Primary care physician help

I used to go to a dr in Metairie and while I really do like him I'm sick of his office staff and the fact that if you aren't feeling good today he can't see you. Appointments are made 3-4 weeks in advance. If an issue comes up I'd like to know I can see someone that week (not necessarily the same day). I changed to a wonderful gastric bypass dr in Mandeville. He was awesome and was always so excited about my weight loss. Unfortunately he moved back home to Canada in June and since then I've seen 2 doctors and both of them are not for me. The first one wanted to know how much exactly I weighed before if I had lost all of this weight. The one I saw last week is insistant that my blood sugars are out of control, but he isn't doing any blood work. Most importantly he doesn't keep B12 in his office and felt it was fine for me to skip a month. So anyone want to recommend someone to me. Northshore, southshore, slidell, hammond...I'm not opposed to traveling for a good dr.

Hi, Diane. My PCP is Dr. Lora Langefels at Ochsner in New Orleans. She's in internal medicine, and while she's not a gastric bypass specialist, she is pretty familiar with the surgery and has some experience with WLS patients. She's also quite young (don't know if that makes a difference to you, one way or the other). I haven't been so sick that I've had to be seen the same day, but I have been able to get appointments within two days of calling. I'm sure you could be squeezed into her schedule if you really need to be seen the same day. As for other health issues, Dr. Langefels is pretty careful and thorough, without being an alarmist. I had once mentioned that I was having calf pain when I would walk, and she ordered an arterial ultrasound of my legs to see if there were any blockages. I feel like that's an appropriate thing to do -- she didn't just write it off as fatigue from carrying around excess weight, and she didn't send me for a bazillion diagnostic tests. Well, Dr. Langefels would be my pick, but you might want to consider asking your surgeon to refer you to an internist who's familiar with WLS and might be a little closer to home. Good luck!

Thank you I'm going to definitely check into her and see if she is on my insurance. I just want a thorough dr who listens to me. Thanks again Diane