LovingTim
Weight Loss for Weight Loss
Mar 29, 2009
How/where do we do we start? My husband was finally able to get an appointment to see the Physician to get started on the path of WLS. The appointment was a good one, yet disappointing.
My husband has not had a scale that would weight him in almost 5 years so we've been guessing his weight. We were off by about 60 pounds. This in itself is very disheartening for my husband. I am personally viewing it as a tree in the road... Ok, it's annoying, it's in the way, but we can find a way around it and continue forward.
Here is what the Physician wants before surgery is really, seriously discussed.
1. She wants a letter from my Tim's Family Physician stating that she approves. ( Annoyance #1- She's the one that wrote the referral. Shouldn't this make it obvious that she approves?)
2. The want my a letter from Tim's oncologist stating that he is currently NED (No evidence of disease... Meaning he is Melanoma free... This is also Considering he hasn't seen his Oncologist in a little over 4 years, this might be interesting to do, but we understand the "why" of it being needed).
3. She wants my husband to undergo a sleep study. (This is something his Family Physician has wanted also, but hasn't gotten around to yet)
4. She wants a blood work-up, and some other test results that my husband has had done - Pulmonary/Heart Stress Test. (Understandable. My husband isn't a "typical" WLS patient. He is a Melanoma survivor, Blood Clot and survivor with current lung problems)
5. She wants Tim to see the on staff Dietitian and Psychologist. (This would not be so frustrating, but insurance will not cover this... Why is beyond me! So we need to come up with a minimum of $175.00 for these two appointments and then we're not sure if he'll need more than one Dietitian appointment or not. They weren't clear on that.)
6. She wants him to lose a good chunk of weight before surgery is an option. (We couldn't get a true straight answer from her but she stated about "50 to 100 pounds" and seemed to lean more toward 100 pounds being the magic "your approved for surgery" number.)
Hearing that he would need to lose 100 pounds was... disheartening and confusing. We both knew that he would need to lose some weight before surgery, but 100 pounds seems such a high number.
This is also the same place that we went to before for the RWL program. Those foods are insanely expensive. The Dr. mentioned putting him on a 1000-1200 calorie diet with 80-90g protein. She mentioned that she'll probably want him to do a modified RWL program... modified so that way he doesn't have the cost of all the food coming from them.
Yet... Those foods, even modified, seem out of reach for our pocket books.
I am an optimistic. While all of this feels a bit overwhelming, I do know that we can do it... somehow! I don't have it all worked out yet, but it will be done.
So what are our goals right now... a plan of action?
1) Start walking every day.
2) Get on Freecycle and see if we can find someone with some wrist and ankle weights that they no longer want.
3) Revise my current diet plan from 1400-1600 calories to meet the 1000-1200 calorie diet as best as possible until we can meet with the Dietitian.
4) Come up with at least the $50.00 for the Dietitian appointment.
5) Get into a routine of Tim taking his Men's Daily vitamin until the Dietitian appointment.
6) Get phone calls and appointments made that need to be made. Oncologist, Family Doc, and Sleep Study.
