Update! Met w/the surgeon!

I had my first appointment with Dr. M. on November 28th.  He is really awesome.  He feels that I am an ideal candidate for surgery and I really NEED the surgery.  I told him about my reflux problems and another problem I’ve had in the past (throwing up w/lots of pain).  He thinks that the latter is my gallbladder.  He gave me the info to set up my pre-surgical testing, and scheduled me for an upper endoscopy to try to get an idea of what is going on with my reflux.

I had the upper endoscopy done on December 11.  It came back clear–no physical issues he could see.  He did again stress the need for me to have the lap-band surgery.  I have my day of pre-surgical testing on Monday, Dec 17th.  I’m nervous.  The hospital schedules everything in one day, so that day, I’ll have my gallbladder ultrasound, an EKG and stress test, pulmonary function test, and meet with a psychitrist and a nutritional counselor.  If I get through all of that ok, everything will be sent to the insurance company for approval.  I meet all of their requirements, so I’m hoping it will be a quick and easy process.

I’m excited and I’m nervous.  I’m worried that the insurance company will find some reason to reject me, and if that happens, I don’t know what I’ll do.  I’m excited because this is going to be the start of a new life for me.  I can’t wait to start losing weight and getting healthy.

I’ll update more after hell day on Monday.

Why I am choosing surgery…

On October 3, I was scheduled for surgery with Dr. S.  I’d been having a lot of bleeding and it has just become a constant never ending problem.  He wanted to do something called endometrial ablation, where they treat your uterus to stop the lining from growing and you don’t get periods anymore.  Well, in order to do that, he required that I have a tubal ligation at the same time.  So, I went in for surgery and while I was on the table, I stopped breathing.  When they tie your tubes laparoscopically, they have to tilt the table head down.  Well, because I’m overweight and have a big stomach, the weight went onto my lungs and I stopped breathing, even though I was intubated.  So Dr. S. got me upright, they got me breathing again and he stopped the surgery.  Eric wouldn’t give consent for him to do an open procedure (which would’ve meant at least 2-4 weeks off of work–impossible) so he closed me up and sent me to recovery.  At that point I was fine, so he went to see his last patient at another hospital and said he would be back to see me after that.  Well, they tried to bring me out of the anesthesia and extubate me.   When they did that, my oxygen saturation dropped again and they had to reintubate.  At this point, they kind of freaked and started playing “cover our asses”.  They let me sleep about 15 more minutes and then tried again.  This time, I came out of it just fine…actually, I came out of it kicking and screaming because they were doing a breathing treatment and the mask freaked me out.  I was told that there had been some complications and I was being admitted to ICU at least overnight.  Once I got to ICU, Eric came in and told me what had happened.  He was the one to break the news that the procedures were not even completed (which I thought was very unprofessional of the recovery room team…that’s not his job).  At that point, Dr. S. came back, explained what happened and said, everything seems fine now, I think you could go ahead and go home.  Then he went out to talk to my ICU nurse, who finally informed him of the recovery room crisis (he was a bit pissed that he didn’t get a call before then).  So he came back in and told me that they wanted a full cardiac workup because they thought I might have had a mild heart attack at some point while I was under.  Or they thought I’d gotten fluid in my lungs, but I already had a chest xray and it was clear.  So I spent the night, got an EKG, an echo, about 10 pokes for blood, etc.  Well, all of that turned out fine, and it wasn’t my heart, or my lungs, it was just because I’m fat (which one doctor actually had the nerve to just come out and say).  Oh and during the night, I had several drops in my oxygen level so they said I needed a sleep study done because they thought I had sleep apnea (I had the sleep study done and I do, in fact, have pretty bad sleep apnea.  I’m now using a CPAP machine at night).

So, I had to recover from surgery (complete with slight infection in an incision) for nothing.  I saw Dr. S. a week later and we had a long talk about my options.  Right now, he refuses to do anything on me until we know my lungs are healed from all the trauma at the hospital.  Then he said he can refer me out for a different tubal procedure then do the ablation.  But what he really recommended is the LAP-BAND surgery.  He has had a few other patients have it done and they are all doing well, losing weight, way healthier, etc.  He said my PCOS is out of control and this is the only way I will lose weight.