Shopping DS Surgeons in Mexico

 Marchesini. It was late, I was tired and :"fat fingered" (excuse the pun) the last three letters of his name. My bad.

Uh-huh.

That was helpful. Whatever.

For anyone else who is interested, I have reached out to Dr. Marchesini (still reading typo police?), I joined his Yahoo Group at: DrMarchesini-DS group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DrMarchesini-DS

I was interested to learn that Brazil prohibits doctors from soliciting services via web sites.  I can totally respect a Dr. who has no web site at all vs. someone who has three conflicting sites and doesn't respond to emails or phone calls.

Dr. Marchesini sent me a boat load of stuff... at least 50 pages worth of information to review. He seems to really have his sh*t together. I like that. 

I hear unicycles are good for rides home from Brazil.

You know, that quite literally made me LOL.  Sooo funny.  

To the best of  my knowledge, whether a surgeon has a current website is not one of the factors in vetting a surgeon (as opposed to the number of surgeries performed, complication rates, etc). I am not sure if its your IT background but why the reliance and expectation on emails and websites? These are surgeons we are talking about, not web designers or internet bloggers.

If you end up in the ER back home with a possible BO or something are you planning on sending an email to your surgeon? Being able to contact your surgeon in the event of an emergency is critical. Email is often considered a passive communication and can be great in some cir****tances, but when it comes to the DS you really need to be ready to get communication by any means necessary.

That said, I am not sure what Dr. Ungson's preferred communication is (you might try asking one of his patients) but rather than sending emails to a bunch of random addresses found on the web you could try calling them.

 I have called and left several messages. I also sent emails. All the other surgeon's I have contacted have responded to emails and/or phone calls reasonably promptly. 

I wanted to follow up and give a HUGE THANK YOU! to the kind folks (several of you here) who actually took the time to answer some of my questions, thank you so much! I do appreciate the names of the surgeon's in Texas, Spain and Brazil... whom I intend to check out. I also appreciate the advice on dealing with getting dental work done in Mexico. Your ideas and thoughts were super helpful.

I also want to "thank" several other folks who made some incorrect assumptions about me. I am not some clueless college kid. I'd love to be "South of 35", but sadly I am not. I am a 44 yr. old mother of three. My youngest is a sophomore in College. I am an IT professional. One of my very good friends is a baratric nurse at a large hospital in my area. She's also had the DS back in 2004. I am NOT a know-it-all. I am/was very excited and happy about sending out several inquires and actually getting my first detailed proposal and quote from one surgeon today. I hope to have several more surgeon's respond to my requests before making a final decision.

However I was a little surprised and taken aback my some of the rude and unfriendly responses I got here on OH. I've seen some of the same bullying in other posts on the OH web site. Nearly ALL of it seems to be in the DS Forum. Why is that?

On the positive side, I've also received a number of very nice, polite private messages from caring folks (who were obviously too intimidated to post here for fear of getting flamed just like me.) Several of them insisted that the people here are really only concerned that I don't get butchered by a bad surgeon and end up dead.

That's all fine and good, but if that is truly the case, I would have expected the responses I got to at least be civil. Personal attacks? The F-word? Really? Was that really necessary from one "caring" poster whose only concern is my well being?

I don't think I could have made it any more abundantly clear how excited and happy I am about my decision and that I was leaning heavily towards the Doctor that everyone favors here. However, I do had a few concerns and questions. Instead of addressing those concerns with genuine kindness and helpfulness, several people attacked me. What's wrong with some of you people? Do you treat all new members like this?

One thing is clear. When I do schedule my surgery, even if it is with Ungson (which in all likihood will be the case), I doubt I'll be coming here to celebrate. I don't relish the thought of getting long term moral support from foul-mouthed, beligerent, clicquish bores who would jump down someone's throat for asking the wrong questions on a support forum.

The next time you get a new user here (regardless of how misguided you may think they are) I would hope that certain people would be more welcoming and treat them with more dignity and respect than I've been treated here. 

Peace out.

Soooo the fact that your having a major bowel resection and re-anastimosis akin to a Whipples procedure in size doesn't frighten you?  The fact that you'll have massively increased bowel motility post op if you don't get an ileous doesn't bother you?  I have this image of your stunning BMW sprayed from the gear stick to back windscreen with **** funnily enough....

So post op i couldn't read or write, remember much and had chronic diarrhea for the first ten days almost on the hour.  It took me two months before I could return to work and even then I was exhausted and sore and still trying to find foods that I could tolerate.  Maybe you need to have an honest chat with your DS nurse buddy about the sheer scope of the operation.  This surgery is massively complicated and carries a huge raft of complications which is why the rest of the OH world thinks we are a bunch of arseholes.  Unlike lapband mills and RNY sweat shops we need you to know how bad this can and may get because there is no one to be there day to day for you after this aside from the vets here.  You'll find your post surgical nutritional follow up to be utter ****  We could chide you along in your arrogance and wave pom poms at you about how great the DS is but why bother...it will end up killing a stupid person.  You'll get RNY advice and be so deficient in essential fatty acids that you'll start sloughing like a snake.  And if you get a pseudo obstruction once back in the states.... how are you going to differentiate between the reaction of eating a "reactive food" which will drop you to the floor in pain or the action of an obstruction?  What about if your bypassed limb obstructs...whose going to help you advocate against the medical staff in A&E who have misdiagnosed you the last 5 times?

What about the hugely difficult task of supplementation?  I'm a Nurse Practitioner and have been rigorously supplementing since surgery and I've already developed a dermatological condition due to my metabolic changes.  Many here are under hematologists and endocrinologists because the DS although is a life line is also a full time job and even the best of us can fall at the first hurdle due to genetics, bacterial over growth and resistence to absorbtion of nutrients.  Equate it with going out and buying full blow AIDS.  You can lead a totally healthy life but only if you take your screed of meds, be able to notice subtle trends in your labs and be able to differentiate forming chronic conditions and head them off at the pass.  But you know that already.....

So taking into account the severity of the possible complications AFTER surgery on a part of the bowel most like wet tissue paper why bother coming here for advice?  You have just made a tit of yourself and are now alienating the very people that will tirelessly look to helping you with the massive issues around maintaining your health.  Go on mention that's what your prospective surgeon is for (giggle).  Good luck with that as once you're recovered and discharged they have another list to do and aside from cursory advice you'll get **** all as far as day to day living advice. 

So good luck.  You should be open informed enough to know the size of the surgery you're getting the the physical ramifications.  I had no choice but to drive the 4.5hrs home after 10 days of hospitalisation and it was truly terrible..but you being an IT professional will have googled all of the possible ramifications and filed them away based on shapes, colors and pixels so good for you.  Don't ever let reality cloud your lofty judgment.  We are after all sniveling nasty people with smelly poo sitting like squat toads desperate to pull you down you magnificent butterfly.

Shine on you crazy dellusional diamond.......

So sorry if you didn't receive your information from everyone in pretty packages tied with sparkly bows.  What you will get on this board is information delivered in a variety of ways - good cop, bad cop, proselytizing, barely indifferent - and IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!!  Personally, I don't give a rat's ass what happens to YOU, but if someone else reads what I wrote in strong language (which, by the way, was TOTALLY justified by your arrogant know-it-all-ness) and is saved from the stark foolishness of attempting anything resembling your "plans," then IMO, hurting your poor widdle feelers will be more than worth it.

So, you're 44 years old and Daddy just gave you a BMW Roadster?  And you think driving it to Mexico (never mind the surgery and its aftermath which several, most notably Kirmy, have detailed) is a good idea WHY??  Because you WANT to?  You sound like a bratty willful child to me.  My husband and I have a 1999 BMW M class Roadster, and I would NEVER drive that car to Mexico WITH him for a vacation where we planned to have the car under 24/7 surveillance - it is not only asking to have the vehicle stolen while you are not in it (days and days while you are recouperating), it is asking to be carjacked and possibly killed.  And driving a stick shift (please don't say Daddy bought you an automatic!) after your abdomen has been cut?  Yeah, right.  By the way, Ungson has two prices for the DS - open is less than lap - are you planning to go cheap on that too?

Please feel free to block me if you don't like the delivery.  Someone else may benefit from my words and style - YOU don't have to like or appreciate it.