Jen T.

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I just found out yesterday that I have been approved for lapband surgery!!!!    I am so excited that I can barely contain myself.  March will be one year to the day that I started this process and I'm finally on the downhill stretch.    My paperwork was sent in on January 15th and Blue Cross approved me on January 20th!!!!

Now I just wait to have the lab work scheduled!!!

After waiting a month with no word on an insurance approval, I called the insurance only to find that they had not received any information.  I called Dr. Woodman's office and they said they were still waiting for the psych eval.  I called the psychologist's office and tell them that even though they told me they sent it on the 17th of November (I called on the 15th of DECEMBER), Dr. Woodman's office had still not received it.  The lady tells me she'll fax it right away.  Now mind you the last time I called (on Nov 18th), the lady told me she couldn't fax it so she had mailed it.

So I told the lady that said she could fax it that that was fine and that I'd hold on the line for her to fax it and when she was done I told her I'd call her back in an hour if Dr. Woodman had not received it.  I called Dr. Woodman's office and they did finally receive it.  YEAH!

I called Dr. Woodman's office on the 6th to find out where we stood and Laura called me back on the 7th to tell me she had been working on getting everything together for insurance and now we just needed to wait and see what they say.

Fingers crossed I get approval very soon!!!

Finally all the documents needed for insurance approval have been sent to Dr. Woodman's office.  Now I'm just waiting for insurance approval.

Hope it comes soon!!!

Yesterday's meeting went really well. I met with one of Dr. Woodman's nurses and not with him. I'll actually meet with him at my next appointment which will be the pre-op appointment. The nurse weighed me, measured my height, and had me watch a video on the good and bad of lapband surgery. Most of it I already had heard about, but there was a little bit of stuff that was new to me.

Dr. Woodman's staff are VERY nice. They all were very kind and helpful. I was sort of surprised when I first walked in and there were XL chairs in the waiting room. I'm glad that they try to make their patients as comfortable as possible. While I was sitting there, they were playing videos of other patients who have lost weight already. It was amazing to see the changes in them and to hear about how their life is now versus before surgery. It gave me hope that I'll some day live a better life too.

The nurse could tell I was nervous I'm sure. She tried cracking some jokes to snap me out of my nervousness. It did really help.

I like that they gave me sort of a step by step list of what happens next. Here's the steps I need to do between now and surgery.

1) wait for insurance to approve.

2) receive a call to schedule all my labwork and testing (HIV test, glucose level, X-ray, upper GI, etc)

3) receive a call with a pre-op appointment date

4) at pre-op appt, receive surgery date

5) have surgery

They said it would take about a week for them to submit everything to insurance, and on average 4-6 weeks for insurance to approve. I checked my insurance and they said that they require 10 working days to approve or deny a pre-approval so I'm looking at up to 3 weeks before I know if I'm approved.

Also, the pre-op appt is to last about 3 hours and that's the first day I'll actually meet with Dr. Woodman as well as some of his staff to go over procedures and stuff like that.

According to his scales I weight 328 so that's my starting point.

My PCP's office didn't fax over my 6 months' diet and referral letter like I asked them to over 3 weeks ago so I had to call them yesterday and ask them again to do that. (sigh) So once Dr. Woodman's office receives that info, they will prepare the packet to submit to insurance.

Now the waiting begins…….

Today I'm quite anxious.  Tomorrow I go for my first appt with Dr. Woodman's office.  (I've been told I won't meet with Dr. Woodman so I don't know who I'll actually meet with)  Anyway, it's all starting to feel very real now.  I'm excited about things finally moving forward, but I'm also anxious about  what all will happen tomorrow.  I think it's just the unknown that makes me anxious.  All the surgeons are so different in the way they do things so I'm not really sure what to expect with Dr. Woodman's office.  I know people who've had Lapband, but not with him.

After this meeting they'll submit to my insurance for approval and then we wait.  (hopefully not too long though)

I've not lost anymore weight, but I have lost some inches.  i dropped another size so I'm really excited about that.  Even though I've not been losing lbs, I have maintained the weight I lost while on the 6 month supervised diet so I'm happy about that.

I read back over my posts during this journey and I've had so many ups and downs, but one thing has never changed.  I have always stood strong in my decision to have surgery and lose weight.

I didn't go to my appt with the dietician.  Money issues got in the way and I had to postpone it until October 21 (the next available appt they had).  Then I started hearing that one of the 3 doctors in Memphis (at least that I'm aware of) left and went to practice somewhere else.  A second stopped doing any gastric bypasses.  So that meant that my doctor was the only one that did gastric bypass and was only one of 2 doctors in all of Memphis. 

Then after checking out people's wait times and hearing first hand from some people, I realized it probably would be late March or possibly even April before I could have my surgery.  This news was very discouraging to me because I was already expecting it would be next year before I had surgery, but never did I dream it would be that far into the year!

I talked to a co-worker who's hairdresser had use the surgeon that was no longer doing any gastric bypasses.  She said her hairdresser had her surgery pretty quickly so I decided to check into this surgeon.  I found that he was pretty much considered a jerk, but I felt I really needed to see for myself so I decided to look up his seminar schedule.  To my surprise he was holding one THAT night!

So I went to his seminar with an open mind.  He was very through with his info and no doubt knew his stuff.  I saw a little of what people were talking about in his attitude, but it wasn't that big a deal to me.  I just took him as a very straight forward person.  He doesn't sugar coat anything.  He just tells it like it is.  Beings that I'm that way in alot of respects, I don't think I'll have a problem with him.

SO........I've decided to change over to Dr. Woodman.  Things are already moving much faster.  I cancelled my dietician appt at Dr. Weaver's office and got my new dietician appt for the 15th with one that Dr. Woodman's office recommended.  Then I found out that I'd need a new psychological because my insurance requires certain tests to be taken and I didn't do those the first time around.  So I got that scheduled for the 23rd of October.  I also have my evaluation appt with Dr. Woodman and it's for the 4th of November.  By the time I have that appt I will have completed everything needed for insurance so they should be ready to submit that day!!!!

I'm trying not to get too excited because I've gotten this far before only to find that I had many more months to go, but I'm at least optimistic about things this time.  Dr. Woodman has a program where if you have your insurance approval and all testing already done, then you can have surgery in 2-4 weeks.  So I'm hoping that I can at least have it by sometime in January.

My husband and I are planning a trip to Gulf Shores with his family in May so I'm hoping I can be fully healed (and maybe even have lost some weight) by then.

As for my current weight, I've been stuck between 330 and 325 for the last 2 months.  Although I'm happy that I'm not gaining, I'm a little annoyed I've not lost anything either.  I'm still hoping to be under 300 by Christmas.

Just 3 weeks before I go to my doctor's appt!!!!!!

Well it's been a while since I've posted and several things have happened.  I got my approval from Dr. Weaver's office in just 5 days!!!!

I even have my appt with the dietician (Sept 30th).  I was really happy to get it, but sad that it's a month away.

I go next Friday for my last 6 month supervised visit.  I'm down 30.2lbs as of this morning.  My goal for my 6 months was 30lbs and I'm SO happy that I met my goal a week early.

I went to a support group meeting a few weeks ago and it was SO exciting to see so many of Dr. Weaver's patients and see how much weight they've lost.  They had before and after pictures and I was SO surprised by some of their transformations.

I'm feeling so good about my decision to have WLS and I'm getting more and more anxious as the time draws closer.

Well I was so excited to finally get my paperwork in the mail to Dr. Weaver.  Hopefully I'll get approved quickly!!!  I finally feel like I'm moving forward now.  Hopefully I won't have to choose a different surgeon again.

More good news is that this morning when I weighed I'd lost another 4lbs!!!  So that's 28lbs since I started my supervised weight loss 5 months ago.

My co-worker and I were discussing my losing weight this morning and she told me she thought it would be good if I had some before pictures so I could see where I've come from.  Well I told her I did (the one of me in green on here is 30lbs from my heaviest).  She wanted to see it  and when I showed her she was very surprised.  It really made me feel good that someone else noticed a change in my appearance.

Today was a crazy day.  First the good news.  I'm on my last month of supervised weight loss as of today.  I saw Dr. Stiles and she said I'd lost another 4lbs!!!  I was very pleased with that since she only expects me to lose 1-2lbs a month.  She said I was doing great and all was well.

Now the not so good news.  Before going to my appt today I wanted to have all my ducks in a row and make sure I'd need 6 full months of diet instead of just 6 visits.  To make a long story short I stumbled onto a link on my insurance's website that said if I didn't go to a "Blue Distinction Center" for surgery that I'd need to pay a $5000 co-pay and then the insurance would only cover 70% of the rest of the surgery.  So I look up Dr. Jones and just my luck, there are NO "Blue Distinction Centers" in AR. 

I talked to Dr. Stiles about it and she highly recommended Dr. Weaver.  So I called and requested another info packet (I trashed the other when I found Dr. Jones) and now I'm waiting for that to come so I can get the ball rolling with her.

So although it's not the end of the world, it still has been a not so fun day.  BTW, by going to a doctor that works in a "Blue Distinction Center" insurance will cover 90% of my surgery.  So we're not talking about a few hundred dollars difference.  It's more like $7k difference.

Well I went on the 24th for Dr. Jones' seminar only to find out that it was actually supposed to be on the 28th.  I was told the wrong date.  There were several people there for the same thing so looked like there was a miscommunication somewhere.

The 28th I went back and got to attend Dr. Jones' seminar.  I was VERY impressed with how through he was.  I'd been to a WLS seminar in Memphis a couple years ago and it was nothing like Dr. Jones' seminar.  He told about every possible kind of surgery and gave all the good AND bad things about each.  He talked about pre-op as well as post-op.  Did I mention how impressed I was with him?

So now I go back to my PCP on the 5th for the end of my 5th month on supervised diet check up.  She thinks that I just needed 6 visits for insurance to approve me, but I think actually I need 6 months.  Therefore I think I have one more month of diet before I can get everything submitted to insurance.

Now I'm just waiting for Dr. Jones' office to call me and schedule my consultation.

I've not done so well the past 2 months of diet.  In June I went on a week long vacation to Gulf Shores with my husband family and although I called myself trying to do good, I gained 10lbs that week.  Since then it's been a fight to get back on track.  I lost the 10lbs just in time for my July appt with my PCP, but since then I've fought to keep even that off.  I'm just hoping to have lost at least 2lbs by Tuesday.