CLEVELAND CLINIC ADVICE

Looking for advice on Cleveland Clinic...I am going on Novemember 10th for a GI and Surgical opinion and then a colonoscopy of the 11th.  The GI I am seeing is Jean Paul Achkar, has anyone on the board been to him?  Not sure of the surgical doc yet, waiting to hear....Any input would be great!

You cannot lose by going to the Cleveland Clinic, other than your colon. My surgeon is Dr. Remzi, one of the best there. My GI Specialist there is Dr. Shen. I read/researched about them prior to my surgeries. Dr. Shen specializes in chronic pouchitis, and Dr. Remzi specializes on surgery for failing j-pouches done on people referred from other hospitals. I figure I would go with them and let them take the first hack at me, hoping to avoid any of the j-pouch complications. Dr. Remzi is very conservative and I really like his approach, it seemed very logical to me.

All I can say is your in very good hands there. I have my j-pouch surgery on the 20th of November, and then the reversal surgery sometime in February. I was so bad with my UC, that I needed 3 surgeries. Now that my colon is out, I feel perfectly normal and I'm off all of the crappy medicines. Even where I'm at currently, I feel completely normal.

However, I did run into a scar tissue issue, which required another surgery last August. Basically, scar tissue from my first surgery (to remove my colon) had built up around my small intestine and squeezed it causing a blockage, so they opened me up again, removed the scar tissue, and now I'm as good as new...so expect the unexpected even with the best, but I can definitely say that they returned my life back to normal again.