The Consult

Apparently, no matter how organized one tries to be, one will get screwed over.  About six weeks ago, I printed all the necessary forms off of the surgeon's website, made a copy and then filled them out for both the Brit and I.  I then put it all neatly in a manila envelope, addressed it and sent Aaron down the street to the mailbox to mail it. 

Apparently, organization requires a copy.

We got to the consult to find out that they had none of the paperwork.  The excuse was that they got so many completed forms in the mail and those people often never schedule or show up for a consult.  So, we had to fill them out all over again...all twelve pages.

After that, things got better.  We met Pat, the nurse practioner and then Dr. S.  I had been warned that though Dr. S was one of the very best, he was not a "warm and fuzzy" doctor.  I really didn't have any issues with him at all.  He was friendly enough (he talks really loud for some reason), straight forward and honest.  The Brit asked why he had gotten into this line of medicine and his answer was that he was tired of putting a bandaid on the co-morbidities.  He would treat something that was caused by obesity, but not the obesity itself. He wanted to deal with the cause of the problems and not with the symptoms.  We discussed his complication rate and he went over the way he prevents leaks (as of January 2006, after 1000 gastric bypass surgeries, he had no leaks....this is one of the lowest in the world). I asked him if he'd had any patients die and he told me not on the table but that he had lost a couple of patients due to blood clots and those patients had a history of blood clots before surgery.  He answered all our questions honestly, told us we only needed about 4-6 between our two surgeries (now we have to decide who goes first) and gave the Brit a couple of options.

So on Wednesday, I plan to call to schedule our appointments with their nutritionalist and try to get it on a day where we will all ready be down there for our other structured diet meetings.  I need to find out how to pick a shrink to do those assessments in the event the one that Bayview recommends does not take our insurance. 

But all in all, a good day!

Oh, and i'm knitting on straight needles at the moment...can you believe it?