knarrly

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Well, I am one week out from surgery. Things went wrong from the start. I was checked in with a gown and an IV in, when my husband saw a message from my doctor's office on his cell phone. It essentially said I wasn't covered for the surgery! I flipped out. The surgeon had just seen me to clear me and had to be paged back. He was furious they were doing this to me. While his office tried to fix things on their end, my husband called the insurance. I argued over 3 hours, while 2 patients got pushed ahead of me. Finally, I found out later, my assigned nurse through the insurance found out I was fighting for my surgery, freaked out, and quick pushed my approval through. The rep on the phone gave me the approval code and my husband had to literally run to give it to my nurse so they could rush me in before they cancelled me.

After surgery, instead of overnight, extreme nausea kept me at the hospital 4 nights. Nothing would stay down, not even ice chips!

Thankfully things are calming down now. I've been graduated to full liquids. And since the day of surgery weigh-in, I've lost 15 pounds! And, since my first visit to the bariatric center, I've lost 48 pounds!

At my heaviest, I weighed 297 pounds. It was actually my oncologist who referred me for bariatric surgery. I'm in remission for both ovarian and endometrial cancer, both which hit me in 2008. I've had 10 surgeries since then (cancer related, hernias that happened because of the cancer surgeries, port, etc.), and went through 6 rounds of chemo. My cancers are estrogen responsive, and the hysterectomy put me into instant menopause at 30, so the hormonal issues caused a big part of my weight gain. (I was overweight before the cancer, from poor food choices, and weight gain from having kids, but after the cancer was when the significant weight gain happened.) I was already eating low carb, whole grain, and sugar free since 2009, and eating very little, and was still putting on the weight.

I attended the free seminar at my hospital, as the first part of the process at the beginning of 2015. (February) From there, I attended all of the required appointments with the weight loss center, the private appointment with the dietician, the appointment with the therapist, the 3 group classes (The group classes are NOT covered by insurance! At my hospital, they cost $175 each!), and the one free support group session. (All of the above are required to get the surgery, some by the insurance, all by the hospital.) I finally got to see the doctor, only to have the process halted. You see, I had been having a problem for the past 2 years where I had nausea and if I ate sitting up I would throw up the food. (Laying down, the food would stay down.) So Dr Boorse would not do the surgery unless we figured it out. He did a endoscopy, but all he found was a hiatal hernia, which he will fix when he does my surgery. So, I got referred to a GI doctor, who ran endless tests over a period of 5 months, and they had no clue what was wrong with me! I, however, found out by accident. After all the surgeries to my abdomen I have a lot of scar tissue, so I have pain. Also, my ankle got injured during the tail end of chemo and did not heal right, and is in pain when I walk on it. I was on dilaudid for the pain for a while via a pain management group. Well, they switched me from the dilaudid pills to the fentanyl patch...and the nausea stopped! The GI doctor appointment by a stroke of luck was that week so I told him... he said "Thank God, because I was all out of ideas on what it could be!" He gave me clearance for surgery. I called Dr Boorse immediately to book an appointment to schedule surgery.

So, I'm finally in the home stretch. I start the 2 week pre-op diet on Wed, and my pre-op testing is on the same day. My surgery is on February 10th. 

On a positive note, with the diet plan they gave me to follow before the surgery, before getting to the 2 week diet where I know you lose an additional 10-15 pounds, I've already lost 30 pounds!