Recap from 1st Consultation

Jan 08, 2010

Yesterday, I went to Ochsner Hospital in New Orleans for my first consultation with my surgeon's PA, Amber Weydert.  I was a little nervous, and it was a good thing I wrote down all of the questions that I had.  Only three of them since OH has been a huge resource of knowledge and experience for me.  It is like a Wikipedia for the morbidly obese.  Anyway, Dr. Weydert actually was very familiar with the website when I brought it up.  She said a lot of Dr. Richardson's patients use it. 

Anyway, we talked about the process.  My insurance does require a 3 month medically supervised weight loss attempt, so we scheduled my first appointment with the nutritionist on the 22nd.  We went through my entire medical history, since my PCP is with Ochsner, all of my medical records for the last 10-15 years were easily accesible.  We talked about my surgery choice, the RNY, and basically went over all of the pre-surgery testing I have to do before everything is submitted to insurance for approval.  So just from my own thinking, the earliest I could look forward to surgery would be April-May timeframe.  Not bad.

I had some other questions, basically what could I expect on the surgery day itself.  Dr. Weydert went over the most common complications from the surgery that they see in their patients.  I brought up the fact that I have a hernia at my umbilical cord.  It will be up to the surgeon on removing it, Dr. Richardson calls hernias, " The gift that keeps on giving".  So what I will be looking forward to are all of the testing prior to surgery; X-ray, EKG, upper GI, and they also want to do a Sleep Study on me where I'll have to spend the night at the sleep lab.  Seems in my life the only times I ever spent the night in New Orleans are for hospital visits or Mardi Gras.  Maybe I can do both this year. 

I also met with the Financial Customer Service Specialist, Monique also.  I'll recap that later.

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