kyzir
After much debate and research May of 2005 I decided that I was ready to have WLS. My husband was behind me not to lose the weight but just so I would be healthy. At the beginning of May I went to see Dr. Babineau and started the whole process. At the time I had insurance through Aetna so I had to go through 3 months of nutrition classes. I also had my psyche eval and went through everything with flying colors. I gathered all my documentation and off it went to Aetna. I was mentally prepared for the surgery and everything that it would entail. Then at the end of September I received my letter of denial. I was crushed. Their reasoning for denying the surgery was because I had to have 5 years where my BMI was over 40. In my 5th year my BMI was 39.2. So because of .8 I was denied the surgery. That was pretty hard to swallow. So I said screw it and went on with life.
Well time went by and the company I worked for was sold. We became a new company and with the new company we got new insurance through Cigna. I have heard some horror stories about dealing with Cigna so I wasn’t real optimistic. On August 20th, 2006 I went back to Dr. Babineau to try again. They said I pretty much already had everything so they would just send it to the insurance and see what happened. Well time went by and I didn’t hear anything. I did try calling Cigna once and they said it was still under approval. After that I just put it out of my mind. By the end of October I figured that I had no chance and I decided to start seeing a fertility doctor so my husband and I could start a family.
On November 1st I went shopping for some much needed clothes; I had gone without for a really long time and I thought it was time to treat myself. $600 dollars later I had a wonderful new wardrobe of clothes. The next day on November 2nd I received a letter in the mail from Cigna saying that the predetermination was approved. I honestly was stunned. I wasn’t actually sure what that meant. I called Dr. Babineau’s office and they were like great, when do you want to have surgery? I said as soon as they could fit me in. Freda was like, how about the 10th? I asked, of December? Oh no, of November? I was like heck yeah!! So I had 8 days to prepare for the surgery. Boy was it a whirlwind!
I had to be on a full liquid diet the day before and do the bowel prep, it was soooo gross. I can still taste that nasty stuff in my mouth. The day before surgery was really emotional. I was so nervous and I really hadn’t had much time to mentally prepare for what was getting ready to happen. I figured this was a miracle so I better take it while I could. I honestly don’t know how I was approved. I have no real medical problems, but I was morbidly obese. I watched both of my grandmother’s fight being overweight and both died at 68 of health issues that could have been prevented if they had been healthy. I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps.
So I had the surgery on Nov. 10th, 2006, I am 5'3, I weighed 248 pounds and my BMI was 43.9. It's very cheesy but it's almost like a rebirth. It is the start of a whole new life. Surgery went like clock work. I was in recovery for 4 hours, I was out of it and didn't know that much time had passed, but my mother was so mad at the hospital because they weren't telling her anything. Before surgery they told my mom that I would be in recovery for an hour so my mom was so worried that something was wrong. The only thing they told me was that they were waiting for my room to be cleaned before I could be moved into it. My hospital experience could have been better, I was really disappointed at some of the things that happened during my stay. The pain pump they had me on did not work correctly and then it stopped working totally. It took me a long time to convince the hospital that it wasn't working, they kept telling me there was a timer and I couldn't push it all the time. I hardly ever pushed the button but after walking too much one morning I was in a lot of pain and after two hours of trying to get the pain pump to work the hospital finally realized that it was broke and ordered me a new one. Boy what a difference that was!! If I even through about pushing the button it seemed like it would go off, it was great! There were some other things that shouldn't have happened at the hospital but I wont go into those right now. Let's just say I was a very happy camper when it was time to go home.
