Hi there,

Just wondering if anyone else is looking at having their sleeve surgery this May? It's too early for me to get an actual date, but I'm thinking it will be toward the end of May. How about you?

Woohoo! Can't believe how quickly the time is flying! Can't wait for May 11th! We will all be new people come June 1st! YES!!!

I will be going to Dr. Almanza May 7th !!! I am so excited and very nervous at the same time !! Good luck maybe I will see you in the recovey house!!

so happy and excited for all of us!! I will be having mine done here, in NY in the Hudson Valley. Thank goodness my ins is taking care of me!!!

RawrrAshlee- I also have a tentative date of May 30th. I just hope to be approved by insurance right away. Lady there said my insurance shouldn't give a problem and I also live by you! Wonder if we have the same dr? I am Dr Chau in Plainsboro, who is your DR?

I am having mine in Tijuana on may 21. Haven't seen anyone with that date yet

My date is May 21st. I can't wait. Insurance approval is all set. Scope next week 4/11. Just need to get my chest xray and blood work which is walk in but needs to be closer to my surgery date, probably around May 10th, 11th. Start two weeks of liquid on May 7th. Have I mentioned I can't wait yet??

This is so nice to hear from all these May sleevers! Really makes it so real and exciting! It will be here before we know it girls! Yay!

I think mine will be in May. I'm self-pay, and I'll get my date after my psych eval at some point, which is on April 13th. Sooooo...I'm guessing May. I hope.

My surgery date and my mothers is May 23rd with Dr. Almanza in Tijuana!

I am now having my surgery with Dr. Ponce De Leon in Tijuana Mexico on May 10! I can't wait!

Lbeauty what made you change your mind? Just curious. I am always second guessing myself when it goes to having surgery in mex.

Didn't think my last post went through.

I too am going to see Dr. Jaime Ponce De Leon on May 4th and super excited about it. He is one of the leading surgeons in mexico glad i did my research and picked the right surgeon for me. Mostly glad this is all happening finally been wanting this done since january of 2011...watching a friend get smaller and smaller and seeing that it would be the best option for me.

Miranda, (you asked I am answering to the best of my knowledge and I actually have emails to verify the information here, THESE ARE MY REASONS. I don't want to start getting bombarded with bad comments about what I am about to say. I believe weight loss surgery is a very personal journey and everyone should do their own research and go with what they believe it’s best for them.) Be forewarned this is a very, very long response LOL.

I believe Dr. Kelly has great surgical skills, but I have spoken to tons of people in Mexico (running out of minutes here!) and time and time again it comes out that he has a very short temper and is highly concerned about the number of patients he sees and the ones other surgeons in México have, some believe this is why he has been making more small mistakes, such as nicking a vessel on someone last year (that unfortunately turned out to be a very large one and cost her, her life because of lack of blood at that hospital, thankfully he no longer works there and I hear his current hospital does have this service. (The reason he can no longer work at INT, is because he was very rude to another surgeon in front of patients (but I did talked to nurses and other personal there who verified this), I don't know about the other hospitals since I did not call them).

I talked to Dr. Kelly and he was very nice but even in our conversation I could tell he really put other people down (even other surgeons). I also talked to Dr. Ponce and he not once said anything negative about Dr. Kelly or any other person. Being in the medical field I admire humility (which Dr. Ponce showed a lot of and after talking to people who work with him (his anesthesiologist has been working with him for over 12 years) and other people I know he is humble). Dr. Ponce's sleeve complication rate is super low, even lower than Dr. Kelly’s, the reason he is not better known is because he does not speak much English (he usually uses a translator and from people who are not Spanish speaking I hear communication is not a problem, most specially because Trish is always helping and checks on you often even after surgery and when you are back in the USA). I speak Spanish so that is definitely not a problem for me, but has been super beneficial since I have been able to talk to people that most people cannot talk to because of language barriers. Dr. Ponce was very open about his complications and talked to me at length about them, I felt like Dr. Kelly was not very open about them and actually was annoyed by the questioning (I can actually understand that since there are so many rumors about him and his skills, so he was understandably defensive).

Dr. Kelly just does not appear to me like a good team player, I keep hearing this from people who have worked with him and others who known him. I believe that this surgery has to be done by a good strong team, not one person alone, no matter how good of a surgeon you are, you can never do this surgery alone. Dr. Ponce has many years of experience in surgery even longer than Dr. Kelly. I hear people say well Dr. Kelly is FACS, I believe that is great but I also know for a fact that because someone is not FACS does not mean they are not wonderful surgeons! FACS starts by applying for and going to the process, some surgeons especially outside of the USA choose not to do that.

So the way that is all started was because one day I was talking to Anid (Dr. Kelly's other assistant) and I asked her why Trish (one of his old coordinators) was not working with them anymore. She said Trish had quitted, decided not to work with them anymore. I asked why, but I was in a building in which I lost reception so I emailed her the question. I waited 2 days to get a reply, and never got one (yes they had been having email problems but Anid had assured me that there were no problems on the account I used and they had replied to all of my previous questions within minutes.) When I did not receive a response I decided to call around and find my own answers.

I called Trish; she was very surprised that I was calling. Told me that she believed Dr. Kelly had great surgical skills but that she left because she was seeing he was increasingly more interested in what all of the other doctors where doing and how many patients they had and was making more and more small mistakes because of that. She not once tried to convince me to go with Dr. De Leon or never said anything negative about Dr. Kelly, only answered my question (even though I later found out Dr. Kelly had taken her assistant who she had trained, she still would not speak ill of him). I asked her a very honest question "if it was one of your loved ones having this surgery who would you recommend truthfully?" her answer was "this same question was the reason I left Dr. Kelly, one day three different patients to be, asked me the same question, and I could not answer it to be him. He is a good surgeon but I had started to see many things I did not like and had talked to him about it and nothing changed, so the only surgeon I would recommend to my family is Dr. Ponce."

So after much research I decided to go with Dr. Ponce, not because of Trish or anyone person in particular but because he is in my price range and has a great deal of experience and happy patients including Mexican doctors, surgeons, nurses and people who I talked to.

I had decided to do my surgery with Dr. Kelly before I found out about Dr. Ponce, if Dr. Ponce was not available I would probably had gone with Dr. Kelly until after what happened the last few days....

I emailed Dr. Kelly's staff after making my decision to change surgeons, within less than 5 minutes I got a phone call from Omar, I agree he is very nice and has been very well trained (I emailed the same address I never got a reply from but now was getting a phone call, so say the list this did not make me any happier).

That same night I got an email from someone at Dr. Kelly’s office. She was very nice to me personally (even though she did accused me of letting myself be manipulated by Trish and her people) and said some horrible means unprofessional things about Trish, things that to this day I have found (I have looked!) not to be true. I sent her a reply and I told her what I told you about Trish comments about the doctor and that this was not my reason for changing, I also said how unprofessional her email was. I have not received another email from her addressing that. I later got a call from Dr. Kelly but I had left my phone home and thus did not answer. I then got an email from some random "patient" the reason I know she is not a true patient is because she emailed my personal account! She said she saw my post and was replying to it, the only people who have that account are Dr. Kelly and his staff and Trish. She talked about how Trish manipulated her into changing to Dr. Ponce and how she regrets it and how Trish herself took advantage of her while in México, asking for money to wash her car and the like (OK is the first time I hear anyone say this about Trish ever! I heard many times she brings people lunch, dinner and such, never asking for money, the only money thing I heard in the past was money for hotel upgrade while she worked with Dr. Kelly). All of this only made me madder and thus I would never use Dr. Kelly and his staff, but again this is a personal journey! So before I start receiving drama filled messages, whoever reads this keep in mind I am not bashing Dr. Kelly nor his staff, I am barely stating my experience, and like I say I have emails to prove it (they are in Spanish though); I am just answering a question that was asked about MY reasons for not using Dr. Kelly. I was very happy to receive an email yesterday saying that my deposit would be refunded this week :-)

I'm scheduled with Dr. Ponce in Tijuana may 17th!!! It can't get here quick enough!

Thanks for sharing that information. I have been reading so much about Dr. Kelly. I am sure he is great but it all comes down to what you are comfortable with. I chose Dr. Aceves because I keep hearing that when it comes to revisions, he is the man.

Can't believe we are already in April. When I first started thinking about revision to sleeve it was February and May seemed so far away. I am so glad it is almost here. Can't wait for the life changing event.