***I apologize now because this is a REALLY long entry. ***

I am someone who has been over weight my whole life, in fact the last time I remember being thin was in 3^rd grade. But over time I just ignored my problem until my senior year of high school. I realized I was going to college and needed to do something about this problem. Unfortunately after plenty of yo-yo diets, weight watchers, Nutrisystem and so on I still couldn’t get my eating under control. It wasn’t until last year when I decided to attend a WLS meeting at the Hospital of Central Connecticut. From that point I was determined to go through with this! I initially wanted the lap-band, but after some research I realized for the amount of weight I want to lose the band is not the best fit for me, and I really need something permanent so I went with the Sleeve.

I began the processes in June of 2011, but chickened out and wanted to give one more try at losing weight on another fad diet… obviously that failed because I am here, haha.

After starting the process all over Ii took a long time to get to where I am now. I was lucky enough to not have to jump through hoops the way other people on here have mentioned. My insurance covered a great deal of the surgery as long as I met some of the medical necessities, and luckily (unlucky) for me, the fact that I was at a BMI of 50 at the age of 21, had worsening asthma, and had mild hyper tension, it was all enough to get the go ahead from both doctor and Cigna.

The hospital of central Connecticut only requires a psychological evaluation, a meeting with a nutritionist, and a couple other things that I don’t remember right now, but my Insurance said besides medical necessity I needed to get an EKG, psychological evaluation, and to meet with a nutritionist for 6 consecutive months. After I completed that it was all a matter of last minute pre op appointments with Dr. Barba including an Endoscopy, where he determined that I had a hiatal hernia that he would fix during surgery. I then found out my surgery date, which was July

10^th…I couldn’t have been anymore excited and nervous.

I was getting all sorts of worked up about the surgery, I was more nervous about the surgery it’s self then focusing on the benefits afterwards. “Was I going to wake up? How badly would it hurt? Will I be able to tolerate all the foods I liked before? What kind of complications might I have?”... these were the questions that kept repeating in my head.

It wasn’t until July 6^th when I received a letter from my insurance company saying that I still wasn’t approved for my surgery did I then started to not just worry but now PANIC. “HOW CAN I NOT BE APPROVED YET? I WAS TOLD MONTHS AGO THAT EVERYTHING WAS ALL SET, THAT I HAD EVERYTHING IN. MY SURGERY IS IN 4 DAYS! (of course I got this letter on a Friday so my insurance and my Doctors office wasn’t going to be able to tell me for sure if I was or wasn’t approved till Monday). I spent hours of the phone trying to get things straightened out, and I thought that there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel! I had gotten in touch with someone who said that it was my insurances’ fault and that they would rush my paperwork. I was given an approval and an apology! It was such a relief for me because I was so worried after all this time that it wasn’t going to happen. But of course, my approval was too go to be true…Monday morning I got a call for my Doctors office saying they STILL didn’t have an approval and when I told them it wasn’t possible because I had gotten an approval Friday, the office was more then confused. I knew it was going to be a long and stressful day for me. I called my insurance again and that’s when they told be that no I was not approved, in fact I had been DENIED! You could only imagine how infuriated I was. “IT’S JULY 9^TH AND YOU ARE TELLING ME I HAVE BEEN DENIED!? WHY HADN’T I BEEN INFORMED DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS AGO!!.”. Turns out I was missing 3 things…one thing was something that the hospital forgot to fill out, the other was an “up to date” psychology evaluation, and the last piece was a letter of medical necessity from my primary care doctor. To say the least I was in tears because I thought I had all of that taken care of back in June. Turns out my evaluation was 2 months too old ( they wanted it within 6 months), and they wanted not just a referral from my doctor, but specific details and for it to clearly state that he thinks that it would be in my best interest to go through with this surgery…. I honestly don’t know how we did it but I was able to get my evaluation updated, a check up by my doctor, and a letter from him all in that afternoon and submitted to insurance. I just had to wait till the next morning to find out if I was approved or not.

My original time for surgery on the 10^th was 10am…but 10 am came and went and we were still waiting to hear from my doctor’s office. My adrenalin was rushing and I was so anxious about what the final result would be. Finally at 12 pm we got a phone call saying to head over ASAP they would get my in for a 3:30 surgery time.

We got to the hospital and everything was so fast, they brought me right up to the surgical floor. They got me changed into a gown, hooked up to an iv, and just had me sit and wait…..I waited for about 2 hours before a Doctors showed up. I was running on what must have been purely adrenalin because it wasn’t until the anesthesiologist showed up did I begin to panic and get nervous. Once he left I couldn’t stop crying. I kept thinking “I can leave, I don’t have to go through with this, it would be so easy. Just tell them no!”…but I had made up my mind, and I knew if didn’t do this nothing was going to help me. Dr. Barba finally showed up and went over everything that was going to happen during surgery, how long recovery would be and then explained about how even though my insurance finally approved my surgery for VSG they did not approve paying for hiatal hernia. I was happy to hear that he agreed that my insurance was crazy and that he was just going to fix it anyways for no charge as long as we said it was okay.

As I was getting ready to be wheeled away in my bed, I remember being offered some Valium to calm me down. The anesthesiologist saw just how nervous I was, and I’m glad he did because it was so tempting to jump and run. But a few moments later I was so calm and relaxed. I felt almost a bit drunk… I was still tearing up a little in the OR so he gave me a little more Valium as I watched everyone in the room prep for my surgery. I remember getting on the table and being strapped down in position, and I was then introduced to everyone in the room. They then asked me to start breathing through the mask on my face and of course they only thing I could think was “I hope I wake up”… I was out like a light.

When I woke up in the recovery room I was in a LOT of pain. I remember yelling because it hurt so much, and I felt like I couldn’t breath. They just kept telling me to press my button and try to administer more pain relief. I eventually fell back to sleep, but my parents told me later that I was in the recovery room almost 4 hours because I was in more pain then they figured I would be.

The next thing I remember is being in my new room with my parents there. I woke up just for a little just to tell my dad “I did it!”.

The first night was really rough, I was in so much pain and would press my button enough just to fall back asleep, but within 30 minutes to an hour I was wide awake in pain again. The nurses were so nice and helpful, I’m really glad they were so patient with me. The next day was a lot harder, because I hadn’t walked at all that night, and so I was not only in pain, but exhausted from the lack of sleep. I also had to do my blue dye test and my upper GI test all within a couple hours of each other on the same day. Once I passed both they gave me some ice chips and jell-o…I was then told I was being discharged. I really could not believe I hadn’t even spent a full 24 hrs at the hospital and they were discharging me!

All I have to say is thank god for liquid oxycodone. It was an hour-long drive back to my parent’s house where I would be staying to recover.

The first few days were pretty hard, and if I wasn’t in pain I was sleeping because of the pain meds. Breathing still hurt because of the gas from the surgery and sleeping lying down didn’t happen until day 4 post op. But I found out that gas-x helps a lot for gas, only taking half the dose of my liquid pain meds didn’t turn me into a zombie, and that I could begin to sleep laying on my back much sooner then I thought I would be. Because trust me, with all that pain I really was starting to think “what the hell did I do to myself”…

Tomorrow will be one week post op and I am much happier with my choice. Thought weight loss was slow this first week, I did lose some weight and I’m feeling back to normal again.

The only issue I have now...I constantly feel hungry. Maybe it’s my lake of protein? I really hope that’s it, because this is not head hunger. This is the wake you up in the middle of the night because it hurts so bad, kind of hunger. I just can’t wait to be eating real food again, and happily watching the lbs drop.