Lisa H's Story

“I had consults with a couple of local plastic surgeons, but they were not familiar with the post-bariatric needs/issues. And they weren’t interested in trying to get insurance reimbursement. After doing some research on OH, I gave Dr. Katzen’s office a call and went in for a consult, even though his office is about 180 miles from my house. My mom went with me, sort of as an unofficial secretary. We got there kind of early and the office wasn’t open yet, then here comes this young guy down the hall, opens the office and lets us in. He even found the paperwork that I needed to start filling out. Yup, it was Dr. Katzen. This made me feel very confident and cared about. So we went over all the procedures I wanted to get done. Lower body lift, inner thighs, breast lift, and upper arms. He was able to show me how much skin he could remove. He answered all my questions, with mom writing everything down. He took as much time as I needed, I didn’t feel rushed at all, like I was his only patient or something. And he was more than willing to ask for pre-approval from my insurance. It’s quite a packet that gets submitted, all the aches, rashes, problems the excess skin causes. And the pictures. Scary pictures. Anyway, insurance approved a hernia repair and the skin removal from my belly.I opted to self pay for the rest of the body lift. Had my LBL/hernia repair on Sept. 2, 2005. The operation took about 8 hours, removed 15 lbs. of skin, and there were about 1,000 stitches between all the layers/closing up. He used “superglue” to close up the outermost layer. It held up well, and left a very smooth scar. Dr. Katzen had warned me about the hospital food, so I was prepared with protein bars. Some things on the meal trays were ok, other things were totally inappropriate (apple pie, coffee). Dr. Katzen came to check on me every day, I was there 3 nights. After discharge and my first post-op visit, I went back home.

Dr. Katzen didn’t want me to have to make unnessessary trips for office visits, so I was able to email my drain totals to his office (Ruth, you’re awesome). When a drain total got below a certain point and could come out, we set up an appointment. This worked out really well. I started out with 4 drains. It took a long time for them to get to the point where they could come out. 3 were in for 62 days (but who’s counting). Dr. Katzen explained that it was better to keep them in than pull them early and risk developing a seroma that would have to be drained with a needle a couple of times per week. He’s very easy to talk with, put me at ease right away. I feel that we’ve developed a very good doctor-patient rapport, and I’m looking forward to stage 2, the inner thighs, in January. Then the breast lift, then the “batwings”. Guess I’ll have a “Body by Katzen” by then.”