Surgeon recommendation?--West Michigan area

I am a Cleveland Clinic patient so I am partial to them and recommend to everybody. Just make sure you are going to a surgeon and hospital that has lots of experience in this. Are you closer to Chicago? My GI in Cincinnati was going to send me to Northwestern University if I didn't want to go to Cleveland. It is 3 and a half hours to Cleveland for me, but worth it.

I am another person on the Cleveland Clinic bandwagon, not just because of the surgeons, but because of the support staff. Yes. the rooms are small and it sucks to not have a private room, but the RN's and MA's are the best and Jason (CNP), who oversees your care after surgery, is what really separates them from other places. If I had any problem I could always get it resolved through them, since most doctors only do rounds once a day or none in the case of Dr Remzi, who has his assistants do rounds (all three of my roommates during my two weeks of being there were his patients and he never did rounds). It was the staff that went out of their way to nurse me back to health and keep the doctor from shoving that nasty NG tube down my throat because of a stubborn ileus. My recommendation would be for Dr Meghan Costedio if you would feel more comfortable with a female physician, because she does the surgery robotically with one port, so no bikini line incision (just where your stoma will be) or Dr Gorgun because he does it that way too and they always checked in on their patients at least twice a day. To be honest, it doesn't matter which doctor you choose at CC because they are all fantastic or they would not be there, but it is the staff, who deal with patients like us all day-every day.

Travel costs were an issue for us as well and my wife and son stayed two nights with the first surgery and then once, with the second surgery, before they picked me up when I was discharged. Since we lived over an hour away and my wife still had to work, we just skyped and relied on the staff to oversee my care while I recovered. You can save money by staying a few minutes away from the clinic.

I live in the Detroit area. I chose to go to Cleveland, but I know that the University Of Michigan, Beaumont, and Spectrum health in Grand Rapids does j-pouches. I went to school in Big Rapids for college and I actually had two emergency surgeries done by both the colorectal surgeons in Grand Rapids. Not sure how often they do the pouches, but they both had great bedside manner.