I got my information packet in the mail today.

My hubby always checks the mail everyday, cause our mail box is all the way down at the bottom of our extremely long drive way, and I can not walk that far right now, so when he came in he handed me the mail, like every other day.  But today, I received my paper work for my preop appointments, and instructions for surgery.


  First of all, I will have to attend a 4 hour class on nutrition, which I personally think is awesome, and it asked that I bring my support with me.  Just be coincidence its on a Wednesday, which is my hubby's day off.  Yay, my support gets to go!!  It also states that I will need to purchase a started kit, that consists of vitamins, protein supplement, 6 shakes, 6 pudding shakes, and a box of meal replacement bars.  Its 100.00.  At first I thought, OMG that is soo expensive, but then I got to adding it all up individually, because you can order your supplies off the website   individually. It would be about the same price, if you ordered it individually, as it is getting the starter kit.  I also saw that I will have to be on a 2 week program of strictly protein shakes/ bars. I will need approximately 8 boxes of bars, and 28 shakes.  I have heard these things taste horrible.  We shall see. I will be looking at approximately 145-160 dollars for this.  I am thankful that my insurance pays for the entire weight loss program fee though, because that alone is 3000.00 dollars and most insurances only pay half of this.  Strictly medicare does not cover it at all, but I have humana gold plus as my secondary insurance, and it covered it all.

  My two week diet will be as followed

Breakfast 

• 
  
  1 new life supplement shake or bar               
• 
  
   2 tbsp. benefiber mixed with a non- calorie beverage (aka Crystal light, water, decaf tea)

Morning Snack  

• New Life Supplement Shake

Lunch 

•   New life supplement bar

Afternoon Snack 

• New Life Supplement Shake

Dinner

•   New Life Supplement Shake OR Bar
• 2 TBSP Benefiber mixed into a non-calorie- drink

Evening Snack

• New Life Supplement Nutrition Bar

So needless to say I am going to be hungry, lol.  Plus we will be on our vacation during this time.  This will really test my strength, everyone else having seafood, ice cream, sodas and yummy stuff, and I will not allowed to have any of those, but since I have been on this 1200 calorie diet since April, maybe this will not affect me to much.  I will update again when I get new information.

The little things that make you wonder about the surgery

I have dreamed for the past two nights that I am going to die while in the hospital after I have the surgery. I know its just my mind living out my fears in my dreams but it still scares me. Some other things that go threw my mind are things that I should not even think about, because its part of what got me to the terrible condition I am in today, but I will never be able to have bread/carbs again, or so I was told in the support group meetings, have not met the dietician yet, so this is still hearsay until the dietician tells me for certain. I can do without sweets, I have splenda, I can do without soda, I have for months, that stuff does not bother me, but the thoughts of never having another piece of lite bread scares me, lol. I love bread, but from what I hear if you eat it after the surgery it makes you violently ill to your stomach, and I have a very sensitive stomach now,I can not even imagine it after the surgery. Stuff like that really worries me, I am afraid of blood clots, which is the number 1 complication after the surgery, and of all the other risks, but that's only natural, anyone will fear the unknown. I just have to stay strong, think positive, and move forward!!!

The things I look forward to doing once I loose this weight

You know, people take for granted the little stuff, like crossing their legs, setting in a booth at a restaurant, riding rides at an amusement park, buying clothes because you like them, not because they are the size you need, walking threw a store, wearing your seat belt in a car, being able to exercise, tying your own shoes, getting dressed alone, or even bathing on your own. all of these things, at one time or another in my life, I have not been able to do. I look forward to us going out to a place to eat, and not having to ask for a table instead of a booth, being able to go to a concert and not pray that I can fit in the seat. Simple things like this are things that smaller people take for granted. Now I am sure some people are saying to themselves right now, well stop feeding your pie hole and you wouldn't be that way. Well your wrong there. I have been over weight since birth,not by choice, but by medical need. I have severe asthma, and have to and always had to use steroids to breath, so I could live. Do you think I would want to be in this shape if I could help it. Absolutely not. Do you think I would have taken the steroids if I could have lived without them, NO!! This is the life I was dealt, and I lived it the best I could. No regrets, just the way it is. I personally do not care if you think this or that, it does not matter to me, the ones whom love me, their opinion of me is all I need. But I wanted to throw that out there for all the ignorant ass wipes that think that every fat person is fat cause they eat to much, its not always the case, so do not judge others... Always know that the little jokes and shit you do to people whom are different than you, it comes back to you, cause Karma is a bitch my friend, plain and simple. Take these words with you if you do not take anything else from this, Do not think that because you are smaller than me, that you are better than me, do not think that because someone is disabled in some way, that you are better than them, because on judgement day, when we all stand before the Lord on his throne, and we all will!!! We all will be the same in his eyes, either a saved soul with your name in the lambs book of life, or a sinner sent to the pits of hell to burn for eternity. Do you think the Lord will care if I was a size 28 and you were a size 2?? No, he will not, he will care about whom of us there have taken him as our savior, it is not for us to judge others, so stop doing it!!! God hears the mean remarks you make to others when you do it, and you, and you alone will answer to him for those things on the day of judgement!!

How to go about it all questions

Ok so alot of people have asked me questions like, " well how did you get started with it?" and " will insurance pay for it?" So I figured this would be the easiest way to explain it, put it in a blog, and you can read it for yourself and see what you need to do.

1. The first thing you need to do is discuss it with you PCP (Primary Care Physician) and see what they say, if they believe your a valid candidate and such.

2. Contact your insurance and ask about bariatric weight loss surgery coverage,and what criteria you have to meet before it will be covered.

3. Find a weight loss surgeon you can trust and that is covered by your insurance.

My deal was that of course with my weight I was a candidate, and since I am disabled, and partially because of my weight was I awarded my disability, my PCP had all the documents in line for me to be proven to be a valid candidate. I still had to contact my secondary insurance though to see if they covered it, and to get their criteria out of the way. Fortunately medicare will only allow you to go to a center of excellence, and that along with the referral from my dear friend Andrea, I found Dr. Williams at New Life Center for Bariatrics. I then contacted their office, where they told me what criteria they required before being seen as a patient. Your first step to the process is to go to a seminar that one of the doctors holds. Its free of charge, and they go over all the information that you really want to know about. Luckily the one I attended was held by my physician that is going to preform my surgery, Dr. Williams.

Next step is to attend a support group meeting, and the kind ladies at the desk gave me a schedule and helped me pick one out to attend. Then you will need to feel out the packet of information that you get from the seminar, call the office, and make your first appointment. I was so scared that first day, because if your fat you know what I mean when I say, oh great here's another person that's going to look down on me because I am fat, but they are not like that at Dr. Williams' office. They treat you like a person, and never judge you, so I really felt comfortable.

Most insurances require that you have completed a 6 month medically supervised diet plan, if not with your PCP, then with the center you choose for your surgery.
I had already done this, but because of my size, Dr. Williams still wanted me to loose 45-60 pds if I could before the surgery. No one ever told me this before I began the weight loss surgery journey, but your liver gets fat along with the rest of you, when you are obese. And, if you are not currently loosing weight before the surgery, then it might be to large for the Dr. to move around to get to your stomach, so you have to begin loosing before surgery. Its similar to the Liver of an alcoholic, even if your like me, and never drink!!

You also might have to see specialist to get a clearance for surgery, before they will submit your forms to insurance for approval. I had to see a cardiologist, pulmonologist, and a Neurologist, as well as a Psychiatrist, all before I could be approved for surgery. Then the office will submit your paper work, and get your approval. If your insurance covers it, Dr. Williams and the staff at NLBC will get you approved most generally. They know the steps to take, and my approval came back within a week of Jennifer, the insurance lady, submitting it.

You will be assigned a coordinator that will work with you from this point on, shes the one that calls you to tell you if you have been approved. The office I go to has three, Melissa, Donna, and Stephanie, all of whom are a delight to be around, and treat you with the utmost respect. My coordinator is Stephanie, and she is the one that let me know I had been approved, and scheduled my next set of appointments and my surgery. I will update more on things, as I go along.

My first post about my weight issues.

Hello everyone out there in Internet land. I am about to set forth on a new journey in my life, one which will hopefully change it for the better, and I have decided I want to share it with others out there that might be thinking of doing the same thing. So here it goes, here is the beginning of my story.

I have always been a overweight person, its a life I have become accustomed to. Not one I like,per say, but one I have because use to. I have always been the fat kid, the fat girl, the fat woman, the fat person. That's me, its who I am, who I have always been. I have always been the one everyone looks at, everyone laughs at, points and makes fun of, yeah.. me again. But it has got to where it does not effect me anymore. I have heard from people who claim to love me say, " you know you would be so beautiful, if you were were not big." I want to say, well you would be so much more enjoyable to be around if you were not shallow!!" But I do not, I just agree and go on.

I haven't ever felt sorry for myself, or wished I was someone else, this has just always been me, but back in 2003, while cleaning my home that my then fiance and I shared, I slipped and fell in bleach, resulting in a very injured leg/knee, and no insurance to get it fixed. I was black and blue from the tip of my toe, to the top of my thigh. This is when my weight became a health issue. I could no longer bathe by myself,my fiance had to do it for me, I could not dress myself, get to the bathroom by myself, I could not even drive. Thank the Lord for the man I now call my husband, being there for me, I would have had to have gone into a facility if he had not taken care of me.

A few years pasted, and so did the pain with the knee. I had moved to Oklahoma, we got married, and then moved back to Tennessee. We started working taking care of the mentally disabled, and I feel in love with my career. For the first time ever I was doing something that meant something to someone, and I loved it. We decided to get our CNA license, and began working at a Nursing Home in town to do so. We went to several different nursing facilities in a few years, because my big heart could not stand the abuse we were seeing in the ones we were at, and we would leave. The last one done my health in for me though, I fell lifting a patient, and landed back on that knee. That's where the real issues came to play. Now I could no longer work. I could hardly walk, and what then was a bad issue of obesity turned into where I am today.

Now I am at the point where weight loss surgery is my only option. I have to loose the weight, or I will die. I have been told that by several doctors. This is my only way out, my only chance to make it. So here we are, a few days away from the biggest day of my life.

I began this journey wanting the "quick fix" the biggest surgery they have, to get the most weight loss. I wanted this because I am considered super morbidly obese, and its the only one that will guarantee that I would loose it all in one surgery. But that is not what God's plan was obviously. The doctor told me my heart was to weak to do that particular surgery, known as a "BPD" in one operation, like most people have it. With my asthma and my heart,I would have to get it done in two operations for him to feel safe doing it, but he had to try to get the insurance to agree to that. Well the insurance would not allow that to happen, and since I had fear of that particular surgery, and since the Dr. did not feel comfortable doing it in one procedure I decided to go with the gastric bypass with the roux-en-y. I think this will be the safest way.

I am just a few weeks away from my surgery day, which is September 22, 2010. I am scared and excited. I have been on a 1200 cal. medically supervised diet plan from Dr. Williams since April, and have lost some weight already, close to 30 pds. He recently put me on phentermine to take until surgery, and that seems to be helping as well.

I feel like this is the best thing I can do for myself, at this point, and I will update this, for myself as well as anyone else whom might want to read it, as I go along. I feel like this is going to be a long, interesting journey, and I can not wait to see where it leads.