Hi Christine,
My experiences with Cleveland Clinic have been excellent. I highly recommend that you see Dr. Alexandra Villa Forte. At my first appointment, she spent almost two hours with my wife and me gathering my history, examining me, and having me tested (CBC, metabolic panel, ANCA, P-ANCA, C-reactive protein, sed rate, hepatic panel, and urinalysis). She and her colleagues are actively researching our disease and fine tuning their treatment protocols. When she wants to change meds, she explains why and how the change should be accomplished. When I first saw her, I had been on cytoxan (100-150 mg/day) for about 16 months. She said that was too long and changed me over to methotrexate (15 mg/week). She also kept me off all immunosuppressants for about two weeks until my system could clear the remaining cytoxan out before starting methotrexate. (I thought this was good because my previous doc had changed me from cytoxan to immuran without any transition period. This resulted in a major adverse drug interaction which precipitated pneumonia and put me out of commission, but not in hospital, for about a month.)
Others on this forum see Dr. Carol Langford, about whom I hear good things. There may be others. This practice sees over 700 of us weggies, so I think they know what they're doing.
As far as traveling to Cleveland is concerned, there is an Intercontinental Hotel on the Cleveland Clinic Campus. It's connected to the Crile Building (where the rheumys are) by a skywalk system. The Clinic is close to University Circle where there are several museums (if you're so inclined) and many restaurants and shops. The Clinic is on the east side of Cleveland (opposite side from Cleveland Airport which is on far southwest side). Cleveland RTA operates a train line that runs from the Airport and connects downtown to rail lines leading to the east side (probably not walking distance to the Clinic) and to a bus line that runs to the Clinic and University Hospital. There may be other accommodations nearby as well.
I've not experienced any of the housing and local transport accommodations as I live about a two-hour drive from Cleveland in suburban Columbus. If airfares to Cleveland are too high, you may want to consider flying into Akron-Canton (CAK). It's a little over an hour drive from the Clinic and has service from Delta, USAirways, and AirTran from east coast cities. The fares are generally lower since it's not a "fortress hub" for any airline (CLE is a United hub).
Hope this is helpful.
Last edited by Pete; 12-21-2013 at 02:51 AM.
Pete
dx 1/11
"Every day is a good day. Some are better than others." - unknown
"Take your meds as directed and live your life as fully as you can." - Michael Chacey, MD
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