[sglaser121]

Tomorrow March 21st I will be having my first of two surgeries with Dr. Clair at the Cleveland Clinic. Since I have not seen much information on here regarding either I wanted to try and let everyone know my experience to hopefully help those looking for a doctor. I am from Michigan and Cleveland Clinic is 6 hours from home and as a lot of us know we sometimes have to travel many hours to find a good doctor. My first visit with Dr. Clair was back in January and my apt was long. Along with a complete physical and evaluation of all my history, (diagnosed with bilateral VTOS, with blood clots in both arms in Sept of '12) the doctor order another venous ultrasound of both arms which they did right in the office that day. Still showing both blood clots and 100% occlusion in both arms starting at a 90 degree angle.

Cleveland Clinic is an amazing place and everyone there is very professional. Today I had appointments starting at 12:30 with blood work, EKG, physical with the vascular surgeons team, clearance with anesthesia, and all the admittance paperwork was done. All in all it took about 3 1/2 hours to get it all done. A few weeks ago I got the schedule in the mail for today and it told me where each place was located, what time to be at each place, and how to get there. There are volunteers all over the hospital so if you ever get lost you just look for someone wearing a red sport jacket and they will tell you.

Tomorrow I am scheduled to arrive at 9:30am and they will get me all setup for surgery. I don't have an exact time of surgery but know I will be following the case in front of me and the surgery is expected to be about 3 hours. After surgery I will be put into a priviate room and I am told I will be released from the hospital the next day (Thursday) in the afternoon. I was surprised to hear I would only be in the hospital over night and hoping the 6 hour ride home goes ok after I am released.

I will update as soon as I can regarding Dr. Clair and how the surgery goes. Hope this helps anyone who may be interested in looking into the Cleveland Clinic.