retirdnav
I've been heavy most of my life. When I was 18 I lost weight to join the Navy. I completed a 20 year career, however I was in trouble over my weight for most of my career. They even sent me to 6 weeks in patient weight loss clinic. I would loss some weight but I could never keep it off. I would hover around 300 pound most of my adult life. In addition I smoked most of my adult life. 4 years ago I finally stopped smoking, but I started to gain weight. Last October (2010) I knew I was trouble my weight had climbed to 405 pounds and all of my joints hurt. I knew I had to do something. One of my clients had weight loss surgery and he lost a lot of weight. I live in a small town in northern Michigan. I started to do research on who had the best weight loss surgery facilities and I decided on using Munson Medical Center in Traverse City Michigan. The reason I chose Munson was it was only 2 hours away and the next closest was 3 1/2 hours away, plus they had a really nice professional website. I went to a seminar in a Petoskey Michigan (35 miles away). After the seminar I knew if I wanted a better quality of life I was going to have to do something.
I believe I had help from above on gettting my surgery. When I started the insurance process for approval from my health insurance (Tricare), I had to jump though a whole lot of hoops. One of the requirements from the surgeon was a colonoscophy. I had this in late December 2010. On Jan 1st I was admitted to the hospital for internal bleeding from the procedure. I spent 4 days in intensive care. Not only did I get to stay in the hosptial for first time since I was a baby I also became a diabetic and was put on high blood pressure medican. I finished up all the insurance requirements in March and was approved the first time.
I had my surgery on May 06 2011. The surgeon Dr Featherstone and I decided on doing a Route-En-Y procedure which he said had the best results for my body mass. Intially I didn't want to have this but using the forums on this website I had good feedback on which way to go.
