Helen O.
Up to Speed...
Nov 13, 2014
TLDR -- My first blog entry. Catching up from July to now, 5 days before surgery.
So, I think it was sometime in July (2014) when I began to pursue WLS for the fourth time. After three other botched attempts in earlier years, I felt I was pretty well prepared for the process. And while it's true that I think things would have gone way less smoothly had this been my first time, it was still no cake walk to get to the point when I finally received the "we've scheduled your surgery" call.
My surgeon is with Johns Hopkins. Their process (combined with the steps required by my insurance provider - JAI Medical) was tedious and multifaceted. But worth it, as I now have had almost every test and evaluation under the sun, which might prove useful at future appointments. Silver lining! Anyway, the required honey-do list went as follows:
1- Contact insurance to ask about bariatric coverage
2- 6 month medically supervised diet with *appropriate* documentation
3- Nutritional Assessment (One on one and a group -- but I managed to roll all that into one long session.)
4- Psychiatric Evaluation
5- Letter of weight loss attempt history, letter of medical necessity
6- Abdominal Ultrasound
7- Chest xray
8- Upper Endoscopy
9- Sleep Study
10- Support group
11- EKG
12- Bloodwork
13- Smoking Cessation
Now, that may not sound like much, but remember that I wasn't the only one involved. I had to schedule appointments with my PCP to get referrals for all of the specialist testing, make appointments with all the specialists, keep my insurance company up to speed on who was billing what (seriously, this wound up being my job somehow), and just generally do a lot of waiting and untangling of schedule conflicts. Oh, and my appendix decided to explode in the process somewhere. It was a mess. But!
I FINALLY all got approved! I am scheduled to have the VSG laparoscopically on Wednesday, November 19th. That's next week. Five days and a wake-up. o__o And I am well and truly nervous. Not so much for the surgery part, but for all the changes that come after.
I imagine the next several days will be surreal in a few ways. For instance, my wife and I re-organized our closet and dresser yesterday to donate things and get ready for winter wardrobes to come back into regular circulation, and as I rolled up my favorite sun dresses from this summer, it dawned on me that I would likely never wear them again.
Now that I read that again, it sounds a bit too superficial to really count as surreal as well...