Surgery on Feb 12, 2007

I am scheduled to have bypass surgery on Feb 12th at Oschner. Dr Kennedy will be doing the procedure. I am scared out of my mind but need to do this. Can anyone tell me about their experiences at Oschner and Dr Kennedy. Thanks Ann Gomez

Hi Ann. I just had my surgery with Dr. Kennedy on 1/22. I'm doing great now. I did have to stay in Recovery for 28 hours because they said there were no beds to move me to. However, when I got to the 5th floor, there were plenty of empty rooms and they put me in a semi-private. I suspect that it was a shortage of personnel. All that said, the time in recovery wasn't bad at all. The nurses were absolutely wonderful. The only bad thing is you can't really get up and walk at all. After I got to my room I could get up more. My roomate was kind of a nightmare, but I was only there one night. Dr. Kennedy's great. She visited with my husband and me in the pre-op section and then again in recovery and in my room. Several of her student drs. stopped by also. I'd have to say my experience at Ochsner was pretty good. All of the nurses were great (except for the one who argued with me about needing a larger size hospital gown). I insisted, and she got me one. She wasn't nasty--she just didn't believe I neede one that big. But it was much more comfortable. Anyway--good luck on your surgery and let me know if you need to know anything else! Jen

Great to here you did well. I am thinking of going with this group but I was told they pressure you to go the RNY route? I am looking for the lap band and would worry about being pressured. Any thoughts on that with this group?

I saw Dr. Kennedy for my consult, and my mind was already made up about RNY. Dr. Kennedy asked me if I had a preference yet, and when I told her, she said "good" and explained why. I don't know what Dr. Richardson's stance is. I think they probably do prefer RNY (as do a lot of practices), but they also do bands, and they discuss it in their seminars. So I'm sure that if your mind is already made up, they would gladly respect that. Good luck!

Hi, Ann. I'm actually a patient of Dr. Richardson, but I started out with Dr. Kennedy for my consult and preop visits. She was pregnant at the time and give birth a little early, just a couple days before my surgery. Dr. Kennedy is extremely competent and is very personable, as I'm sure you know from talking to her at your consult. She seems to be a good bit more lenient than Dr. Richardson, who is more of a by-the-books sort of guy (he seems a little distant at first, but he's actually very warm and compassionate). As for Ochsner, like Jen, I spent about 28 hours in recovery. 24 is the standard, but they said they were still trying to get me a room. Fortunately, I got into a private room on the 5th floor. Though I wanted to walk around as soon as humanly possible, I couldn't really do that while in recovery. Besides, I was pretty much out of it until the following morning, when I had my leak test. I will say, though, that was the best part of my stay because you get lots of 1:1 treatment from the recovery room nurses, who are just wonderful. They were pretty good on the 5th floor as well, but you could tell they were very, very busy. Still, they managed to come in and check up on me every few hours, and on a couple occasions when I called for a nurse, they came pretty promptly. One more thing: after surgery, don't bother asking for Gas-X. It's a no-no, and no matter how hard you try, you're not going to get it.