WLS secrecy and shame and an insurance rant!

Dec 17, 2011

A very close friend of mine whom I recently discovered has been secretly going through the process to get the VSG was denied by her insurance. Apparently, she hasn't been fat enough long enough, which is a crock of bull. I'm not calling her fat, but she's been big her entire life and I've known her for over 30 years. She has the blessing of being very tall so that makes her BMI lower--altho it has indeed been over 40 for a while now , and most likely for most of her adult life. I advised her to appeal and have them look at more records from further back.

I hate insurance companies with a purple passion. I've been on the doctor office side of insurance pre-auths for over 12 years and I can tell you, nothing sucks more than having someone who doesn't know the patient, isn't a doctor, and is reading crap off a list tell you that your patient does not require this testing or procedure that the doctor has requested. I get why authorizations are required, I really do. I've worked with doctors who want to test every patient who has a twinge, and I get that that is not cost effective. But daggone, that really isn't true even 25% of the time. Doctors value their time just like everyone else and they don't want to spend more time on testing a patient or doing surgery than they have to. Of course they want to make money (who doesn't?) but I believe, perhaps naively, that most doctors really just want what is best for the patient. Sheesh.

The other thing I wanted to touch on is the secrecy and shame associated with WLS. Why is it that my friend mentioned above did not tell me that she was considering WLS? And why didn't I tell her? We grew up together and were inseparable at one point in our lives. I know things about her sex life with her husband that would probably embarass him. She knows things about me that she could probably blackmail me with! If I was going through a trying time, she'd be one of the first people I'd call. But for some reason, neither of us wanted to share that we're going through this journey. I happened to find out accidently because she liked the VSG page on FB (I don't think she realized that would show up on her page). I only saw it because I was looking on her page for a pic of her kids she had posted. After that,  I sent her a message and the rest is history, but why were we too ashamed to speak of it openly?? Neither of us is planning on telling our extended families about what we are doing and we both live far enough away from them to get away with it. I hate that WLS is seen as this last resort thing that indicates that you are giving up on ever doing it "the right way." Back in the day when I lost 105 lbs. on WW, I had a cousin whose ex-wife had had WLS and done really well. The new wife was congratulating me on my weight loss and told me she was happy to see that I hadn't done it "the easy way." Yeah, cause surgery is just so easy! Not to mention, so what? So what if surgery were the easy way out? Why is so much value placed on doing things the hard way, anyway? I'll never understand that. Of course, I know that by keeping my surgery secret I'm adding to the shame mentality. But I just can't put myself out there for the judgment I know would come my way. It's hard enough being the fattest person in the family. Maybe later after I have some success and hopefully gain some confidence I can do it. Maybe.

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