Seriously, noone in my state does the DS?

I know some people from Missouri go to Dr. Anthone in Omaha, Nebraska.  He is used to working with out-of-state patients. I watched his seminar on DVD, and I think since then it has been made available online, so you can watch it that way and save a trip.  I have heard of people just going to Omaha twice -- once as an initial appointment with him, and they may do some other things at that time, other things he orders you can do local to you, and then they go back to Omaha for the actual surgery.  In my opinion, it is okay that he only does the DS as an open surgery, however, he believes in making the common channel much longer than I wanted for myself, and he makes the stomach/sleeve smaller than I wanted.  But, that is what some people want or are neutral to.

I am in Topeka and I ended up using the program local to me.  I do recommend it, but I think it will require more trips out of you.  There are two surgeons in Topeka who do the DS, Dr. Berntsen and Dr. Dunshee.  Whichever one of them you use, you will have the other as the assistant surgeon on your DS here.  They do the vast, vast majority of their DSes laparoscopically (I only know of one that had to convert to open, and it was a revision).

I don't think I saw it mentioned previously in this thread, but in my opinion, the reason there are so few DS surgeons is because insurances do not reimburse for it at a rate commensurate with how very hard it is to do technically.  I think it is the least lucrative type of WLS per hour of their labor, if they don't charge extra fees, even though it is the hardest one to do.