Not a very hopeful start...

Jun 08, 2010

Well yesterday was my first day visiting the Harlem Hospital to start my journey towards getting WLS. My appointment was for 8AM, I arrived at 7:30 AM, it was still close so the guard told me to pick up a number and sit until 8 AM with the others, then at 8AM people had to make a line in order to enter the elevators in the order of their numbers, first to arrive first to go in, I was number 40. The bariatric clinic is on the second floor in which we also had to grab a number to get registered. I registered at around 8:30am and was called by a nurse at 12:15pm!!! The reason for this, they explained to me, was that it was my first day so those people are the last to be seen because of all the explaining they have to do. While I was waiting to be called I got to meet other patients, some already had the surgery and others were in the process. Most of the patients were women from the Dominican Republic, which is my home country also, there were very few African Americans at least on that day, I expecting more variety of people. I told them I wanted to get the Lap-Band, but the majority told me not to, but couldn't give me a concrete reason. I noticed that all the people that I spoke to or heard got the RNY so I thought  "Does this hospital does anything else?" But there was this one girl who was also in the process that told me she was getting the band, she told me she doesn't wan't her intestines cut up nor her stomach, she doesn't want any drainage and she doesn't was her pouch to expand over time and become overweight again, just like another patient there who had the surgery 5 years prior and was obese again!!! I was also amazed at the amount of seniors going there for the surgery, people in their 60's and beyond! They said that they wanted to control their diabetes with the surgery. We were only 4 "young" people in the clinic and I'm 28!

Finally the nurse called me, took my blood pressure, weight and height...5' 5", 231lbs. The physician's assistant entered the room and told me to go with her. She is the one that asks you all kinds of questions and explains to you the different types of surgeries and gives you suggestions. She is super nice, her last name is Kapoor. She started asking me all kinds of questions including if I have'd any surgeries in the past, I told her yes around 12-14 surgeries in the past 5 years due to a Domestic Violence attack back in 2005, in which I also had a colostomy and colectomy performed which left me with a huge scar from right under my breast to my pubic area, she asked me to show her and immediately told me that the band cannot be done on me because of the scar, they cannot do it laparoscopically and they will not open me up for a band. Then she told me that since I had a previous surgery done in my intestines that the RNY was very unlikely also. That the only one she could suggest was the vertical sleeve. She told me that she needed to see what the surgeon did in my intestines and that she needed my medical records for that, that I needed to go to that hospital and ask them to send her those records and that she also needed me to get an abdominal sonogram or cat-scan with contrast (I hate needles!) and that is going to be on Friday. Then after getting all that they would make a decision on what to do with me. At least it was not a definite NO! 

After that I had to wait another hour for the nurse to call me and explain to me what I needed to do. She gave me the paper for the abdominal study on Friday and another for a blood test that same day. I went to the first floor where the lab is and got the blood drawn, then I went to my old hospital to ask them to send her the records, then I finally went home at 3pm!!! Well, let's just see what happens...

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