Minnesota

[darinak 78]

Hello, i live in Apple Valley and having surgery @ Fairview Southdale as well with Dr. Benn on 4/18/16. Im super excited and scared. Haven't beed able to sleep the last few nights. Ive never had surgery and the only time in a hospital when i had my son. Have my pre op on the 4th . And going to Fairview for the pre op class on the 7th. Im so excited to start this journey, to loose all this weight. I have been big all my life even though i never had health issues and have been active in many different sports, but i think that just looking at food makes me gain 20 lb. i dont know what i look like under 250lb. The diet restrictions are super scary thought. Mngreeneyes- what did u think of Fairview Southdale?

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[mngreeneyes 674]

@@darinak

I have been super impressed with Fairview Southdale and their team. I had Dr. Pierce for my surgeon. I loved him. He was the surgeon who did my initial information meeting and I was so impressed with him, I never considered either of the other surgeons. I've heard great things about both of the others as well.

I also had never had surgery before my surgery, except the stitches I got when I took a header into a metal door frame at the age of about 4. The only issue I had with surgery was that they tried to make it less painful to put in my line/iv and kept giving me pain killer and it kept causing my veins to collapse in that area! It took 7 tries to get one in for surgery and that one had problems post surgery so they had to try again. The 8th one lasted the rest of my stay.

Have you been to any of the support group meetings? I highly recommend them. Both the ones I go to are amazing groups of people who genuinely want to help. We don't meet until the 20th this month, but if you can make it to Fairview Riverside next Wednesday from 6:30 to 8, we would love to answer any of your questions and alleviate any fears we can. In fact, this month's speaker is one of the U surgeons talking about complications after surgery. That alone might help some of your concerns.

My attitude going in to the surgery was that I wanted to know the worst, but expect the best. I had a really smooth recovery so the best was what happened, but I am also glad I knew the worst because I had figured out how I wanted to react to each of the complications as they happened. Once I came up with a plan of sorts for complications, I knew I could deal with whatever came my way.

Best wishes, and feel free to private message me if you have any questions or just want to vent or whatever.

pam

[lamchop 0]

Eagan