Checklist done! Scheduled to see the surgeon!

May 30, 2014

Today I got cleared for gastric bypass surgery! It's been a long and at often times disheartening process, jumping through hoops upon endless hoops and wondering if I was ever going to successfully pass them all.

 

It all started back in 2011, when I first decided to pursue the surgery, after months of deliberation over my options. Back then my life was miserable. I lived in a small dingy studio with my mother, and I couldn't work because my back was shot to hell and I was at that point that many of us face in our lives where you have to make a decision to change or die. I knew I had to do something, and I couldn't get the weight off any other way, I tried. In my 20s I fasted for 3 months and dropped 100 lbs, and it was looking like I was going to have to try that again, or get the surgery. So I called up the closest Bariatric clinic to my house and got started with it all. First there were the phone calls with my insurance which took three months, then there was the psychiatric screening which involved taking a three hour long test, and visits with the doctor for another four months, then I had to lose 25 pounds, and I had no idea how I was going to do that. I mean, wasn't I trying to have surgery to lose weight? Why was I being expected to lose weight... to lose weight? Then I started the pre-op diet and it started falling off, much to my surprise.

 

I'd gotten almost all the way done with the process with that clinic, and then I met Dan. Dan lived in California, and I wanted nothing more than to be with him all the time, so I moved, interrupting everything. Not that it was a bad move, in fact, it was just what I needed to restore my sense of self worth, being loved tends to work like that. When we came back to Minnesota, I picked back up the process, but I had also gained seven more pounds in California, and they wanted me to lose that weight in addition to the 25 that they had initially wanted, two years ago. I was crushed. So I dropped the whole thing. Dan loved me the way I was, and I wanted to go back to eating whatever I wanted.

 

By the time I decided to drop the program, I had already lost 27 pounds, and I thought, I'm losing weight on my own, I'll just keep it up. Then I plateaued, then it started creeping back. So for about a year I lost all desire to pursue weight loss at all. As the year went on and I gained ten more pounds, I started really feeling it in my back, hips and knees and I hated the way I looked more than I ever had. We moved in August to a much nicer, bigger place, and the move devastated me physically. By that time, Dan and my mom were the only people I felt unashamed to be around, because I felt so bad about both my looks and my unemployment, and I had totally shut myself off from any social activities. So sometime in January 2014 I made up my mind to get the surgery after all. It was just after a bad episode with my back, and I couldn't move for like two days.

 

Anyway, since we moved so far from my last clinic, I looked for something closer to home and found Fairview Southdale Weight Loss Clinic, and I attended an information session with them in February. The things that Dr Benn said at the presentation really made me realize that now was the time to do this, and that I was at more of a risk for serious health problems than I ever realized before. My mom and Dan were with me that night, and they both absolutely agreed that I should do it. So I decided there and then that I wouldn't back out this time, that I could handle the idea of someone going in and rearranging my insides, and that I was going to give life another shot.

 

Dr Benn said many inspiring things that night, and one of them stuck out in my mind. He said that you should see your surgery date as your second birthday, because that's really what it is. This is your second shot at a healthy life, a chance to do the things that you've been unable to do, been stopping yourself from doing. This is cause for celebration and you should treat it with the respect it deserves. He said something about people coming in after surgery showing off their new clothes and stuff and they are so much more self confident than ever before. That's going to be me.

Anyway, I went to the new clinic, I told them how far I'd already gotten with the other clinic, and we got started. I wound up only needing to see the psychologist who did my testing previously twice until he cleared me. I called my insurance and they cleared me right away. I had three visits with the dietician, and on the third she cleared me. My lab work came back saying that I'm anemic, which I already knew, so I was told to get back on iron, which I did, but which made me horribly constipated. I got a new primary doctor, and she got me on some awesome laxatives to help with that, so that worked out.

 

The ONLY thing that looked like it was going to stand in my way was my teeth. See, I've had three teeth pulled. One on my lower left, two on my lower right side. After surgery, your “outlet” (the hole going from your new 'pouch' to the intestines) is only about the diameter of the tip of your pinky finger. So, you need to be able to chew your food to applesauce consistency, or you get blockage, and that can make you throw up. Throwing up when you've just had someone rearrange all your insides and they're all sore and stapley is hell, apparently, and they need to make sure that its not going to happen too much, for your own sake. I get that. I don't want to throw up as much as they don’t want me to throw up. So when Melissa, the PA, said that due to my missing teeth, she wanted me to get a partial denture on my jaw before surgery, I was like sure, whatever you want. In the back of my mind I knew that I could chew my food fine. The surgeon at the old clinic thought I could chew my food fine. The doctor that did my physical at the old clinic thought I could chew my food fine. But I was going to go along with this, because she wanted me to.

 

So, of course there was a two month wait to get into the dentist for a cleaning, and the date I finally got wound up being the day before my last dietician visit. That worried me, because I knew that the work I'd need to get done was going to take months to complete, and I hate waiting. So I went to the dentist, they gave me a hell of a teeth cleaning, (my teeth are still having nightmares of that cleaning) and then started to go over what would need to be done to get a partial denture going for me. First, I'd need a crown on my sole surviving molar on my bottom right, and then when that was in place, they'd do some stuff involving drilling holes into my other teeth so that the partial could hook into them, and that'd all take at least three months to get done. Oh and also, it'd all cost me about $1500 out of pocket, due the day the work got done- no they don't bill, sorry.

 

I walked out of there utterly destroyed. I knew I couldn't afford any of that, I'm on state friggin' health insurance, they should have known that when they set the appointment and realized that hey, this girl is poor, I bet she can't afford this work. So the next day I had to go to the dietician appointment with this knowledge in my head, and try to seem happy when I was miserable, and try to be excited when she gave me her clearance to proceed with surgery. Then I dropped the bomb on her about the dental work and her face fell. She said that it could stop me from having the surgery if I couldn't get this work done, and that it was now between me and Melissa whether or not I could proceed.

 

She kind of hurried out of the appointment and I could barely move. All the work, over all the years, all the ups and downs, the hopefulness, the doubt, it all flashed before my eyes and I called Melissa then and there and pleaded with her to let me work something out. I promised to use a food processor, mush food up with my fork before eating, eat friggin' baby food, if that's what it'd take. I needed her to work something out with me. She was out of the office that day, so I had to wait until the next day to know my fate.

 

I worked through so many scenarios in my head; would she be stuck on the denture and just shut the whole thing down? Would she want me to come in and demonstrate my ability to chew food? (Which I was totally willing to do. Pride is out the door by this point.) Would she blow it off and just be like it's fine, whatever? What would be my reaction to her reaction? Would I give up the fight and just try to lose the weight on my own? Would I return to the last clinic and try to pick up there where I left off? I was wracked with anxiety and felt like a caged rat, waiting. So I commenced getting drunk (one of the last times I'll be able to for a year) and playing video games with Dan to take my mind off of it all. 

 

I woke up super early thanks to Acorn (my cat) and instantly the anxiety hit again. I texted Dan to see if anyone had called him, he said no. I debated between calling her again and just waiting and I decided to call. Again she didn't pick up but I left another message saying that I really could chew fine, and I'd show her if she needed me to.

 

Within an hour, the phone rang. It was her. My heart nearly jumped out of my throat when I heard her voice. My hands were shaking. We talked for not even two minutes, and just like that, she cleared me. Instant release of happy chemicals in my body. It felt like a dam burst. The anxiety flipped over to excitement, the doubt, to elation. It was... finally happening? To me? Now?

 

A scheduling agent called me 10 minutes later and scheduled my appointment to see my surgeon in six days. After that, I have to wait for my insurance authorization to get to the clinic, which can take three weeks, and then I get scheduled for surgery. Then I have a pre-surgery class I have to attend, which is when they make my final weigh-in, and I have to be down 10 lbs. I already am, so I just have to maintain.

 

I'm... having the surgery. It's been three years in this cycle of going back and forth, learning everything I can about it all, trying so hard to prove that I want this... and now it's real. So now I'm starting to come up with things I want to do when I'm thin. I need to start a list so that after the surgery, when I'm in pain and regret my decision, I can look back at it and remember why I did it. So here goes.

 

1- Belly dancing.

2- Cute underwear.

3- Biking.

4- Fertility.

5- Osteoarthritis.

6- Employment.

7- Self-esteem.

8- New chance at life.

9- Better sex.

 

That's eight things now, I'm going to come back and add things as I can think of them. Number nine just popped into my head. Nine things now. I think that's a pretty good start. I'm still in shock, having waves of emotions ranging from excitement, to anxiety, to nausea, to pride in my self, to straight up fear. I did it. For me.

 

I DID IT! 

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