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After reading the forums and seeing so many of the cute little WL and exercise tickers, I decided I needed one too a couple weeks back. I hadn't been working out like I should, so I set a reasonable goal and had at it.

As of this past Saturday I am 50 minutes over my goal! It helped a lot that I was on vacation with my friend Duck. We did a lot of walking on the beach and the historic area where we stayed. It was wonderful, tons of fun-- and we even managed to eat mostly healthy foods-- fresh fruit and veggies.

In other happy news, Duck read all the info I got from the bariatric clinic, joined OH, and seems much more at ease with the idea of me having WLS. She's even going to try to pull some dated pics of me from the last few years to help with my insurance. My mom and sis ran into an RN we've known since I was 7 or 8, and who said she'll be more than happy to write up a medical statement about my long-term obesity.

My sister has her first appointment with the surgeon this afternoon. Sort of wish I'd taken off so I could go with her, but no point really. We're resigned to never having an appointment at the same time. Sucks though with gas prices and having to drive 45mi to get there. Anywho, my thoughts and prayers are with her though I know things will turn out just fine for both of us.

I got a letter from the clinic saying that my appointment is July 14th. Yeah, a looooong time away. My sister has hers in about a week, though how in the world we wound up two months apart I don't know. Anywho, being my agressive self I decided to call and see if anything closer was available. As a result I've been moved up to July 8th. Baby steps are still steps, right?

I also decided to go for broke, and expressed my willingness to be called as little as a day ahead if someone else cancels. Since my supe already knows and understands that it may be a sort of random thing, I felt ok doing it.

Honestly, I am just ready to hear a yea or nay.  It's not that I'm not patient, because I can be. The problem is that I don't like not knowing.  I want to get the first step done so I can focus on my goals-- getting my insurance cleared and starting whatever diet they put me on. I'm ready already!

I think that is the one thing that sticks out most in my mind from the meeting. The speaker held up two medicine cups like you would get with a bottle of Nyquil and said "you get two of these when you leave the hospital." Ouch. *lol*

He passed around the model of a stomach with a lap-band, and it began to make a lot more sense. Still, for a couple minutes I almost thought he meant that was all you could eat for life.  The reality is better and after reading a lot of the posts on the various OH forums, I think it is certainly doable.

So many of the members are a true inspiration to me. Not so much looking at the awesome before and after pics as reading blogs and posts. I have been working on getting an overall view, checking out the progress and problems of people at all stages of WLS, and I think  I have a pretty good idea of what I am really going up against.

I'm really starting to get excited and I can't wait to meet with a surgeon!

Well, I survived. Feeling a bit silly about all of my anxiety now, because all we had to do was sign in and it counts as the first of our six appointments. It was basically a presentation of the ppt slides we got in our big packet, followed by a Q&A session.

We learned a lot about obesity, dealing with insurance and the different types of surgery they do. By "they" I mean the Bariatric Surgery department at ECU's Brody School of Medicine. We have a choice of the Roux-en-Y (RNY) gastric bypass or gastric banding, ie the lap-band. After sitting through two hours of that, I can say with 100% certainty that the bypass is not for me. The very idea of dumping scares me, not to mention the fact that it is malabsorptive. Which means you are denying your body the nutrients it needs because food is rerouted directly from the stomach pouch to the large intestine. 

Happily, I am now absolutely sure I want a lap-band. I called my insurance to verify that my work group covers it. All set there, though I do have one minor concern. My mom called me last night to see how the info session made me feel, if I was sure I want to go ahead with it or whatnot. I appreciated that and told her how things went. Also talked to one of my best friends, Duck. We're very at odds about it, primarily because she fears for my safety and thinks it's too extreme. She had a lot of questions, some of which I honestly don't know how to answer yet. 

This morning I talked to my boss about it, explained where I was yesterday. I wanted her to know what's going to be going on with me schedule-wise. As it turns out, my boss told me about one of her friends who has done it and how successful it's been for her. At the end of it she told me, "You're going to feel wonderful." Yay! Cannot begin to say how good that made me feel. So now I won't have to worry about taking time for appointments and whatnot. We'll work out comp-time as needed.

A few months ago my older sister, teacherpooh2008, first mentioned the idea of Lap-Band surgery to me. We already knew we did not want the usual gastric bypass and she'd run into someone or other that was now looking and feeling pretty fab. What really piqued our interest was the fact that this lady, and others we heard about, was able to drop most of her prescriptions as she began to lose the weight. So we started reading up on it, talked to family and friends, then decided to move ahead.

Why do we want to do this? Both of our parents have Type I diabetes and high blood pressure. Our mother also has high cholestorol. My sis also has high BP and my last checkup (3 weeks back) left my GP rather worried. I've been able to get it out of the danger zone but... it's still way too high.

I am currently at my highest weight ever and am having problems with shortness of breath, back pain, and most recently trouble sleeping some nights. It scares me when I think of what the future might bring-- not just for myself, but for my sister as well. I know I have got to do something and soon and I believe that surgery may be the best option.

I am not bothered by the idea of going under the knife, but I know dropping bad habits and starting a new lifestyle will be tough. When I think of the alternatives though... We both have BCBS insurance through our employers and they are supposed to be pretty awesome, so I am not worried about that either.

Maybe I'm crazy, but my primary surgery-related fear is simply that I will not qualify for some reason.

My sis and I are all set to attend an info session on Wednesday. I am a little nervous because, despite the ton of paperwork we already sent in, the form says we will have to do it again. Which sucks because I have kept very poor records of my yo-yo-ing, though I can name a handful of programs and systems I've tried. Pinning dates to things is tough-- I had to call up a couple of friends to get things straight. Which is the main reason I am nervous about going. Hopefully though, it won't be that bad and I'll survive.

I'm getting better anyway-- already bought a shiny new journal and have started keeping records.