Just a word of caution....

Hi everybody!! Just got home from an awful depressing movie. House of Sand and fog? ugh, it was so boring and such a downer. Anyway, here's really why I am writing. Now this could be nothing, but lately I have been receiving emails from different people in our chilly state looking for guidance. I love to help people and am even going to be volunteering to speak to our preop group we are starting at UConn for Dr. Giles. But here's the thing, on one of them it went on and on and then I noticed the email signature was one of the newspapers in our state. Now when I responded and said I was uncomfortable with that she admitted to being a reporter but was writing to me and an obese women. I hope I am not too cynical, but I also know we get taken advantage of. It has happened to me before. Both Kim and I had a women emailing us like crazy and then when we didn't give her the answers she wanted she just stopped. So I guess this is was just my experience that I wanted to share with all of you as a word to the wise. We are all still so vulnerable and we all want to help each other. I felt sort of bad at first but then just wished her well on her journey. Intuitively I felt something wasn't quite right. This is such an awesome supportive site and I want to help keep it that way. So if you get an email that makes you feel uncomfortable, let's put it here so no one else gets it. Any thoughts?? hugz-Cheryl

Cheryl, Are the emails coming to you directly, not through the message board? What types of questions are they asking so that we can try to identify who they might be? Deb

On one of them the email address ended with journalinquirer.com, the other said she "saw" me at the support group and finally found my email address. I don't know how she would get my name. They are all innocent enough "sounding" questions, but they want to know all details of how we picked my doc and hosp. But don't offer a lot about themselves. It would be the sort of totally random email you might get and your instincts kick in. See, I used to be a moderator for Obesity Help for quite awhile. We used to get this type of thing all the time. Then these reporters quote people and don't have to name the source. They can slant it negative or positive which ever way they want to. The one that Kim and I had seemed so interested and was an attny. When she wrote a letter to complain to our doc that things weren't moving fast enough, we both told her not to use her attny. as a strong arm tactic and we haven't heard from her since. Am I making any sense?? Hope so C