Gone Fishin'

“If I get hungry when I have to wait for you, I’m going to bring my fishing gear and catch something from your fish tank.”

This was one of the ironic comments that one of my less reverent patients made in our new office surroundings. Some exciting things have been happening with our practice lately and we’d like to share them with everyone.

For one, we’ve moved our Hoffman Estates office. We formerly had been at 1626 W. Algonquin Rd., which is in the middle of a Strip Mall with no other medical practices or facilities in the area. On one side of us was a hair salon, and on the other was a restaurant. The restaurant used to be a bar when I was shown the property by a real estate rental agent, at 9:00 A.M. on weekday it was a nice quiet location. I have Tuesday night hours and that was when I discovered the walls were paper thin as the bar music regularly drowned out any conversations that I could have with a patient.

The old location was pretty isolated and we had prospective patients that could never find it. One common problem is that they would go to 1626 East Algonquin Rd which apparently is a Mexican restaurant in Arlington Heights. When the aforementioned bar next to us went out of business it was replaced by yet another Mexican restaurant. This made for some amusing but frustrating scenarios where patients who had gone to 1626 East Algonquin Rd would be calling and saying that they were at the Mexican restaurant and couldn’t find us. Jill thought they meant they were at the restaurant next door and told them to walk over.

Our new digs are at St. Alexius Hospital (Doctor Building Two). We are sharing space with a plastic surgery group (Dr. Frank Madda is named several times as a top plastic surgeon in the Chicago Magazine Poll). Dr. Madda apparently is a tropical fish lover and we have a nice tank in the waiting room, leading to my irreverent patient’s comment.

The main reason that I am excited by the move is that it puts us at a major medical center! This is useful for many reasons but the one that I like the best is that it reinforces that we are a medically based weight loss program. When you come to our office you will see a physician every visit, one that has been highly trained in weight loss medicine. We treat obesity like a disease, the same way we treat diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, heart disease, arthritis, and all the other diseases
that are caused by obesity. We figure out how many calories you need, devise a diet to help you lose, offer medication to help if you need and want it, and try to assist in treating the other medical problems linked to obesity.

Obesity is a medical problem, after all. Sometimes the seriousness of that message could get lost when we were in a less than serious location, like a suburban strip mall.