Extremely Disappointed

I followed this surgeon for years before deciding to have my surgery, and unfortunately, my experience has been disappointing. From the beginning, I found communication with the office difficult. I had to reach out several times to book my surgery. That should have been my first red flag. At my preoperative appointment, Dr. Michaels seemed bothered and disinterested, which was very different from the warm and personable presence I had seen online. I left his office tearful and more anxious than when I had walked in. The biggest issue was my postoperative infection. I contacted the office multiple times when I felt things were taking a turn and was largely ignored. The only real response I received was being told to buy medihoney off of Amazon. At this point, both of my armpit incisions had opened up and I had black, necrotic tissue on my left arm. I received no pharmaceutical or referral support. Dr. Michaels was away on vacation, which had not been relayed to me. I felt completely alone and unsupported, left managing a very frightening complication on my own during an already hard recovery. Secondly, I am extremely unhappy with my overall results for the amount of money I paid. There is bulkiness around the back of both of my elbows and I have horrible scarring on my left arm because of the infection I experienced. When I mentioned my concerns at the post-op appointment, Dr. Michaels expressed that he disagreed with how I felt and that I should essentially be happy from where I had started. He did eventually agreed to do an in-office revision, but also mentioned that he wasn’t sure that he would be able to “cut out enough time for me,” which was confusing to hear considering he didn’t think there was anything to fix to begin with. I was told the office would follow up with a quote. I didn’t hear anything after almost a week. I decided to reach out myself to the office manager who had asked what I was looking to get done and apparently received no notification from Dr. Michael’s regarding the discussed plan. I kindly told her what we had talked about and received no reply over two weeks later. After investing nearly $20,000 between the cost of surgery and associated expenses, the lack of postoperative support, communication, accountability, and follow-through has been extremely discouraging. I genuinely wanted to be happy with my experience, but I cannot say that has been the case for me. If I had the chance to do this process all over again, I would ignore all of the social media hype and find a genuine and caring surgeon.