abeaher

Hey minimac I am not far from you....Magnolia, Texas a few miles off of 290 and 1488. Glad for you to join us! Is your doc in College Station?

I did a happy dance and called everyone I knew when I got diagnosed with sleep apnea! It was what I needed for ins approval and you would have thought I won the lottery. Anyway, on the way to my consult to ensure a BMI of 40 I stopped for a sirloin burger from Jack in the box, large FF and a Lage tea.....guarenteed to put on an immediate 6-7 lbs. Yes, it was weight sabbatoge....but it worked!! 40.2 BMI. Hey, whatever it took, I was willing to do it! Many people won;'t agree with me because it is contradictory to gain weight to have weightloss surgery and what does that say about how I will do after placement bla bla bla. I was willing to fight for years if I had to to get covered. Good Luck PS My doctor asked my height, they never even measured me so fudge about your height an inch or so and if they measure you then just play dumb. It worked fo me and made a HUGE difference in my BMI.

I vote for mothers of young children or super woman syndrome. The woman who does it all! The hectic life of caring for others and putting ourselves last is a common trend among the modern "super woman" and in many cases is was the root of our weight gain. I think many LBTers would fit this profile.

First Entry. I am embarking on 2 hugely significant journies! First, I was approved Jan 17th for lap band surgery and scheduled for Feb. 22. SO EXCITED!!! Second I am on my second day of sobriety. I am going to start working the steps again either today or tomorrow. I really hope to be successful this time. I need to be clean for my kids. I am EXTREAMLY tired today and can't wait to go home and rest. We are having financial issues too and I don't know how we will make it, but I have faith in God and I know he will provide.

Thanks for all the replies, I am sure it is not easy to put such painful memories out there for everyone to see, but please know that your stories will help to change the life of at least one child....mine and for that I am very grateful. Continue posting, I think this forum is such a GREAT idea.

I have heard that a "plastic" surgeon as opposed to a cosmetic surgeon can perform abdominoplasty on the grounds of a hernia repair or risk of a hernia d/t the stretch out abdominal wall. I don;t know if this is for sure, but worth looking into.

sounds like grounds for a harrassment lawsuit, verbal abuse! That is if you plan on getting another job. Sorry to hear your dilemma, people can be SO ignorant, misery loves company, don't give her the satisfaction.

Nice of you to join us! Great Idea! I am an alcoholic, also with a family history of alcoholism, deceased d/t cirrosis etc. more family members than I have time to name. I have small children and what has driven me to AA is my oldest child who started to realize what was going on. Was your mom recovered when you were growing up? will you share your experience as a child of an alcoholic parent? I am curious to know the view of a child. I don;t talk to my son about my going to AA mainly because I have only been sober now for a couple of weeks and have been trying to get sober for 3 years, I don;t want him to see me fail so I don;t talk to him about it. I think it would be to grown up of a responsibility for him at this age to worry about me. Can you help me to know what he is seeing from the eyes of an 8 year old. Thanks

I don;t have to do the liver shrinking diet..what is it??

Yikes, I honestly have no idea about either company, from reading the ins posts over the last 6 mos they both seem to have pretty strict guidelines for approval. If I were you I might look into the doctor you want to use. You want to make sure that the doc you want to go to is on your plan, not only that but the ins coordinator at that clinic will play a HUGE part in helping you get approved so call around and talk to the ins coord. at the offices you are interested in, you will know immediately how knowledgeable and helpful they will be. I chose my doc in part because I was so impressed with how knowledgable the staff was on how to get ins approval from the nurse to the doc to the nutritionist. If it is covered and you qualify then chances are you can get approval from both companies, but it will be a question of how long it will take, will you get denied and have to appeal etc and most of this can be simplified if the initial submission of info is done properly. Hope this helps, Good Luck!

Back to the initial post....By law insurance companies have 30 days to review a claim and give an answer. So whatever time of year, holidays or not, reps on vacation or not, you waited WAY to long for your answer. I would have threatened to take legal action. But none the less, good for you on your persistance! I hope it pays off for you! Abeaher

Enjoylife, I don;t know where you are and if you have to travel far this might not work for your budget but dR. Spivak in Houston does it foe 9,500 and I am pretty sure that includes your first 4-5 fills.

Lovingwhatis I am interested in the tool you used for the forth step. "The Work of Byron Katie". can you tell me more about it?

I don;t have my band yet, but a friend of mne has lost like 120 lbs in just over a year. Went from a BMI of 47 to being a size 8 (I don;t know her current BMI. Anyway she has since stopped loosing, but she told me that she lost a minimal amount of weight for the first 6 months or so...like maybe 30-40 lbs at best. She said she REALLY started loosing after her band was at a good fill PLUS she said she really had to hype up the exercise. She said she did an hour of tae bo every day...like religiously. for about 4 months and has since slowed to like 3-4 days a week. She attributes her extreme success to her smart eating decisions and relentless exercise. I also had a cousin that had the band and needed to loose about 100-150 lbs and she lost 40 at 6 months and plateaued, a year later she has said that 40 is all she will loose, but she did not put Any effort into an exercise routine. In my research and getting a ton of personal experiences I find a pattern of this type of trend. Are you guys exercising? Believe me..I realize that an hour of Tae Bo on a daily basis is crazy hard and we did not all get this way by following the Billy Blanks nutrition and exercise plan..LOL, but are you challenging yourself as far as increasing your exercise routine? I know I have done a ton of damage to my body and my muscles are buring about as much fat as a fire in the rain and I know building up my muscles again is going to have to be part of my daily routine.:wink:

So I had my first appt yesterday with doc Turnquest in Houston.......I was so nervous....the bariatric coordinator (a medical asst??, I thought she would have been a nurse, but she was nice) is who I met with first. I have been gathering a TON of records and info in preparations for this vist for MONTHS and it was a B***H, let me tell you! I am a nurse and usually have a lot of patients with office staff, but it was a nightmare to get my records (one office tried to charge me $50!!!!) Anyways, so I go in TOTALLY prepared and almost more knowledgable about my approval process than her and she still tells me that I need: 1. letter from PCP 2. Medical clearance form PCP 3. Pulmonary clearance 4. Psych consult 5. nutrition consult And I am really frustrated at this point. I know that these are all things that would benefit me, but I have been researching for 4 years, dieting since I was 10, had just seen the respiratory doc, just had an EKG (for no reason), just had a total blood workup, etc. Plus my ins does not even require all of these things! So I tell her fine.....whatever I have to do and then I see my surgeon......I LOVED HIM!!! He was AWESOME! and when I was discussing all of these future visits,appointments, tests I was being told I needed, he immediately said, you are only 28 years old with no significant hx and you just had surgery a year age(c-section) you don't need any of that!! He said to have the nutrition consult for pre-op reasons and then we will schedule the surgery. I was ELATED!! It just goes to show you that you should ALWAYS talk to the doctor about EVERYTHING the office staff tells you! Yaaaa go me!!:whoo:

The girl at my office said that legally they have 30 days to review the case, maybe you will get lucky....just keep calling, maybe if you bug them they will want to move your case through faster...hah. I about to start the ins approval process, after my nutr consult on Tues we will submit. Let me know how yours goes. Do you think you will get approved, I notice you are close to my age.....do you have comorbidities?

I peel the dead skin off my heals, I will pick and peel until they get sore or bleed. It sucks, on the less disgusting side I also twirl my hair.

Thanks, I appreciate the outreach! I'll check out the site. WOuld love to stay in contact! Actually where I live the meetings are a bit limited, the last time I started attending my options for a sponsor were limited to 1 and she kind of snapped at me, but I realize now that she was just telling me the truth.....like you just said. I also have 3 small kids so it is difficult for me to get to meetings especially if they don;t provide childcare. Seriously, would like to stay in touch...do you sponsor?

Hmmmm. I have worked for dr offices before and we never sent out info to our patients that was brought to our office by drug reps, other doctors, etc. In fact I worked in infertility and we marketed our office by taking info and leaving it with other OBgyns for their waiting rooms, etc. NEVER was it mailed out in some bulk mailing by the obgyn to all "nonpregnant" or "infertile" patients. I would call the doctor that the pamphlet came from and find out how they got your info and who they are, then I would call your doc and ask if they know the doc that sent you the pamphlet. You can probably go to the consumer protection agency, file a report and request an investigation. It sounds to me like there is some sharing of info going on. You might also check HIPPA.

I want to eat what your eating, it sounds yummy!

My prayers are with you, how devastating......God must have one hell of a plan for you!! I am a firm believer that God has a greater plan for you than ANYTHING you could ever imagine. Think about how great you thought your life would be after band success......now imagine that x1,000,000,000,000. I will pray that God shows you his plan soon because I know you can't even think about seeing it now.

So are you saying that it isn't childhood trauma and learning out of survival to respond to situations in a dysfunctional manner that can trigger my addictive behavior? The roots of my addiction were my morbidly obese and alcoholic family members? I don;t know that I buy that....Sure I recognize that my genes make up who I am, but I think other life events make those characteristics more prominent than others. I am not even through all the steps and have not read the big book, but I thought that the point of the steps was to dig out what makes you do what you do, I could have blamed my addiction on my heredity, but what good would that have done, it is not something I can change and the point is to accept the things you cannot change and change the things you can(I can;'t remember the exact prayer). Am I missing the point of the steps here? BTW... sobriety of 6 years and so young, that is great! I too am around your age and am encouraged to see your success.

I suffered from bulimia in college, not severe enough for psych and rehab intervention ( at least I don;t think so). I slowly overcame it, turning point was when I was vomitting blood. Anyhow, it has been about 8 years since and I did not tell my doc. I felt like it was a short time that I did it and I was never actually diagnosed plus it has been 8 years. I think you should come forward with your history for sure especially since it has only been a year and you were actually treated for your condition. YOu want this procedure to work for you, it is a life long change so even if you have to put it off for a couple of days to do an endoscopy it is worth the peace.

You're right, the staff can't be blamed for doing their job and in fact when I told the girl what he had said she was really happy for me even though I am sure she felt like I went over her head. The other staff members' reaction was not so nice. I just get frustratd sometimes with medical personel because being a nurse and having worked in a dr office I was always so mindful of being the patient's advocate and addressing their INDIVIDUAL needs, not just hearding them like cattle and assuming that every problem and course of treatment is the same. I feel like some of these people are just in the wrong profession! I worked in fertility which like bariatrics is a specialty field with undefined insurance coverage and I always made every effort to help the patients feel like they were the only patient I had that day and my #1 goal was to make their journey as painless as possible. I don;t mean to toot my own horn, I mean there are thousands of awesome practitioners and office staff out there that provide this type of compassion and service, it just is irritating when you come across the not so good ones. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Well, I am not an expert on AA or OA, but I can tell you my experience as an addict. I am only 28 years old so I have not really "hurt anyone" with my problem, I just know that I can't control it sometimes. I have neglected some responsibilities or engagements out of embarassment or my desire to indulge in my weakness and for that I make ammends to myself. So you are not apologizing for being fat, you are making ammends for allowing your compulive tendencies to take precidence over more important things in your life. I don't know if this helps, I am certainly not an expert on the 12 steps, I just thought the same thing on this step because I really had not hurt anyone at this point but myself.