In the last newsletter I said that I would tell you about our new bariatric coordinator. As most of you know we’ve been without a coordinator for almost a year. Having a coordinator is a requirement for an ASMBS Center of Excellence. Jacki Bridges who was the heartburn center coordinator did a nice job as our interim coordinator until she moved to a different position. The hospital had applicants for the coordinator’s job over the last year but didn’t hire anyone. The number of our bariatric cases is down (as are numbers of cases throughout the country due to the recession) and when Dr. Henderson left, the hospital didn’t feel that they could justify hiring a coordinator. According to the SRC rules, the practice can hire the coordinator, so I hired one. I think she is far better qualified to be a coordinator than almost anyone else I could find. She received her BSN from the University of Florida, her MSN from the University of Texas at Arlington, recently became an Allergan “Lap-Band Champion”, has completed 38.5 hours of nursing education in bariatric nursing and has attended a lap-band fill preceptorship. She is also a retired Navy Nurse Corps Commander. Some of you have already met Kathleen. I worked with her when I was in the Navy and I’ve been married to her for over twenty years.  If you get the picture I’ve tried to include, you’ll see a photo taken outside of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Hospital where the younger Kathleen, then a Lieutenant Commander, is getting a Navy Commendation medal from the Commanding Officer of the Marine Defense Force for work she did in her previous assignment as a medical programs recruiter for the Navy. Later in that tour Kathleen was one of the nurses on a medevac flight that took a young Marine back to Miami for medical care after he’d been beaten up by other Marines. The story surrounding that beating became the movie “A Few Good Men”. In real life the Marine who was taken to Miami survived. There was a trial, too,  but it was held in Guantanamo Bay the year I was stationed there as the base General Surgeon. I always like to tell people that Demi Moore had to get a part in the movie because she looks so much like Kathleen.

            I’m sure you’ll enjoy getting to meet Kathleen. She’s intelligent, attractive, well educated, hard working and very nice. After only a few weeks I’m beginning to wonder how I ever got along in my practice without her.