The Big Day

A lot has happened on the surgery front since I lasted posted.

I GOT MY SURGERY DATE!!!!!

Before I get into that I will talk about the other steps in the process that have had to be done before I got to this point.

EGD: I had to have and EGD done to make sure that I don't have a hiatal hernia. If I did have one the surgeon would fix it while he is in there. This was quite the fiasco, let me tell ya. I had to reschedule my initial EGD because I wanted to make sure everything was square with my insurance since the EGD isn't cheap either. I called to reschedule and she gave me a day and told me to call the night before to get my procedure time. When I called to get the time they had to record of me.
the scheduler at the surgeon's office made an error and I was never officially added to the schedule...
This procedure was a big deal. This was the last item I needed to have done in order to have everything turned into my insurance for approval so this could have held me up big time since the surgeon only does EGD's one day/month. LUCKILY my surgeon has picked up extra shifts at our local hospital and the scheduler was able to get me in while he was at the hospital (as opposed to the outpatient clinic). I think she just felt bad so she pulled some strings.
All in all the EGD was painless. I don't remember a thing. the last thing I remember was laying on my side in the procedure room and getting an oxygen mask on. After that the nurse injected some good stuff into my IV and I passed out. It was all over in 20 minutes and they wheeled me into the recovery room and then the surgeon went to get my husband and tell him the results. No hernia! Woo hoo! the funny thing about being in the recovery room is that from what I remember it feels like I was doing everything with my eyes closed. I can remember conversation a little bit and getting dressed but I cant picture it in my mind. Over-all, it was painless.

The day after my EGD the bariatric coordinator at my surgeons office, Angie,  submitted all of my information to my insurance for approval. After a week went by I started to get anxious so I emailed my insurance to see if they could tell me if I had been approved. I received an email back within 24 hours saying that I WAS APPROVED!!!
I immediately called Angie naïvely thinking that I could get my surgery date. She informed me that the surgeon would have to review my record and then have the hospital look it over and THEN they would call me and get me a date. She said this step would take about a week.
A week later (January 28) she called and told me that they had a 2-12 surgery available so I obviously said HELL YES! However, I got ahead of myself as this meant that my pre-op diet would have to start the next day and I needed to run to the surgeons office that day in order to get my protein powder to last me until my pre-op appointment tomorrow.

So there it is folks. I'm still working my way through the pre-op diet and sobbing at the amount of money ($2,400) that I have to hand over tomorrow at my appointment. God bless my amazing husband and all of his support because this is a lot of money for us and he hasn't even bat an eye at it. Love him :)

Also- the pre-op diet has been making me feel pretty crappy. The point of the pre-op diet is to shrink your liver and open up the space where surgery will be. This means the diet is flushing fat out of my system. Blech.

Oh well, it will be VERY worth it shortly :)