elicat

I've enjoyed reading a lot of your posts. It looks like almost everyone is in the US and dealing with insurance requirements and similar journeys towards and after surgery. I live in Italy and things are completely different over here. I'm wondering if anyone else on the forum is in Europe and what their experiences are like? For instance, we have national health care here. I saw the surgeon of my choice for an initial consultation with only a referral from my GP, then got referrals from him for all necessary labs, exams and visits which I will need to bring back to my "prehospitalization" appointment. At that point they evaluate all the results and do things like EKG and full blood panel which are required before any surgery. Unless there are red flags in any of my test results, I'm already on the schedule for October. Cost to me for all of this is only my co-pay for the outpatient visits. Nothing for the surgery. The only preop dietary requirements are low carb for two weeks prior. There is no use of Protein shakes afterwards. Protocol is Clear liquids for three days, full liquids for a week, pureed foods for a week then soft foods for a week. They use baby food to add to the full liquids for protein (meats) plus milk - so lots of Soups - then pureed real foods for soft. Thank god because I cannot manage to drink a shake. It was my biggest fear before the consultation - I couldn't gag one down even if surgery depended on it. They don't seem to be so focused on the protein replacement here and get you back to real foods as soon as possible. I love my surgeon and he is considered one of the top in the country for this procedure, and luckily in my region so not far to travel. He thinks I'm a great candidate and I hope none of my labs or exams prove him wrong. I can't wait!

BTW to answer your question, no talk of supplements yet but I think that will be covered during my prehospitalization day.

Hi there Melanie! I'll be following you into surgery about one month later. There sure do seem to be a lot of different approaches but I'm starting to think that more of them are administrative and actuarial than medical. "Insurance wants me to to... " etc. I have a biology background and have spent a fair bit of time reading the medical literature in English and Italian - what I take away from it is that the diet protocols come down to individual surgeons' preferences but the requirements to lose weight, etc. beforehand seem to be more on the paper pushing side. Most of these best practices in each system have to do with cultural norms about what constitutes disordered eating and healthy diets. Interesting that on the Italian system I didn't need to have a comorbidity even at a very borderline BMI. My surgeon put his thumb on the scale so to speak in order to push me the last few kilos into being accepted. His judgement was enough.

Thanks for the perspective! Good luck on the liquid diet. I can't wait to hear how things went and what your post op diet looks like. Make sure to come back and fill us in, please :-)

Salut! Are you doing yours in the public system or privately? What's the post op diet like in Belgium? Glad to meet you and good luck, it's coming up soon!

Good luck!

Hi Nickisleeve. I had mine today too and thought the same thing about the test, which was almost exactly the same as yours. I actually live in Italy and was sent to the regional eating disorders clinic to have my eval. They treat mainly adolescent anorexics and bulimics, most of the questions didn't apply to me at all. I didn't care much for the psychiatrist either, but that's another story. I've been in therapy with a psychologist for a while and would have rather had her write an eval, but the system here wants me to go to the expert. I swear I weigh as much as three of those anorexic teens put together :-(