Hello everyone! I’m new to the site! Just had my initial consultation appointment today with a weight loss surgeon. When he walked into the room, his first comment was, “Hi I’m going to make you mad first. How did you get this big at 34?” For some context, I’m 5’10, 350lbs….size 28. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t know how to answer the question besides saying, “food”. Then when it got to the questions portion of the consult, I had just begun asking my question (didn’t even get to get the whole question out) before he cut over me and began giving an answer which wasn’t even remotely related to the question I was about to ask. So I waited for him to finish, to which I started to ask again and he once again cut me off. He also kept pushing for the bypass option, and when I finally asked my question about vsg, he quickly turned that option down. Now I’m just rethinking the whole thing because it made me feel invisible, and just awful. Has anyone else had a similar experience, or maybe some words of encouragement? It took a lot for me to make this first step, and now I’m completely discouraged.

On 10/12/2022 at 9:08 AM, SpartanMaker said:

Don't know if that's quite a universal truth, but there is an important point here: bedside manner be damned, I want the best. I'd much rather have an a-hole that's really good at what they do, than a super nice person that's just an average surgeon.

Hopefully the OP won't have to make that choice. There are actually decent human beings that are really good surgeons as well. I hope you can find one

I actually agree with you 100%…idk, maybe I was just in my feels because the whole thing is a lot. I am glad I finally made the decision to work towards bettering my health, and I may need to get thicker skin. Hopefully this process will help with that. Thank you for your response!

I'm lucky that my surgeon is really good AND had a great beside manner, but I can tell you as a nurse who's been around a lot of surgeons, some of them are great at what they do, but not at dealing with people. As long as they weren't egregiously rude, I wouldn't necessarily rule one out for not having the best bedside manner, but I would definitely get another opinion if someone made me uncomfortable. There are plenty of excellent surgeons who also have excellent besides banners out there.
Good luck to you!

Bedside*