COVID-19, Bariatric Surgery, and YOU

Hi everyone, this Reeger Cortell, your friendly bariatric surgery nurse practitioner and this is the Weight Loss Surgery Podcast, where in normal times, we talk about obesity and bariatric surgery one episode at a time. But these are not normal times. 

At this moment is 9:34 in the morning, PST, on March 16, 2020. 2 months ago, heck even one week ago, I did not know talking about the coronavirus would be my next episode. Just last weekend, which feels like 100 yrs ago, Dr Walt Medlin and I recorded a great episode on bariatric surgery revisions. I was really looking forward to publishing that episode this weekend. But times have changed and rapidly. 

We have gone from in January, 2020 just learning about a novel Coronavirus which started making people sick with severe pneumonia in December in Wuhan, China to the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 (the infection that results from the coronavirus) a global pandemic on 3/11/2020 the likes of which none of us have seen in our life time. All in less than Three months. As of this morning  169,000 people have been infected (and those are just the ones we know about) and 6,500 people have died. The death toll for this new virus is greater outside of China than inside, in the US school are closed in 33 states, with more closing, restaurants are closing, and the CDC recommends that any and all gatherings of 50 or more people be cancelled for the next 8 weeks. Hour by hour this situation is changing. My heart goes out to everyone, everywhere. 

There is so much information out there, good, scientific evidenced-based information that is open-sourced and available to all of us. Therefore, I am not going to make this episode about proving why we should all be on high alert and rightly concerned. We have not contained the coronavirus. It is out there. Sadly, and frustratingly, the gavel is down on that one and the jury has gone home. 

But rather, I want to use this platform, use my voice, to speak to directly to my listeners who are pre-bariatric surgery patients that are scheduled for their surgery in the near future. What do I mean by the near future? It’s hard to say exactly but why don’t we just round it out to at least the next 1-2 months, perhaps more. In the very least between March 16th to April 16th.

I am sure you are wondering if you should move forward with your surgery? How could you not be asking this question? But on the other hand, I bet you are thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? After all this time, and money, and prep, and waiting, and hoop jumping, and learning (thanks for using this podcast as a resource), and, and, and now this? A Global Pandemic is the reason you might not get your surgery?’ Perhaps you are thinking, ‘the heck with that, lets just do the surgery and we will figure out other issues, including coronavirus if and when we need to.’   

And perhaps you are a looking to your bariatric surgery center for guidance. I do know that at least in USA many programs have stopped group visits in different settings- seminar, classes, and support groups. We are all pi