Todd

[Guest guest]

I've had an ectomy and I also had A as a kid - I was diagnosed at age 15 after 3

years of mis-diagnosis so I really feel for your daughter. I will never say

'absolutely not' to the ectomy becasue I feel so much better now but 17 is

awfully young (I had mine at 39). What I would stress to you is to get 2 or 3

opinions from top docs. In Toronto - look up Trainor - she was in

Pittsburgh doing some kind of fellowship thing with Dr. Luketich when I had my

ectomy there. He does 150 ectomies a year so it's a given that she's done quite

a few and participated in mine- I would recommend her in a heartbeat and I know

that right after my surgery, she was moving back to Toronto. Also check some old

posts from - she' in Thunder Bay, Ontario (no idea how far that is for

you) but she had an ectomy right before I had mine and is doing great - she may

be able to post some doctors names for 2nd opinions.

Please keep us posted, regardless of what you decide to do - we're here to help.

~ in NC

[Guest guest]

Thank you ,

For the past 5 days we have been researching different treatments to determine

if we she go through with the ectomy or wait. We still have some questions we

need answers to. We will be meeting with the surgeon again on monday morning for

another consult. From our research on Dr. Lees we have no doubts that he is one

of the most capable surgeons in the country, so having him perform the procedure

is not the question. What we need to decide is when is the best time, can we

find some way to improve the quality of her live without the surgery or do we go

ahead with the ectomy and deal with the effects of that. We have found success

stories for people that have had the ectomy as well as some not so good

outcomes.

Again I would like to thank all of you who have posted a response, it has been

very helpful. I know that none of you can tell us exactly what to do that's not

what I want or had expected. It's just nice to know we are not in this alone.

Todd

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> Hi Todd,

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> My Doctor is Dr. Gehman and he is from London, Ontario but currently lives in

Thunder Bay. I had been to London 7 times and my Doctors were Rick Reynolds and

Inculet. Personally, I hope they are both retired by now. Both of my

open myotomies were unsuccessful and I suffered for years. I waited until I was

41 and had a very successful esophagectomy performed by Dr. Gehman. I have no

regrets, but it is certainly not something I would ever recommend having done at

17. My heart goes out to you and your whole family. I only wanted to give you

the name of a fantastic Doctor, but wouldn't dream of suggesting an

esophagectomy on a 17 year old unless there was no other option available.

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> Best of luck to your daughter.

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