Hi,
I am also new. Actually I think I had an account on the old board and maybe even posted a couple of times but that was a number of years ago.
I have had a dx of primary LE (both legs) for quite a number of years. Since I didn't have health insurance it hardly mattered because I couldn't have afforded tx anyway. I just got antibiotics from my dr whenever I got an infection that wouldn't go away. My legs were often red (sunburn look) and blotchy and warm/hot to the touch, but as long as I didn't have a fever I pretty much ignored it.
Now I finally have a good job with good health insurance and I wanted to talk to my dr about getting tx for my legs, which are swollen very large. I have to sleep with my shoes on to keep the swelling from going down into my feet, and right at the top of my shoes they balloon out to several inches larger (each) than below the shoe line. Unfortunately my long time dr retired so I had to find another one that was covered by my health insurance plan. I asked my old doc for recommendations and one was recommended. It took me 4 months to get an appointment with the new doc.
When I finally got the appointment, she shocked me by pronouncing (without even looking in my chart) that I did not have LE (she decided this by demanding to see both my legs, and upon observing that they were both swollen she pronounced that it was not LE). She then spent 25 minutes (still before looking into my chart) trying to talk me into having bariatric surgery.
I am overweight, I weigh almost 200 lbs, but a lot of that is the weight of the fluid in my legs. They are so heavy they feel like they are filled with lead. I mean, I know even if all the fluid were gone I'd still be overweight, but I don't know if its enough overweight to need bariatric surgery. Plus I'm very concerned about having surgical stuff done to my abdomen because I'm afraid it might further damage the lymph system.
Is bariatric surgery a reasonable tx for LE? And is it possible to determine (without even looking in the patient's chart) that a person does not have LE but is "just fat" just because both legs are swollen? Isn't the lower leg a strange place for "fat" to accumulate? I see very fat people walking around who still have ankles that you can find, and thin legs for that matter.
I am so confused I don't know what to do. I really don't want to go back to that dr again. I was so looking forward to finally being able to get tx for this condition, and now ... now what?