MGB

So its been forever and a day since I last wrote. I have kinda been putting it off since almost all of my time as been consumed by something I didn't want to talk about. But since now it is definitely going to happen I might as well spill the beans. So I have decided to have the Mini Gastric Bypass surgery. It is of course a weight loss surgery. I usually don't admit anywhere online that I am overweight because it just turns people away. But since this is going to be such a major impact on my life I just have to be able to post my struggles and achievements on here. It has been such a rollercoaster just trying to get this surgery it is unreal.
So first of all the deal with the MGB. It is the best, safest, most affordable weight loss surgery available. It has the lowest complications out of all other weight loss surgeries. And with all other surgeries (ie RNY, lap band, etc) they can fail, (ie able to gain weight back). With the mini gastric bypass people loose the weight and maintain it. Plus it is revisable/revers able, unlike many other surgeries. So if I loose too little I could get the bypass length increased and loose more. Or if I loose too much it can be fixed. So it all seems great right? Well there are downfalls. I can never have Alcohol or soda again in my life. Apparently red wine may be okay after a couple years, but nothing hard. Giving up Dr. Pepper was actually a hard choice. But I know it will be worth it to be thin. Also I will have to take multivitamins for the rest of my life. I am not a pill person. I forget all the time, but I will make it work, because again it is worth it.
This surgery is only about 10 years old and not too well known. This is because the surgeon who created it only lets doctors do it after working with him, and have done it on tons of people for the experience curve. Therefore only him and one other doctor have a clinic open to offer it currently. One is in Las Vegas and the other right here in Florida, right by the hospital I live by. So I knew that it was fate.
So most insurance won't pay for obesity related things, and mine is no different. So I had to come up with the money myself. The usual charge is $17,000. that includes everything; surgery, hospital stay, followups, etc. But employees at the hospital get 50% off and sometimes can get their family the discount. Luckily my mom works there and after talking to quite a few people, including the surgeon who does this, everyone agreed to give me the discount. So I still had to come up with $8500. Abe and I applied for loans and were rejected a lot. We finally found a company to give us $7500, so we figured we could come up with the rest and thought it was a done deal. But there were problems, but I'll get to that in a minute. After thinking I had the money I began trying to get this surgery rolling.
I went to a "clinic" which is where new patients and some post ops go to talk to the surgeon. You can ask him anything and everything. It is a requirement to go to to have surgery. There I got my manual and packet. The manual is 130 pages of information, and I had to read it all. Which was harder than it sounds because of the material. But know I am very well informed about my surgery and others, and what to expect. The packet is all the paperwork and such required, and it is a lot of stuff. I had to go to my doctor and get him on board. He had to write a support letter and do a physical. He was suppose to order my lab work too, but there were issues. He had a family emergency vacation. But his office had the lab orders for me and I just had to pick them up by noon. However when I got there at 11:30am they were gone. I tried everything to get my labs. I went to the lab place at least 4 or 5 times in one day with new attempts. I was able to get a doctor who i used to work for to write the order. And I finally got my labs done.
It was important to get them done that day for a reason. It usually is required to have the packet in 2 weeks before surgery and I needed to have the surgery before I started school on the 25th. So I was rushing everything. The surgeon's office agreed to let me turn it in without the 2 week requirement. They just had to rush it, but it was still a very tight deadline to meet. I had to go get a psych eval. And actually read the manual. I had to write a 9-10 page letter answering all sorts of questions. It was crazy hard and long to do. I had to have a family support letter that was notarized. And I had to contact 10 former MGB patients. The easy part was actually contacting them, since another requirement is to join this web group, and there are tons of contacts that way. plus it is a great place to get information.
It was a crazy time getting the packet done. And there were a lot of ups and down... one day it was working out and I was going to get the surgery, other days stuff would go wrong and appear I wouldn't get the surgery. And that rollercoaster is still going. Thursday we went to get our loan money, and they screwed us. They made a critical error and it turned out they could only give us $3900. So we were a lot short. We ran around Friday trying to get loans and my parents offered to cosign. It was a day of craziness that fell through. But my uncle George, (yes one who I often complained about) had the money and offered it send it to us. So OMG, my Uncle was a life saver. And I am so grateful. Of course we have to pay him back, but without interest! So it was amazing. We had to get the $3900 from the loan company and the rest is coming from my uncle. So the surgery is definitely happening. BTW, it is happening on the 13th of Aug. That's just 4 days away. I will have to stay overnight in the hospital. I am really excited, and sad because I have to stop drinking Dr.pepper today. But I gotta go because I have to go to fill out some paperwork I missed in my packet.