MBowman189
We Have Our Surgery Date!
Mar 31, 2011
We Have Our Surgery Date! 
We’ll the last 3 weeks seemed like forever, but we used the time wisely, have been stocking up on a wide variety of proteins, buying things that we’ll need post-op, getting things done around the place that I won’t be able to do right after surgery, and filling out all the forms 30 pages in all for the surgeons office. I really want to thank ALL of you that have been so supporting during the last 6 months. Your support, comments, suggestions, recommendations, and recipes are appreciated so much. I also want to especially thank Lucyfan1980 for the suggestions on expediting the process while we were waiting for our insurance approval. By attending the surgeons Bariatric Seminar, Patient Education class, and pre-op and post-op support group meetings which were all prerequisites for getting a surgery date scheduled, it probably cut a month off of our wait. I learned at the Kaiser pre-op support group meeting last week that Dr Suh had renegotiated his contract with Kaiser to include the VSG, whereas before he only did the RNY for Kaiser. The contract is set to go into effect the last week of April. Previously, if you had Kaiser and wanted the VSG, you had to go to Pacific Bariatric in San Diego, or Kaiser in Harbor City. I called the Kaiser case manager, and Dr Suh’s office to confirm this before discussing the option with my wife. As mentioned in earlier blogs, the RNY is the best choice for me, as it will put my diabetes in remission. I felt that my wife Gerry on the other hand would be a good candidate for either surgery, so we studied both even more the last several days to help decide. Eventually, she decided that it would be best to go with whichever one Dr Suh felt would be the best. My wife Gerry and I had our consultation with our surgeon Dr. David Suh today, and he and his staff at Crown Bariatric are all really nice. We arrived for the appointment 45 minutes early, as I didn’t want to be late for the planning of our new birthday. At first we turned in all of our forms, went over and signed more forms, they were really surprised to see we had all of our prerequisites completed and out of the way. Said we’d probably get our surgery date after seeing the surgeon. We watched a 30 minute video, weighed in, and waited about 10 minutes to see Dr Suh. He went over both of our medical histories, asked us both a lot of questions, asked which surgeries we wanted to have done, and agreed with our decisions. He then did a pelvic examination on both of us, paying close attention to my “little alien” umbilical hernia. He said Gerry would be a good candidate for any of the surgeries Lap Band, VSG, or RNY, but recommended the RNY as it had the best long term results. He supported the fact that we’re doing this together, and said this will give us the best results in losing and maintaining. He went over a list of 20 questions I’d prepared, and answered each of them thoroughly. If anyone is interested I can do a blog with the questions and answers. After we told him both of our adult children were living at home and could help us through recovery, he said he could do both surgeries the same day. He asked who wants to go first, and I looked at Gerry and said ladies first. Another reason is that I have an umbilical hernia he will be repairing, so my surgery will take longer. He said we did have two more steps to take before having surgery, and that was to set up an appointment for a psychiatric evaluation, (which we already have scheduled next Wednesday April 6th) and there will be one more appointment on April 14th, where he do a weigh in (and you better not gain an ounce), will order some last minute labs to check blood counts (to rule out infections), and then the same day we go to the Inland Valley Medical Center and do a pre-check in with the hospital. He said for the rest of your life, no crackers, chips, pretzels, cakes, high calorie deserts and cookies, ice cream, and carbonated sodas or beverages. He also said, from today until surgery, “NO Starches” such as potatoes, rice, pasta, breads, crackers, tortillas, chips and pretzels, or fast foods. He wants our livers to shrink as much as possible before surgery. Lastly, he wrote us both prescriptions for Prilosec to reduce stomach acid, and told us to pickup Magnesium Citrate to take the night before surgery to flush us out. His surgery nurse Lisa came in and made sure we had scheduled our psych appointment, went over things one more time, and gave us our surgery dates of April 20th at 7:00 AM, and 9:00 AM. We both are so happy and excited that in just three short weeks we will be starting the next stage of our journey to a happier and healthier life together. Both of us again want to thank you all for your support you’ve given us on this journey. We’re both doing the Happy Dance tonight.
Martin
PS: I'll make sure to update our stats, and upload some photos just before surgery.
Here is a photo of some of the items we've purchased getting ready for the weeks and months ahead. We didn't purchase all of our vitamins yet, as we wanted our surgeons approval first. We'd selected both Opurity and Bariatric Advantage products, and he was good with both. We're actually going to purchase both, just in case our tastes change, and we don't like one of them afterwards.
