tkattau

I was 25 when I decided to seek additional help in losing weight.  I was 259 pounds and was called "morbidly obese" by someone I considered a friend.  Regardless of the reason for the hurtful statement, it was a true statement.  My original surgery was with David Kim and I had troubles from the beginning.  At my initial post-op visit, I saw Dr. Kim's physician assistant who told me I had a staph infection in my port incision.  He put me on antibiotics for 2 weeks.  When I came back it, it was determined that I didn't have a staph infection but that my incision was not healing properly.  They are supposed to heal from the inside out, but mine decided to just close at the surface of the skin.  I packed the incision for what seemed like forever, and was not allowed a fill until it healed completely.  It took months, but Dr. Kims' staff were very professional and friendly.  I decided that once I had a fill, none of it would matter.  I got my first fill and lost a bunch of weight!  Things were going very well for about 2 months.  Then I started having restriction problems.  I would start having trouble keeping food down, then liquids down, then would have to visit Dr. Kim for an unfill.  This happened numeroustimes.  One particular time, I was on vacation.  I called Dr. Kim to see if he knew of any bariatric clinics I could go to in the area I was vacationing and he said no but to not go to an ER as they do not use the right kind of needles for our port.  After being rejected by probably 10 or 11 clinics (due to liability reasons), I finally found a doctor willing to take me.  Thank you Dr. Wright in San Antonio Texas for saving my vacation!  He is part of True Results and the reason I chose a doctor from this group to perform my correction surgery.  If I can give any bandster advice, it's choose a surgeon who is a part of a network.  Choose someone who is willing to call another clinic and approve you for an unfill on the chance you get too tight and are unable to come to them for an unfill.  After this experience, I was not in a hurry to get another fill so I waited a couple of months before I decided to go in for another fill.  At that time, the technician told me he saw some stretching of the pouch and esophagus and prescribed a complete unfill and liquid diet for a week.  A week (and a loss of 6 pounds - yeah) later, I came back for a fill and the technician noticed a prolapse (but didn't tell me until he confirmed with Dr. Kim) so he made an appointment for me to see Dr. Kim the next day.  I left Dr. Kim's office the next day confused about what was really wrong and under the suggestion that "only you know if you did anything wrong...I just don't think you're a good candidate for the band...I think you would be a good candidate for the gastric sleeve"  and so on.  Not a year before I was a good candidate for the band, so I was especially upset of that change and that I was still paying for a surgery that I'm no longer a good candidate for.Introduce Dr. Robert Snow.  I cannot begin to describe how wonderful he and his staff have been.  They are sympathetic/empathetic to bandsters and are so encouraging.  Dr. Snow was able to look at my patient files, which included x-rays of the prolapse and assure me that I didn't do anything wrong.  He told me the reasons why prolapse can occur (and verified that's what it was - I hadn't been told what it was, just that my band needed to come out), and what would be needed to fix the problem.  He walked me through the entire process and answered my questions.  His nurse, Nikki is just as wonderful.  I had my second lap-band surgery on 1/14/10 and it's going very well so far.  Here's to a clean start.