person, who was making a serious decision about my health. He was totally non-critical of my appearance and weight problem. I felt VERY comfortable with him. He told me his exact statistics for his 14 years of experience (including 2 1/2 years of Laproscopic experience). He currently does about three WLS per week. He also does other types of surgery; his practice is not limited to WLS. I found him to be friendly and competent, but not arrogant. He has a support group for his patients. Since I live so far away, he and I spoke briefly about how I will need a support group in my local area. I have not met any of his partners yet. He did tell me that it takes 2 of them to do a LAP RNY and that my surgery would probably take about 3 hours, if there were no complications.
The only negative thing so far is having to wait so long for the surgery because of his very long waiting list. "
