Any recent patients of Dr."Fuzz" in W/S??

    

Thanks for letting me realize it is not always the first impressions that make a person. I actually know that by now.  BTW, would you be interested in going to an OH support group meeting in the surrounding areas of Winston Salem like in the middle of this whole area because are the only North Carolinians that do not really have a support group close enough that it would not be less than 2 hours one way to go to one? I have inquired about starting one. Two of my physicians have offered to help get me a meeting room at either WakeForest University Baptist Medical Center (WFUBMC) or Forsyth Medical Center (FMC) but I also still have ties with Surry Community College (SCC) and believe I can get a meeting room there also.  Mainly, first things first, I have already applied to OH support group information and have just submitted an application to get a new support group started and have not heard yet if it would/will be approved.  Back to my original question, WOULD YOU BE A WILLING PARTICIPANT WHEN YOU COULD MAKE IT TO A MEETING ESPECIALLY IF IT WERE CLOSER TO HOME? Please let me know what you think and any others interested please let me know, I would like to know if there is as much interest as I believe there is. Plus, I have several friends and acquaintances that I have met since I lost my weight because of an article written in the local newspaper "Local Woman Finds New Life After Losing 350-plus Pounds" and this then lead to other people looking into WLS contacting me over my experience and if I would recommend the surgery to others or not and what I thought about it for certain people. So, anyone out there close by, please post on the message boards if you are interested in a new group within an hour of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, Mount Airy/Surry, Yadkinville/Jonesville/Elkin, Greensboro/Guilford, and even Wilkesboro/Wilkes County. I would like to find a place in the middle to help make it easier for people to be able to come! With Blessed Wishes! Susan C.

  Dear Charleston: Thanks for the reply. But here is more of my story so you may understand better. I weighed nearly 600 lbs in 1997. I worked in the Emergency department at a small hospital. I had been over 300 lbs since the age of 10 years old. I had vertical banded gastroplasty at age 19 years. I had nothing but problems essentially had 3 revision surgeries and eventually take down of the surgery. I had lost approximately 100 lbs. But over the next nearly 15 years I gained back up to where I was prior to the first surgery which was nearly 500 lbs at 18 years of age. My mom begged the physicians to wait to do the surgery the first time, which by the way was not at WFUBMC.  In 1997, one of the doctors I worked with saw I was visibly upset and asked me what was wrong and I confided in him about my weight and that no matter what I did I was not losing weight. You go to a reunion, and the only people in my family you see that are not over weight are those who married into the family. This physician unbeknownst to anyone had a lifelong struggle with his weight and even today you would not know it because even I had a crush on him because he was such a nice person but one drop dead gorgeous physician also, but was married and I was friends with his wife. So anyway, he came to me and showed me a picture of someone approximately 450 lbs. and it was him, surprise, surprise and he also said while showing me the picture he talked about his story. Then he offered to help me lose the weight. Then so started my next weight loss journey. Over the next two years, I lost over 300 lbs and then got to the point where I was staying really sick all of the time and this physician was still with me and eventually, I had aspirated because my stomach had gotten so small, that there was about as much room as there is in a coffee straw for food to go down, there go the reason I ended up at WFUBMC and in the lap of the head of the trauma/burn center because no other surgeon in their right minds felt it would be ok to do surgery on me. Then just before taking me into surgery J. Wayne Meredith stated to me first and then to my family that he would not know until he got into the surgery what he would have to do. I then came out of surgery after about 15 hours with a partial gastrectomy and essentially a Roux en Y from all of the adhesions that were there and from where my stomach had shrunk shut. Changing the subject, but my story is in the upcoming May/June 2008 OH magazine, or at least a lot of my story. It is titled, " Susan Carlisle 's Mayberry Ending" since I am from the real Mayberry, Mount Airy, NC. Anyway, I hope I do did not make out the nurse to sound that bad it was the middle of the night and I am still an insomniac so I might have sounded harsher but the nurse was very professional until she found out that I was inquiring about needing to see a nutritionist who has WORKED WITH PATIENTS WHO CANNOT EAT BUT VERY SMALL BITES AND HAVE TO EAT SEVERAL TIMES A DAY TO GET THE NUTRITION I NEEDED BECAUSE NOT ALL OF THE NUTRITIONIST AT WFUBMC have the training and so it is a waste of their time and mine and a long drive wasted and with gas being as high as it is, you see my point, for there are only I think the nutrition department at WFUBMC only has 2 nutritionists who have even worked with weight loss patients. You see my surgery was out of necessity not this time out of want for weight loss but to live because by the time the surgeon did my surgery I had already gotten pneumonia at least 5 times from aspiration of food.  You see, I have been on both sides of the street with the WLS. I have different viewpoints than a lot of people. I do feel that the surgeons requiring people to have certain diets and take in certain kinds of protein drinks and such and also the surgeons making people understand the true lifestyle change it is when you have this surgery for I was not ready for it mentally at 19 years old and also my father had just been brutally murdered and I also struggling with that when I had my first wls. Now since Meredith did the surgery in 1999, I have never been able to eat more than about 1000 calories at the most a day because I have to eat several times a day and never have gotten more than that. Now the meaning of not having any metabolism, well this is my opinion from being there. For I had never been a big eater but when I did eat, my body was starving itself and I would gain weight. I saw a nutritionist as a child b/c they said for me to even maintain the weight I was at I would have to be eating over 3000 calories a day and as God was my witness I never have eaten like that, now I have seen others in my family that can put away that much food. This is why it was so hard for me to understand why I could not seem to lose weight. But when I started losing the weight the hardest thing I ever did in my life was learn to eat several small meals a day for my body realized I was going to eat and then it sped up my metabolism instead of developing more fat it started metabolizing differently. I then felt more like exercising more often and so I started losing weight and then I got to where I could not stop losing until I got so sick from the aspiration pneumonia. Plus, after I had to have the stomach surgery, a few months out, I think maybe at this point, I was now so afraid of gaining the weight back and since I had lost it this time the hard way and by the grace of God, I could not for the life of me eat and then the surgeon threatened me with a feeding tube and such as my 'red headed will' and I got to where I could eat when faced with that threat.  Also, no I am not underweight for on paper I am still considered overweight but have maintained my weight for approximately 8 years and at this time am looking forward to having plastic surgery, a panniculectomy and the plastic surgeon that is doing this is the one that saved my life in the article that will be in the OH magazine this month. But anyway, we are waiting on insurance approval at this point, but also I have come to the realization that when I got down to about 200 lbs. with my body frame, I stayed sick all the time and I had to realize that with my frame, my height, and now after the excess skin will be removed, I will weigh less than 250 lbs. I am nearly 6 foot tall also. The surgeon said that to remove just the skin, he would be taking off approximately 35 to 47 lbs of just skin and I would go down several sizes. This is going to take some getting used to for until just last year, there were only 5 or 6 pictures taken of me and that was at my biggest and I will be putting some pictures from the last few years at the weight I am at post losing weight when I figure out how to get them to up load from Photoshop of road runner. Anyway, maybe I will try again about getting in with the nutritionist. I may go through the dietary department and get the nutritionist that works with Dr. F's office. I used to work there and still know a few people that may be able to get me in touch with the right people. Thank you for the heads up my first opinion of the nurse. Maybe it was just a bad day. Maybe it is because I do not want surgery, because she was willing to get me in with the nutritionist I needed to see until she found out I did not need the surgery for all intense purposes, I have already gotten past that point, if you know what I mean. Hope to hear from you again. I have really just started posting to the site, I read a lot but there are very few to talk to from close to where I live which is about 55 miles north of WFUBMC. Thanks again and talk to you soon! Susan C.

Wow Susan, that's quite a roller-coaster story.  Good luck in your search for a qualified nutritionist.  Welcome to the NC Boards!  We may not all respond in the middle of the night with you, but you'll get comments back during the day!  :)

Susan - I'm SO SORRY about everything you've gone through - I can't even imagine that! It must have been so hard! I will cross all my fingers, toes and say a huge prayer that you can get up with Amber and get an appointment. Who's going to do your plastics? I had an absolutely wonderful doctor do my tummy tuck in Winston in case you haven't picked anyone yet.

Charleston Mom,   Thanks for your support. I actually have gotten past the feeling sorry for myself over everything in my past, or at least my therapist and I are at work on that, but I appreciate every word you said. You know, I used to think things like "whowies me" (misspelled?) but then I saw people in the hospital when i was in there for sometimes up to 8 months at a time, but I actually met a lot of people who were actually in worse shape than I was in. It made me have a different outlook because I could have been worse off than I was. But then again, medically speaking, I was the sickest of the sick and at least one physician that had a part in helping to be one of what I call my 'few angels on earth'  stated one time close to my last leg surgery, which was on 11/24/03 to close the wound from my knee to my backside, but he said that in his nearly 20 years of being an internist, he had met quite a few people who had either common sense and a little brains or were brilliant but could not do anything that took common sense without being taught, but he stated to my mom (someone could have told me it might have made me feel better, oh well, enough self pity now) but he said that I was one of the few people in the world that has brains and commons sense to boot and that the one and only reason they had taken a new interest in me which was less than 5 doctors but after having had close to 70 surgeries in all including my leg and my hip, my line placements, stomach surgery, cholecystectomy, etc, but he just stated this:  "MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THE SHAPE SUSAN IS IN RIGHT NOW WE WOULD JUST KEEP THEM COMFORTABLE AND THEN EVENTUALLY NATURE WOULD TAKES IT COURSE AND THEY COULD LET ME GO AHEAD ALS PLAN MY FUNERAL BUT THAT BECAUSE THE DOCTORS SAID THEY THOUGHT i HAD TOO MUCH 'UP TOP' TO LET IT GO TO WASTE" FROM WHAT HE SAID. i WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HEAR THAT THEN BUT IT STILL MAKES ME FEEL REALLY GOOD i DEVELOPED A GOOD REPRETORE WITH HIM Sorry for all the caps i only meant it for a short sentence and lost track of myself. Before I forget it, my plastic surgeon is Dr. Andrew Schneider of Forsyth Plastic Surgery, for he is one of my "Angels on Earth" he is the one who saved my leg after close to 48 surgeries and he came into the picture after everyone else gave up and believed in me and made me a promise that if I fought to stay a live he would fight to try and keep me alive and so here I am today! He is a great Christian fellow, which to me is a number one!

 

Also, changing the subject, I know we have not talked a lot yet and so far I enjoy being able to have someone to send an email back too. Since I am starting to feel better, I am bored and where I am from and thus jobs are nil or nearly impossible to get even on an as needed basis, open to any schedule times, willing to be on call, but I believe that every thing is always in God's time and he will make it the right time for me yet again for this new adventure.(Please LOL.Sorry I took something for allergies and am getting a little loopy and I am adding this in my spell and grammar check/ But getting back to what I was going to ask you A HUGE FAVOR:   PLEASE, PLEASE, PRAY FOR MY BROTHER AND I TO DO A GOOD JOB ON THURSDAY BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO SING ANGELS AMONG US WITH HIM SINGING WITH ME. THIS LUNCHEON is for the programs run by an NC agency that run as sheltered workshops (several in the state) under contract through the state. So now it is fund raiser time and hopefully they raise a lot. I just hope I do a good job this town b/c it is soooooo smmalllll every note we sing with be commented on yes good to my face but if it is actually bad and I usu.know, they do not came back. Anyway, enough about me, I have inquired about and hopefully in the next day or 2 I can get to working on getting a new support group started in/around/about/suburbs/Kernersville, Lewisville/Clemmons/Greensboro/Mount Airy, and even some from Virginia would be great and I hope I can meet some people too that I can share my experiences where we could have something in common because my weight loss journey has been most of the time truly lonely. I have found that not only does your you body change but everything about changes but the biggest thing I have dealt with was my image of self and that is what my 'wonderful Christian' therapist is helping me with now. She is helping me to turn my 'fat body mindedness' into what I am, as what she says the 'beautiful person' that is beautiful not only on the inside but the out.

 

 

So what about your story to change the subject? I would really like to know. My story is so long, I do not know how to put it on the OH website under my profile, and having ADHD does not help me because I go all around the world and back to get to the point and I have worked on that for quite sometime and still I cannot seem to cut things down to be a lot smaller and say what I truly need to say and do it short and sweet. With God's help I will eventually conquer this too but with lots of practice.

 

 

  I will shut up for now but hope to talk to you again soon!!

 

 

Take Care and God Bless!  Susan C.