Pediatric Surgeon

My husband and I met with the pediatric surgeon yesterday. Thank goodness my husband was there because even with the paper in my hands that listed about 10 questions...I still lost my sense of coolness and tears welled up in my eyes and he had to take over. The answers he gave us to all of our questions were great and he was completely full of himself when talking about doing the surgery...and I mean that in a good way. I want a surgeon who doesn't think this is a big deal and has done this many times and is very confident with what he is doing...and he was all that...in fact he even told us that he was over in another county doing outreach work in 2007 where he solely worked on children with omphaloceles! That impressed us...I am feeling better and I am off to now make an appointment to meet with the neonatalogist at our hospital too and to get a tour of the NICU. If you are getting ready to meet with the pediatric surgeon...here are the questions we asked (Chris's cousin who is a pediatric emergency physician helped us with a couple of these as well):

1) How many omphalocele repairs and what kind have you done?

a) surgery right at birth? #

b) "Paint and wait" method? #

c) If "paint and wait" how many months did you have to wait to pull together the abdominal muscles?

d) Will you know right away which method you would want to use or will you have to wait until our son is born?

2) Is this something you feel comfortable doing because of your experience?

3) What level NICU's are there at Valley Hospital?

a) What do the levels mean?

b) Where would our child start?

c) What determines which level they start and then move to?

4) Will you be the surgeon tending to our son or will there be someone else? If there is a chance that there is someone else can we meet them as well?

5) When should our son be circumcised if he is already having to go through surgery? Should we wait to have less areas with the potential to get infected?

6) Are you up to date on the latest research and procedure?

7) I have heard that "paint and wait" is out dated, what are the methods used now?

8) Is there a pediatric surgeon on call at all times?