Weight loss surgery

At the request of my family doctor, someone I respect, I went to a certain hospital for their bariatric surgery seminar. I'm not going to name any names because I don't just think the entire process is crazy, I think the doctor who gave the talk was pretty crazy too.

At point she was quite sharp with me and seemed astonished when I stood my ground. After I asked for the death rate for their hospital she said the other concern they have is that their patients will get pulmonary embolisms because of course if you're fat and have surgery you're at risk for a PE but if you're thin you're not. (Of course in the real world this isn't true, anyone who has surgery is at a higher risk.)

The doctor stated she gives the patient medicine to prevent blood clots the morning of the surgery. When I made some sort of horrified gasp she turned to me and asked, "Do you have a problem with that?" in this tone of voice that I suspect she uses to shut people up.

"I most certainly do," I said. She wanted to know why and I said I was assuming she meant she gave them a shot of low molecular weight heparin and she said yes, what is the problem? And I said the problem is that giving the patient a blood thinner right before surgery was going to cause bleeding problems. She said she can stop the bleeding but she can't stop a PE.

This was on Tuesday and I'm still boggled.

Now she did say two interesting things, one was that you need to eat between 80 and 90 grams of protein a day to lose weight properly and that new studies are showing that fat people have fewer dopamine receptors than thin patients. See, that's why they call it comfort food.