Re: Kay Bee sets a deadline -- read on if you have little else to do

[Guest guest]

I find this message extremely confusing! I can't tell who

said what and figured I'd look for a signature at the bottom

but the last line says something about enjoying the

lingering glances from men. I know that this message was

sent by you Steve and while I don't want to draw any

conclusions about your sexual orientation, I'm guessing that

the end of this message isn't written by you. If I am wrong

in my assumption, my apologies, no offense intended.

I didn't even try to wade through this whole message to try

and figure out what's going on because it looks like a

dispute between the two of you and figure it's none of my

business!! I didn catch something though about a threat

which really struck me as highly inappropriate.

Regardless, I hope the two of you iron out your differences

to your satisfaction.

Jean.

The fallibility of surgeons

This will be a long-winded post, because I've had two DS

surgeons,

both of whom have generated some controversy.

I've been bemused in recent months to see that both the

surgeons with

whom I signed up for the operationñHazem Elariny and

Renñhave proved to be less than committed to the BPD/DS.

They're

both young surgeons who are still carving out identities for

their

practices. Elariny seems uncomfortable with malabsorption

as a means

to weight loss, as he is persuading more and more of those

who come

to him for the BPD/DS to opt for Elariny's stand-alone

sleeve

gastrectomy instead. Ren has become a proponent of the Lap

Band

since the FDA approved that procedure recently. I thought

that meant

that she too was beginning to prefer purely restrictive

procedures to

malabsorptive ones, until the recent news that she's

embracing the

BPD without the DS.

Many people have asked me how I came to switch from Elariny

to Ren.

Last winter, on the night before my scheduled BPD/DS,

Elariny called

me at home to tell me that he had just reviewed the pre-op

tests I

had taken nearly two weeks earlier. Though I had no history

of heart

trouble, the EKG disclosed that I was a possible candidate

for open-

heart surgery, he said. While I was still recovering from

the shock

of this, Elariny went on that if by chance I got to have my

operation

the next day, I'd have to agree to have it open, rather than

lap,

because of adhesions. (I had had one previous abdominal

surgery, so

I didn't realize until later in the conversation that he'd

confused

me with a patient who'd had three Caesarean sections.) If I

insisted

on having it done lap, Elariny said, I'd have to be willing

to wake

up with " just the top " of the operation doneñwhich was my

introduction to Elariny's stand-alone sleeve gastrectomy.

He tried

to sell it to me as a " superior " operation to the DS, but I

was in no

shape to process the information.

Having received lots of sweet e-mails from fellow members of

AMOS

wishing me well, I thought it was only fair that I let them

know that

my surgery was canceled the next day as I lay on the table

(Elariny

did not show up at the hospital, choosing to deal with the

anesthesiologist and the cardiologist by phone instead). It

was

the " surgery canceled " post to AMOS that brought about my

parting

from Elariny. He didn't appreciate my telling other pre-ops

that he

had waited until the night before my surgery to review the

pre-op

tests, and told me to find myself another surgeon. (He had

also, by

the way, left me on my own, without map, suggestion, or

referral, to

figure out whether in fact I had a heart problem. A stress

test by a

cardiologist found no abnormality and cleared me for

surgery, meaning

that had Elariny looked at my tests even a few days earlier,

my

operation could have proceeded on schedule.)

What continues to baffle me is the reaction of my fellow

Elariny

patients to my news about Elariny. Many of the same people

who had

embraced me so warmly before, with the empathy that is so

evident on

this list and others, now attacked meñthere's no other word

for

itñfor saying such mean things about their savior. Elariny

couldn't have acted like that, spoken like that; I must be a

liar, I

must be crazy. I was called a psycho on more than one

Internet

site. A member of this list with whom I had commiserated in

a

private e-mail used the matter as an excuse to betray a

confidence.

And then there were those who lined up to " take credit " for

blowing

the whistle on me. Each Elariny loyalist was serenely

certain that

it was her exposure of the " incriminating " Internet posting

that had

put me out on the street to find another surgeon. I suppose

they all

must have wanted me to post their names publicly, so that

they could

win the applause of their fellow Elariny devotees. I denied

them the

publicity; I didn't even respond to their e-mails. I simply

deleted

their messages and blocked their addresses.

This surgery is no mere operation; it's the Holy Grail.

Between the

night of Elariny's dire pronouncement and the day I was

cleared for

surgery, I daydreamed about digging my " defective " heart out

of my

chest with a dull knife (if it was keeping me from having

the

surgery, I wanted to be rid of it). How could anyone

believe that I

had just " made up " a set of circumstances that caused me to

have to

start this emotionally draining process all over again?

I was ready to go to Dr. Baltasar in Spain on a raft if I

had to,

rather than get in line for another U.S. surgeon. Dr. Ren's

office

penciled me in immediately, and for that and much more I am

and will

remain grateful to her. Some will say I should I have

waited for a

more experienced surgeon, and maybe they're right; but at

that point,

waiting was intolerable. To those who poo-poo the

importance of

bedside manner, I must say that the warmth and empathy that

my family

and I found in her was therapy in itself, a huge factor in

getting us

all to and through the surgery. And the BPD/DS she

performed on me

would appear at this point to be flawless. At nearly eight

months

post-op, I have had no pains, no gastrointestinal distress,

no

vitamin or mineral deficiencies, no problems of any sort,

and my

weight loss is proceeding on schedule.

Deb Mullen's surgery with Dr. Ren preceded mine, but I heard

nothing

of her difficulties until well afterward. I'm not qualified

to say

whether what happened during Deb's surgery was inevitable

due to

Deb's anatomy, was the product of the surgeon's

inexperience, or was

some combination of the two. I don't need to know the

answer to that

to empathize with Deb's pain and feelings of betrayal and

violation.

That my experience with Dr. Ren was almost the antithesis of

Deb's

never led me to believe that Deb must be deluded, dishonest,

or in

need of psychiatric care. I will never say that Dr. Ren

" couldn't "

have made the statements Deb attributes to her, even though

they were

so different from what Dr. Ren has said to me. Deb still

has my best

wishes; Dr. Ren still has my gratitude.

I am a firm believer in malabsorption as a means to

permanent weight

loss and therefore no fan of any purely restrictive surgery.

Dr. Ren

has taken heat on this list for advocating the Lap Band, but

at least

it offers enough restriction to do some good to the more

moderately

obese among us, it's adjustable, and its minimal

invasiveness means

that it will be undergone by those who otherwise would be

unwilling

to try any weight-loss surgery at all. I still doubt that

it will

prove to be the answer for a significant percentage of the

morbidly

obese. Dr. Elariny's stand-alone sleeve gastrectomy has

come in for

comparatively little criticism on this list, even though it

tries to

force the reduced stomach to carry the full burden of weight

loss and

maintenance, a function the BPD/DS's creator says it can't

carry by

itself. If we care that people who come to Drs. Ren and

for the BPD/DS will now be offered only the BPD instead, we

should

care that Elariny is persuading increasing numbers of those

who come

to him for the BPD/DS to opt for the unadorned sleeve

gastrectomy.

Some of them (as I've seen on the Elariny list) even come

away with

the impression that the sleeve gastrectomy is " minor "

surgery, which

it is not. And if we care that the BPD leaves the patient

without

the pylorus, we should care that Elariny is reported on the

DS-

Elariny list to be offering his sleeve-gastrectomy patients

the

option of intentionally disabling the pylorus. If there has

been any

discussion of that on this list, I've missed it.

Meanwhile, I'm loving malabsorption. It has set me free:

free from

stuffing myself beyond satiation today because I must begin

the diet-

to-end-all-diets tomorrow. No more dieting for me. I love

the

feeling of being satisfied with little food. I love being

able to

stop with " just one " of a sweet treat without feeling

deprived.

I feel smug when a package of cookies or candy lasts for

weeks or

just goes unopened. At eight months out, I've lost more

than sixty

percent of my excess weight. Bones are bursting out all

over me.

And I'm glorying in the unfamiliar lingering glances of men.

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