UW hospital

[Guest guest]

--

I also see Dr. Gaumnitz. Yay! I'm so excited to have someone to compare

notes with! i go back and forth on what i think of him...i don't think

he has a great understanding of what it's like to live with this disease.

just before my surgery i went in and he wieghed me, then was all excited

that my weight had plateaued. he was ready to send me home; meanwhile

i'd been unable to get more than four consecutive hours of sleep for

weeks (which i had told him). i went into complete hysterics when he

said the surgery wouldn't be necessary, which totally scared him...he was

quick to respond though, called the surgeon that day, called me back at

work to let me know that i was ok-ed for it.

plus he looks kind of like Dr. Ramano from ER and it's hard to get past

that. <grin>

My surgery was done by a Dr. Starling, who apparently has a good surgical

reputation, but who has a pretty wierd bedside manner -- he's hard to get

complete answers out of; you have to do a lot of persistent asking of

questions because he doesn't volunteer a lot of info. i think he's been

doing this so long that he forgets that this is new to his patients...i

didn't end up dealing with him after the surgery as much as his

underlings (the UW is a teaching hospital, as you know, so there are

always interns and residents floating around).

i was in the hospital for...let's see. day one was surgery in the

morning and a day of sleeping, day two was a lot of walking up and down

the hall, had the catheter taken out (by the way, i was worried about the

catheter but i ended up loving it: i couldn't feel it AT ALL, in fact i

didn't even know it was in until the first day, and it was such a relief

not to have to get up to go to the bathroom or have a bedpan issue). i

was out around eleven am on day three. the hospital was ok; the nurses

were really nice, tho understaffed...i had a phone, a tv, my own room

with an adjoining bathroom. these things are standard at the UW, and

they just redid a lot of the rooms, so the new ones are even nicer than

that. i also had a nice big window and it looked like all of the rooms

did.

i also live in madison; i'm a student at the UW.

email me directly and i'll give you my number if you want to talk about

this more.

-katy

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