this will be a long story. i paid cash for my surgery. my insurance would not cover me. i went thru tlc edge. i picked dr carter out of their surgeons. i visited with him two days before my surgery. talked to him and his LB consultant and watched a video. i didnt have alot of questions because i had done seminars and research on the internet. i did ask him about pain medication after the surgery. he said dont worry i will give you Rx's after the surgery to get filled. i do not have a very high threshold for pain. surgery goes ok. they give me two morphein shots for pain before i leave the hospital because of the pain. we get home and my husband goes to get the Rx's filled. by 6pm that night i am in severe pain. i would say 12 on a scale of 1-10. my husband called the dr. to talk to him about the pain i was in. he gave me 10mg toradol. we called his service 3 times and he never returned our calls. so by 10pm we called our neighbor and he brought me over a hydrocodone. i mean i couldnt sit, stand or anything the pain was so bad.after the pain pill from the neighbor i finally felt relief from the pain. i slept very little thru the night . we called again the next morning. finally after the second call the nurse from the hopsital cal;led back and said he would NOT give me anything else and that i should just put ice on the pain. i was crying hysterically from the pain and just couldnt believe my ears. i called a family member who had just had surgery and she brought me some of her pain medication. i was finnally able to get up and down, walk, sit and everything. i felt so much better with some pain managemtn. she left me 5 pills. that was all i needed. i dont think that was too much to ask from him. so now i have a post op visit. (3 weeks later) i am glad because i really wanted to talk to him about the whole pain management. at my 3 weeks post op i dont even see him i see his LB coordinator. she doesnt look at my incisions or anything. just weighs me. then she tells me i should have lost more weight than 4 lbs. she said i should have lost at least 8-12. this may not seem like a big deal story to you but to me it was. i did find out the reason he wouldnt give me any other pain meds was because he is afraid it will make his patients sick becasue we are on liquid diets. i know everyone is different on their pain level. he was also recently fined by the state board you can read that info from the fort worth paper feb 10 issue. i'm not saying he is a bad surgeon because i dont know for sure. but i am not going back to him. i will be going elsewhere for my fills. i also have one incision that the suture is sticking out and his LB coordinator told me to snip it off with scissors. needless to say i tried that and it didnt go well. the suture is still poking me and i am afraid to call them back cause i dont know what they will say. i'm hoping it will just dissolve