Thanksgiving week

During this holiday week and the holiday season many people will be very busy with family, friends, traveling and preparing meals. If you find yourself feeling a lil down or lonely pick up the mouse or Iphone instead of that food or desert. I will try to be around for anyone who may want or need a word or two of support. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

You seem like a nice guy who is continuing to struggle with the inappropriate and unnecessary requirement of MASSIVE pre-op weight loss your surgeon is insisting you meet, which is blocking access to your RIGHT to have bariatric surgery.  While you struggle with this, month after month after month, your life is tick-tocking away, as your weight and comorbidities rob you of the joy you SHOULD be having in a body that should and could have been REPAIRED and RESTORED to health a long time ago.

When and if you are ready to ask for help in getting a different surgery, one which is more likely to help you as an older African-American (and thus inherently more likely to fail RNY or a non-malabsorptive procedure), you know where to find the DSers who can help you navigate the path to forcing NorCal Kaiser to pay for a DS for you.

Bigcoop-
Thank you for being there-what a nice offer, to help support us all!!

I read your profile and I will keep you in my prayers.......
Have a very Blessed day.



On His Wings......

To amplify on my post above:

I know you want to have faith in the Kaiser system in general, and in Fisher in particular, but let me point out some facts and reasonable inferences (in my opinion, of course) based on how you have been treated so far, and from years of experience with both the Kaiser bariatric practice and reports of Fisher’s statements and attitudes.

 

1)      You are a high surgical risk, based on your being older, male, SMO, with comorbities, and African-American.

2)      Kaiser in general – and Fisher in particular – have a history of cherry-picking their patients, discouraging the high-risk patients with unreasonable, unwarranted, scientifically insupportable (see the ASMBS Position Statement: Preoperative Supervised Weight Loss Requirements) pre-op weight loss requirements.  They do this to keep their costs down and their thereby artificially manipulated “statistics" good.

3)      When patients complain about this delaying/deferring/discouraging tactic to the DMHC, they pretty much invariably win a waiver of the pre-op weight loss requirements.  Why the DMHC doesn’t order Kaiser to stop this unethical practice, when it repetitively violates DMHC and national standards of care, and wastefully ties up precious DMHC resources to review, can be explained by looking at who has been appointed to run the DMHC – by Jerry Brown, no less, which should give you some idea of how politicized the system is:

a.      8-11-2011: SACRAMENTO – Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointments.

Brent Barnhart, 68, of Danville, has been appointed director of the Department of Managed Health Care. Barnhart was senior counsel at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan from 1996 to 2009 and a policy committee consultant to the California State Assembly from 1993 to 1996. He was the legislative affairs director at Blue Cross of California from 1991 to 1993 and senior attorney and legislative advocate from 1983 to 1987. Barnhart served as counsel and secretary at the Association of California Life and Health Insurance Companies from 1987 to 1991 and was the California legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1975 to 1983. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $142,965. Barnhart is registered decline-to-state.

4)      Kaiser does NOT provide accurate information about the DS, because they don’t have a DS surgeon on staff, and because Fisher (who is the head of the NorCal bariatrics program, if I understand the hierarchy correctly) has a fanatically negative opinion of it, based on what seems to be an occupational and inbred inability to revisit his beliefs based on the scientific literature and admit he might be wrong. 

5)      Kaiser loses essentially EVERY request by its patients who have the great good fortune to learn about the DS prior to surgery, and who get properly drafted appeals to the DMHC.  These appeals generally take about 3-4 months from filing the first request for a referral for a DS.  There are several volunteer DS advocates who can help a wannabe Kaiser DSer prepare the appeal documents.

6)      NorCal Kaiser has lost so many of these appeals that a couple of years ago, they entered into a contract with Dr. Rabkin to perform DSs on their patients when they are ordered by the DMHC to pay for them at a rate discounted from the one they had to pay previously without the contract.

7)      In fact, NorCal Kaiser has noticed something else in their economic interest:  since they are going to lose these cases anyway, they have started referring SOME of their DS wannabes DIRECTLY to Rabkin after one internal appeal.  These tend to be people just like yourself – high risk patients on whom Fisher et al. realize they would rather NOT operate, and thereby, they slough off the risk of complications and thus messing up their stats onto Rabkin.

 

You seem to be an educated man, used to following the rules and being compliant, and trusting that if you do so, you will be rewarded.  You have faith in your doctor, and seek to do what is required of you , in the belief that his requirements are in your best interests.  I get that.  I provide this as an alternate view for your consideration.

You are very kind to offer this.  Helping others helps us, too.

I am also sorry your offer is being received as a self serving opportunity to beat you up, metaphorically speaking.

Your kindness stands in stark contrast to that reply.  Don't let the turkeys get you down!

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

tee t. Other (04/11/86) Member Since: 12/02/06 [Latest Posts]

Post Date: 11/21/11 7:54 am You are very kind to offer this. Helping others helps us, too. I am also sorry your offer is being received as a self serving opportunity to beat you up, metaphorically speaking. Your kindness stands in stark contrast to that reply. Don't let the turkeys get you down! Happy Thanksgiving to you.   JIB 1986 revised to RNY 2004 plastics 2004,2006, 2009

I see Tee has now blocked me and swung once again to the other pole of whatever disorder she has.

I am "beating up" the OP?  Really, Tee?  I know you are very unhappy that after years of claiming to have had a "failed DS" which you used as a platform to incessantly bash the DS (and me), only to be outed as actually having had a JIB, but your bitter betty whining campaign against the DS (and me) gets lower and lower all the time.  Reading behind your own block and then posting **** about me is petty and disingenuous.  But then again, I guess you will never get over being outed.

There is nothing REMOTELY bashing about my post - it is offering the OP (and anyone else reading this post) information about an alternative to remaining under the yoke of a fanatically anti-DS and anti-fatty surgeon, who has prevented the OP from getting surgery for (IIRC) over a year now with a pointless, medically-unfounded, torturous and UNNECESSARY pre-op weight loss requirement.  He constantly refers to the fact that he is patiently trying to meet this requirement, and I therefore remind him again that his patience may never be rewarded, that his health is deteriorating, and that the doesn't need patience, he needs to become one of us post-op PATIENTS.  And I gave him a concrete way to get around the obstacle to his health that Dr. Fisher and Kaiser's unethical requirements are for him.

But hey, keep posting your nonsense if it helps you get through your day!

" There is nothing REMOTELY bashing about my post - it is offering the OP (and anyone else reading this post) information about an alternative to remaining under the yoke of a fanatically anti-DS and anti-fatty surgeon, who has prevented the OP from getting surgery for (IIRC) over a year now with a pointless, medically-unfounded, torturous and UNNECESSARY pre-op weight loss requirement. "

The OP made   made a kind offer to be of support over the holidays that has been converted into a diatribe about WLS choices.  Sad and self serving.

Can't anyone make a post that is simply what it says it is without having it taken as permission to grab the opportunity to beat everyone over the head again and again and again?

I do not have a DS (can you read my signature?), do not have anything against the DS, nor do I feel any WLS choice is the wrong choice. I do not accept your position, but that does not equal what you think it does. however, this is not about me and I'm not going to take it on as though it is.

I don't get where your information comes from but that is beside the point, which is this:

this is the OP's thread.

it is not a thread about the DS

it is not a thread about you.

you have glossed over those three points and tried to make it into all three.

I have defended you and supported you  (repeatedly) against personal attacks and would only hope that you had taken the high road and not participated in same. I would do it again if the situation came up again. No one deserves that unkindness.

Now, I do look at certain posts by you but, by and large, have blocked out your posts for this very reason.  It is always the same berating tone.  I'm sorry your kitchen is done cause, at least, there was something being said that had some passing interest.

Perhaps if you have the concerns for this particular person, you might get off the soapbox, contact him in PM and try to help.

But that would mean you would be concerned about the person rather than broadcasting your "issue."

Yes, I am going to block again, and expect you to read around it. That is simply to keep me from engaging any further. I know full well you read everything and you are notified about posts.


So, there really is no effort to exclude you.  That would be silly and futile. 

Have a happy thanksgiving.  

First, procedural matters:

You block me, read my posts around your own block, RESPOND to my posts and make comments about me personally while hiding behind your own block (which I only noticed because your post showed up as the most recent one on this thread on the first page of the main board, and when I went to see what you had to say, discovered that I was blocked - I have no idea for how long you've had me blocked, because your posts generally don't interest me in the least - I didn't even notice the LACK of posts from you, and you flatter yourself way too much to think I go looking for them).  NOW you have the nerve to unblock me long enough to respond to me - and we'll see if it's long enough for me to answer you before you block me again, which you have PROMISED to do, which promise I hope you'll keep) - and WHY?  Because you are "defending" the poor, defenseless OP against my - what, attacks?  My "inappropriate" message to him about getting help from someone besides his WLS-blocking surgeon - fie and for SHAME upon me for hijacking his thread, which thus far has ONE limply supportive post besides this hijack.

YOU may scuttle about in the dark like a ****roach using PMs to prevent your comments from being seen by the general public, but I rarely do that.  The message I had for Coop was ALSO a message for others - he is as free to read it or not, and to take it to heart or not, as the next person.  The message was pertinent to HIM, because he hadn't posted in a couple of months, since the LAST time he posted about his struggle to get clearance for surgery in the face of an overwhelmingly unreasonable weight loss surgery requirement, and clearly, he's gotten no further, so I reminded him and anyone else reading the thread of the options he has.

You seem to have an obsession with me and my DS posts - I really wish you'd get over it.  You spent YEARS on Quix insisting you had a failed DS and were the exception to the general rule that nobody revises FROM a DS to something else - only to finally have to admit you were LYING.

If the OP is distressed about my comments on his post, he has not expressed that to me - why don't you let us have our own discussion, if any, without interjecting YOUR obsessed self into something that was none of your business in the first place? 

Please, exclude me from your demented attentions.

I wish I'd seen this 20 minutes ago before I scarfed down that coffee cake in the break room.