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I love all these positive stories about great experiences! Dr. Kelly is a consummate professional, and the more we post positively, the faster all the BS drama will go away! Im so happy for all of you, and can't wait to be sleeved by one of the best!

Unfortunately, due to a reaction I had to my anesthesia, I am still in the hospital, but aside from that I think everything is going well. My doctor did come in to check on me this morning and was asking me what all I kept down yesterday (liquid diet) and as I was telling him I saw his eyes get wide bc someone had given me apple juice. It says I can have fat free apple juice, but this was no sugar added and I drank two of them yesterday (4 oz each). I had no idea bc the nurses were bringing it so I thought they probably knew what they were giving me. Oops! I know now and won't do that again, but he was afraid of my body dumping bc of it although that didn't happen. Anyways, hope everyone else's surgeries and few days post op are going smoothly! I will hopefully overcome this postoperative myalgia soon and get to go home and see my puppy dogs. I'd love to hear how things are for everyone else. I am interested to get on a scale, but haven't had the chance yet. Best, Rach

Yes, and Fed Ex doesn't fall into any of those categories. You need to let your HR person know! Maybe he/she was confused or just didn't present the info very well. I'm sure that corporate HR is in the know but maybe they need to explain better to their team.

Fyre, check out this test to see if a company is a covered HIPAA entity. Fed Ex would not qualify. This is from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services which helps administer HIPAA: http://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/HIPAA-Administrative-Simplification/HIPAAGenInfo/AreYouaCoveredEntity.html Are You a Covered Entity? The Administrative Simplification standards adopted by Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) apply to any entity that is a health care provider that conducts certain transactions in electronic form (called here a "covered health care provider"). a health care clearinghouse. a health plan. An entity that is one or more of these types of entities is referred to as a "covered entity" in the Administrative Simplification regulations.

Awesome job! Keep up the hard work! I'd discourage the biggest looser bc you can google how horridly they treat the contestants. Make them exercise with injuries & they dehydrate themselves before weigh in so they don't get cut. I think that a good personal trainer that is local to you can be of help. They may be persuaded to take you on probono. I also would look into some Of the freebie fitness routines on youtube/ on demand & have your dr say if they're appropriate for you? Good luck! allons-y

Hello, I have bc/bs of ga. If u are out of network. I was told u have to pay everything before the surgery of or get your own financing. I was also told on the phone I would not a 6 month diet plann, My bmi was 40.7. I learned to call behind the doctors office and double check everything they say. Because to get u in there they will say u are covered and then hit u with u got to pay this and that . But I feel your pain. I started Aug. 12, 2008. I had to go to 2 sleep studies. Now I have to wait till Oct. 30 for my appt. with the doctor. But I am trying to be patient along with being excited about the surgery.I hope everything goes well for you. Try(care credit for medical financing). good luck

So, my husband just said “ I support you but I don’t think you need this surgery”……what do I do with that? Am I wrong to see this as non support? I looked at him with tears in my eyes and told him “ I NEED this” and he is somehow now the victim of an assault on his psyche bc I won’t let him have an opinion? What? I expressed to him that I appreciated his support for whatever size I am was great and that I really needed his support without the “but” and he was offended. Wtf do I do with this? I am just baffled at how this has exploded……any advice?

anca~ Thank you for your insight. I do appreciate it. My parents had a very rocky relationship and my mother kept me from my father....shoot, Im 33 and she still tries. She did what she thought was best though. Looking back on it all, I dont know what she accomplished by not letting us see each other. My father had a lot of issues that were part of her decision to stop us from seeing each other. But he could have come to the house and seen me, we could have spent days together. I have an AWESOME relationship with my father now and I really think it sucks that we were held away from one another for years!!! I spent a lot of time hating him for things that were force fed into my head.......hating him for things I couldn't have changed then and certainly can't change now......I dont want our son to grow up thinking I kept them two apart. I know it hurts a child when they dont see their parent for what ever reason. You sound like the rare case where your comfortable without your dad in your life. I wasn't comfortable with it. I cried for him day in and day out. My son occassionally asks for his father. I call him on the phone and let the two of them talk...and today when his father came for him, my son couldn't get his hat and coat on quick enough~ So, I know he misses his daddy. I do believe taking it one day at a time is going to really help us all out right now. Talk to you soon~

I won't have a hospital stay Bc I'm having a mini sleeve, it's the same as a gastric sleeve just the procedure is completed differently and is minimally invasive but i will b in recovery for 4 hours. Is there anything that anyone recommends taking with them even tho I will not be staying in the hospital ?

My Federal Employees Blue Cross Standard pays for 90% of the Usual and Customary fees - i.e, I pay 10% for the surgeon and the facility. Can anybody out there give me an idea of how that translates to my actual out of pocket costs for each of those items? Just trying to get informed! Thanks alot!!:thumbup:

I stood 2 nights bc of vomiting, slight fever and irregular blood pressure. It was all over the place. But I didn't mind. It gave me time to adjust before going home and being on my own. Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

I have the same ins company. My paperwork was submitted on June 20th and i got my approval on July 12th. My case was closed by my nurse bc she stated she never heard from me after i would call and leave several voice messages. I would call back and never get an answer bc she called during my working hours.So my case had to be reopened and a few days later i got a call from her with my approval and we went over basic surgery stuff and any questions i had. So just make sure u call and check in with your nurse from time to time and document times and dates you call but overall the experience was easy.

There is no reason you can't lose 100% of your excess weight. It may be a challenge, but MANY people do it. Now, I will say that shooting for a "normal" BMI could be BS because the BMI chart is ridiculous. MANY athletes are categorized as "obese" simply because of their height/weight. BMI does not take body fat into account at all, which is ridiculous. There is no reason to expect that you will only lose 50% of your excess weight either. YOU WILL DO WHAT YOU WORK FOR. YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS WILL DIRECTLY EQUAL YOUR EFFORTS. That's really the bottom line.

I was having issues with that for a bit after surgery. I just didn't want to eat and even thinking about taking my pills in the morning made my stomach queasy. I just stick with food that had little taste such as vanilla yogurt, took my zofran and changed my multi vitamin bc that made me nauseated. Eventually I felt better. Now I haven't had any nausea but can't wait to be able to stop the omeprazole. He said 3 mos on it. I ate bc I knew I had to. I hope it goes away soon for you, but I would take the nausea med and eat something mild, I figure there was a reason they gave me like 6 bottles of liquid zofran in my prescription before surgery.

I agree with what the the post above me said. I got my hair done a few weeks after getting the sleeve and am still shedding as I was before. Haven't hit the 3 month mark yet when you lose a ton of hair but it's bc of internal. Not what you do externally to your hair. Do it! It'll make you feel good as well

I have medicaid or its called medi cal here... I also, due to my complex health issues and living with my mom and Obama making sure insurance companies cant deny ppl with pre existing conditions have private primary insurance with blur shield... they also required a six month supervised nutrition, support group attendance and other random things like illustrating you have tried and failed several weight loss plans. I have a ppo, it is expensive and still I had hoops aswell..itsit's no jusMedicaid that demands this.... I think, they believe they are trying o help ppl prepare for the surgery...most insurance companies, including government ones don't care about research studies They don't really want to pay but if they do, tgey try and throw together some resembles of care and follow up...just my cynical opinion here I do feel, that at least with medi cal here in Cygeythey approved adding the sleeve ratgerrather fast to li ofif procedures they will cover cover so to me, that indicates some desire to help patients plus it saves them economically bc being really fat, getting comorbidities, medications, tests, er visits cost a lot more then weight loss surgery...

I had my surgery on October 3rd. Maybe 1 week after surgery I started having very dark brown discharge. I started my BC on October 29. It stopped it for not even a week. Should I call my OBGYN about the discharge? There is no blood, just very very dark brown discharge. It's driving me crazy!!

"3 week stall" (which really isn't a stall) is almost something we need to expect... but no one tells us about. Honestly, don't try to break it. It's not really a stall, it's your body trying to adjust. You're seeing what goes in to your body, but you aren't seeing what's happening on the inside. Your body's kind of freaking out right now, trying to survive this famine. Your body doesn't know it's supposed to be eating less, your body just knows how to survive. To it, there's not much food, so it must be starving. Reserve energy "troops" are being mobilized out of bunkers like your liver and into your bloodstream. Your metabolism may have been given the order to lay low and avoid enemy fire. Your body is pulling resources like Fluid away from more well-fed troops and giving it to the ones who aren't doing so hot. All of this fluctuation is behind most things we call "stalls" (it's also behind most unexplainable or quick weight losses/gains). Your body is doing exactly what it should do. Don't have a knee jerk reaction and try to "fix" something, because there's nothing wrong and nothing to fix. If you try to fix, you're just going to throw things off even more. After about 5 or 6 weeks of this, then you can start looking at what you're doing and what you night be able to change, but even then you can do everything right and see no results. It's just a fact of being alive.

I’m scheduled to have my VGS March 19th but I’m reading everyone’s posts about being consistently hungry. I want to do the sleeve so I’m not hungry all the time! I thought the whole point was to not feel so much hunger. Can I drink fiber between meals to not feel so hungry? Does anyone have words of advice for this bc im considered not doing the VGS since I do t want to feel hungry for the next 30+ years!

Well I am 2 years out from my lapband surgery and decided that now I would like to have all of this extra skin removed. I had an initial PS consult in February. My surgeon is Dr. Michael Beckenstein in Birmingham. I worked in surgery for 6 years and I really liked his work. He submitted the procedure to my insurance and it was denied. I was heartbroken. It turned out to be a blessing, because that is how I learned that my insurance would not cover any complication involving my band. (I had bc/bs which covered my band - then I changed jobs and switched to Viva). Luckily my HR department was not aware of this either and let me change to bc/bs (which is more expensive) before open enrollment. Sooo I went back to Dr. Beckenstein last week and he is resubmitting all the paperwork to bc/bs. He see's no issues with getting them to conver the panni. The rest however I will have to pay for. Luckily it will only be $1,800. So I am okay with that. It was submitted earlier this week, so everyone please keep their fingers crossed that it will be covered. I have been reading other stories on here and it really is helping with what to expect. Hope everyone is well!! Thanks!

Nicole, I've said it before, but it bears repeating... "People" (like this Nurse friend of yours) suck... For the record, none of what you repeated from him is true at all. I'm -- I believe -- 13-14 weeks out now. I've stopped counting.. Eating: I eat what I want, but strongly make every effort to eat right. I just eat very small bits of it, so if I go to Ford's Fish Shack and order a Smoked Salmon dinner, I already know I'll get 3 to 4 meals out of it for the same price I was paying before. Most economical, and most incorrect on his part. Shots: Ok.. A given. For most of us, there are about 2 weeks (14 days) post surgery where we have to give ourselves injections of Lovenox, which is a blood thinner. I'm TERRIFIED of needles, but they made me do the first one in the hospital and I realized that the needles they use now are so incredibly tiny that you don't even feel them... I'm really a big wimpy baby where pain and shots are concerned, so please believe me when I say that for *me* to be able to do it, absolutely anyone can do it. "it messes up your entire gastric system": K? Say Wha?!? What a declarative BS, idiotic, non-statement... It's like the WLS equivalent of "bringing up Hitler in a forum debate".. WLS surgery is a big deal. You may only see the 5 little cuts, but your body takes several months to adjust. That being said, nothing is "messed up". If anything, your gastric system is put to right, where you are then restricted from eating badly. food also becomes like the number one focus of your life for a while as you learn how to eat right. Something that most of us NEVER knew how to do pre-op. The benefits of WLS for "people of size" are extremely well documented. Major, MAJOR benefits which -- depending on your surgery -- are usually long-lasting. Otherwise, the number crunchers at the insurance companies would fight you tooth and nail before spending a dime of the money they've already taken from you... The end result, and I mean this very sincerely is that your "friend" is an idiot. At least where Weight Loss Surgery is concerned. While I absolutely understand your hesitance to share your intent with others, as you've discovered, not everyone is an idiot... My "learn to be quiet" moment came during the 6-month mandated insurance wait when I told a co-worker who instantly said "oh, you'll never qualify for that, you don't need that, I'd never approve you for something like that", etcetera... Now I'm 60 pounds lighter than when I started this process and I have absolutely no regrets... The funniest thing happened though. Ever since my bypass, my aforementioned co-worker has become like the first one in the room who "notices" and compliments me on my progress, so there's hope.. Anyone that gives you negative? "Show them the hand" and just truck on with your bad self. We're here for you, Wayne

Mine eval almost didn't get passed bc he said I was unreasonable to have 130 lbs as a goal (I'm 5'6") and that I hoped to lose 100 lbs in one year. It sounds like alot of us had issues. I wish you all the best and if it takes longer than maybe it was meant to be for some reason.

i wil have to agree…..not drinking while eating is the hardest part of this whole journey. i guess it's because i really don't understand what the big deal about it is. i just had my sleeve done 3/10. i don't think i'm getting enough Water bc scales really aren't moving so much. i am certainly not eating too much. i don't know what the deal is. any advice?

Both of those are up to your doc, but my thought with the yogurt is no bc the fruit may have skin or seeds which could be hard on your digestion... What i did was buy peaches in light syrup, pureed them and mixed in vanilla yogurt.... Additionally watch out for berry yogurt as they may have seeds that could irritate your gi tract if you have them too soon...... Also muller makes yogurt that has fruit completely pureed but is a bit pricier

Well after visiting with the surgeon she recommended the sleeve because I have no other ailments ..like diabetes or high cholesterol etc...she said sleeve has less risk so after thinking about it and talking to my husband I've decided on sleeve. It does Co cern me bc the stomach is bigger....but I'm really going to give it my all and hopefully it'll work.