Mt. Sinai Support Group (was Re: Angel)

[Guest guest]

Lynette,

I am also very sorry that you had this experience. I hope you believe

me when I say that not all the post-ops in last night's meeting

approved of the things that went on. The past three meetings (Feb-

April) were really informative and quite supportive. I have not been

active on this list for a long time because I just don't have the

time due to a lot of personal and work committments. Someone else

notified me about Lynette's post because I had posted about last

night's support group on the Mt. Sinai Post-op site. I usually don't

cross-post, but I think this is important to share.

Regards,

Lori H

Lap BPD-DS 8/17/00

Drs. Pomp and Gagner

Down 91 lbs and 91.5 inches

O.K. here I am opening up an old can of worms...

I wanted to share my feeling about the issue of pre-ops talking at

the support group meeting. This may offend some of you and I am sorry

if it does, but I have been thinking about this all night and I

wanted to get my feelings out in the open and make a suggestion.

I fully understand and agree with the reasoning behind the guideline

that pre-ops should not participate in the meeting. No one wants to

use our meeting time to discuss insurance approvals, preparing for

surgery or why we made the decision to have BPD-DS vs. RNY. Like many

of you, I spend a lot of time doing that through e-mail and before

and after our support groups and I am happy to do. I DO NOT want our

meetings time to be devoted to pre-op issues in any way.

However, I do believe that there are times when people other than

post-op DS patients may have something valuable to add to the

conversation. I think that support people, pre-ops and all visitors

shoud be treated with respect. This did not happen last night.

For example, Dawn (new pre-op) shared some feedback that she heard

from post-op patients. Granted, they were not present and that led

some of you to feel that their opinions were not worth anything, but

Dawn thought that she may be sharing some important information

regarding the feelings that some post-ops have about the support

group. I don't see anything wrong with that. She did not attempt to

steer the conversation to pre-op issues at all.

Another example - When the husband of a post-op patient spoke, he was

doing so in order to try to clarify the question that Dr. Drooker

asked of the group. Again, I don't see anything wrong with that. He

was not trying to influence any conversation or steal time away from

post-op issues for his own personal agenda.

I felt very uncomfortable with the way both Dawn and this gentleman

were corrected when they spoke. Especially the latter - it was

confrontational and disrespectful and actually ended up wasting more

discussion time. (Enough of which was wasted by the whole

redundant " meeting format " conversation.) Again, I am sorry if this

offends anyone. That is not my intention at all. I guess I just may

be overly sensitive, but I would be devastated if I were a brand new

pre-op being exposed to our group for the first time last night and I

probably would think twice about attending future groups, even when

post-op and allowed to speak. So many of us have been disrespected

and felt the loss of dignity that morbid obesity carries with it. I

think it is a shame when anyone (post-op, pre-op, support person and

even Dr. Drooker) is not treated with respect in what is supposed to

be a supportive and caring environment.

I would like to suggest that we modify the guideline to be " Only post-

op ISSUES should be discussed " instead of " only post-op PEOPLE are

allowed to speak. " I think that if pre-ops or support folks do ask

inappropriate questions, they should GENTLY be reminded that all

conversation during the meeting should focus on post-op issues only.

This is just my opinion. I am curious to hear what the rest of you

think.

Regards,

Lori