Today’s Date: September 26, 2008
Okay I guess I should do some updating. Goodness. I cannot believe that the month of September is almost over! This entry will probably be fairly long. I’m going to have to stop waiting so long between writings.
On September 9th, 2008 I headed up to St. Vincent Bariatric Center of Excellence, in Carmel, for my first support group meeting that they have for patients that are going through this surgery. As I was getting ready to pull out of the driveway M got off the late bus. She asked where I was going. I told her and asked if she wanted to go to. She said she did and …. LOL… she is such a hoot. So at this meeting one of the surgeon’s decided to come in and talk (I guess it isn’t something that always happens), Dr. Evanson is his name. I was actually really glad that he did because it gave M an opportunity to hear everything and to ask questions, which she did ask a few. I learned more about the procedure, the before and after as well. Very informative! M was stuck on Dr. Evanson’s physical appearance and decided to tell him (out of ear shot to myself… and kind of on a dare) that she didn’t know what it was but she was curious how it is that he and her PCP were both hot. LOL. I have since found out from writing about her little stint on a forum board that many have also had this very sentiment. Oh, there is not a membership fee or extra cost to go to these support group meetings. At the end of the meeting the Nutritionist who was actually the sessions leader for that day gave us a attendance verification sheet that we need to send to our particular surgeon so that they have it on file and know that we had gone. I am going to fax these all in at once later on. I honestly do not know if Dr. Gupta requires these or not. I know it was a suggestion that one go to them but I don’t recall her specifically saying how many one had to go to prior to surgery. So, I’ll go to as many as I can before surgery and then make sure that she has the attendance verification sheets before hand.
On Sept. 12th Dr. Hess called me back, after I left her a message, and explained to me how she does her psych evals for this surgery. She usually meets with the individual for one hour (she has done enough of these that she knows what is needed and doesn’t have to have a great deal of time) then will write up her evaluation, which she says can take anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks before the surgeon’s office has that document on their desk. Sometimes a person needs to come back for further evaluation, but usually it is just the one appointment.
So, I go ahead and I keep my appointment for Dr. Hess to do the psych eval. I’d rather pay a $15 co-payment than pay $115, no offense to the other Doctors’ that do have that. I actually think it is cool that they offer that option for people that are doing self-pay in order to do this surgery. Anyway, I go to see Dr. Hess on September 13th. The appointment was for 10:30 am that Saturday morning. I got lost! Finding 103rd Street off of Spring Mill Road was not a problem. The problem was finding the building within that complex there. The sign is very small and it is NOT in the same location that is shown on mapquest…. I dislike mapquest sometimes. So since I did not have my cell phone on me, the battery was dead so I left it at home, I pulled into some hotel near there and called her office to find out exactly which building it is in. I left a half hour before the appointment to get there and hind up being a half hour late. All I could think at that point was, “Great! I’m going to fail this psych eval because I am not being very punctual today!” But, Dr. Hess did part of the session and we set up a second date to do another ½ hour session on a different date and time.
Second appointment with Dr. Hess was on September 19th at 12:30 pm. It was only suppose to be a half hour appointment but I think we hinded up talking for about an hour. It went well, or at least I believe it did. She told me that she saw absolutely no reason for me to not have this surgery done or for me to wait to have it done. She said that she is confident that I will do just fine in managing it and that I have proven time and time again, in her opinion, that I can overcome major changes with no problem and do a great job in disciplining myself to keep going. All of which is true. So the next step…. She is going to prepare the written eval that is needed and will fax that over to Amy at Dr. Gupta’s office. Dr. Hess said that if I call Dr. Gupta’s office, or they call me, and tell me that they have not received the eval from her anytime after two weeks and still do not have it after a month then to call her and she will refax it over to them. She said that she has had it happen that evals get stuck on someone’s desk among a mountain of other papers and so she just wanted me to know.
On September 24th, I went to my second support group meeting at 3:30 pm again at the St. Vincent Carmel facility in the same conference room as the Sept. 9th meeting (through Entrance 3 then take elevator up to 2nd floor and go to suite: 255). At this meeting one of the “center’s” Nurse Practitioner’s, Linda, was the facilitator. There were about 4 or 5 people at that meeting that have already gone through this surgery, but most were in the beginning phases like myself or have already received their approval from the insurance company and just waiting for a surgery date. I wish I could say that I learned a great deal from that particular session, but I didn’t. Now, don’t get me wrong here… just because I didn’t learn much at that session does not mean that the information that I did learn from it won’t be added to in other sessions thus making the “whole” of the information learned significant and valuable. I am sure that will be the case. I, again, got my sheet from Linda and have added that to my binder to be faxed over to Dr. Gupta at a later time.
Today…. Today I am going to call over to the insurance company, yet again, to see if anything has changed, policy related, on the requirements for the approval process and coverage if approval is received. I will also be calling Amy over at Dr. Gupta’s office to see if by chance she has already received that document from Dr. Hess. I also want to see if she can give me an idea as to how far out Dr. Gupta is scheduling her surgeries at this time. I will most likely have to leave Amy a message as she never seems to answer her phone. She does try to return phone calls within 24 hours but since today is Friday she most likely will not return my phone call until Monday.
Today is also another interesting marked moment. Today is the first day that I am attempting to cut out caffeine. Although I am still a little fuzzy as to “why” it is so important in this process to not have caffeine…. It is only because I haven’t done that much research on it yet. I know that there are health benefits to not having caffeine, but the flip side is I have heard in the past that there are health benefits to having caffeine also. Either way… I am going to cut out the caffeine. Carbonated beverages are the other thing that I am going to have to cut out and I have been working on that already. I think I have it down now where I could stop drinking any soda and be fine with it. Switching to decaf coffee and tea… I don’t think that will be an issue… like I said today is the first day for going without it and I am just going to quit caffeine beverages cold turkey just like I did smoking. Interestingly this morning when I had my coffee (Folgers, decaf smooth) I really liked it. Right now I am drinking Lipton’s decaf tea (iced) and I have it sweetened with Splenda and it is really good. Now, whether or not I will even be able to tolerate Splenda after this surgery is still up in the air (meaning that I won’t know until after the surgery if it will be tolerated).
Well… that’s my current update. Told you it may hind up being a little lengthy.
~Tammy~
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