Dana: I’m Dana Flanagan from Liberty Hill, Texas. I had the vertical gastric sleeve and I have lost about 90 pounds.

Kevin: My name’s Kevin Flanagan and I’m from Liberty Hill and I had a laparoscopic vertical gastric sleeve and I’ve lost 50 pounds, 55 pounds. I started recognizing in my 30s that I was just kept gaining weight and that the more I tried to lose it the more I’d gain it back and that was this whole yo-yo experience and it was getting worse and worse. I’m just like my father who was an adult onset diabetic and had a lot of problems with this weight and I think that actually was one of the things that convinced me to eventually I’m going to need surgical intervention for this problem. I can’t do it by willpower and it’s been the best decision of my life.

Dana: I did an enormous amount of research. I got online. I watched videos on YouTube of they actually have the actual surgeries on YouTube. You can actually watch and I wanted to be very well prepared on what my expectations were going mostly for the pain and you know anything that you’re really concerned about when you’re going into a major surgery. I didn’t have to be surprised by anything and I feel like that I wasn’t surprised by anything. There was lots and lots of information out there and there’s also lots and lots of information on the doctors out there. So we did look at a great number of doctors. I found Dr. Ganta and decided that from the amount of information that there was about him that he was an exceptionally good general surgeon in this area. Kevin is a general surgeon himself and so we had the ability to actually talk beyond just what’s online we could actually see more clearly about what his history was and what Dr. Ganta history was and we felt that he was an excellent choice and still believed that he is an excellent choice for doing this surgery.

Certainly anytime you’re having a surgery where you’re going to cut out a major portion of your stomach or anything for that matter there’s the fear of what happens when you go into surgery but once I made the decision I never looked back. I had done enough research to know that I was comfortable with everything that should be happening and that Dr. Ganta and his staff were very well versed in what they were doing. I didn’t have any concerns about confidence in what they could do. So I think that was a very important part of it. I could not say that that is true of all of the other doctors that I looked at. They absolutely answered all of my questions here at Dr. Ganta’s office without hesitation. They really did seem to know exactly what my question is and how to answer it.

Kevin: The best thing you can do is prepare yourself for it by researching it and by you choosing Dr. Ganta you’ve chosen the best in this area. I’ve seen a lot of different people come out of the surgeries in different areas and it doesn’t work as well for them. Dr. Ganta’s office, his setup, the way he does it all; it works very well and I recommend doing it.