February's Work

FEB 2, 2010
This is the day of my first 'group meeting' through the surgeons office. I'll admit I was a little nervous going into this. I wasn't exactly sure what a 'group meeting' involved and since I rarely consider myself a joiner, that kind of meeting seemed a little much for me. But as its all part of the process, I conjured up my bravery and set off to the meeting. I checked in at the surgeons office and was weighed in (actually GAINING weight from my last appointment). Then I was sent off to a conference room, where my fellow surgery patients awaited the start of this meeting. Promptly 45 minutes after the designated start time, the nurse began to talk. (By the way, have I ever told you how much late people bug me? If I'm on time, shouldn't you be too? Just saying. . .) The one thing that strikes me about the surgeon's staff is that most, if not all of them, are former bariatric patients. I guess that is a good way to be able to relate to your patients and it definitely gives them an understanding of whats going on. In my experience, it also gives them an attitude of "been there, done that," which I'm not exactly appreciating right now. It was during the nurses not so rousing pep talk, that I realized that this meeting was more like a lecture on the insurance process and how we should all be on a 1200 calorie diet starting now. Yeah right. A nutritionist came in to talk about our diet over the next 3 months. I don't care what anybody else says, if you're overweight, you NEVER want to hear a size 2 lecture you on eating habits. As soon as she walked in the door I completely zoned out. Like she has ANY idea about eating habits of an obese person (and no, she wasn't one of the former surgical patients- THAT would have been an advertisement). So basically what I took away from that meeting was, for my insurance to pay for my surgery, I have to show a good faith effort and lose 6 pounds over a 3 month medically supervised weight loss period. 6 pounds total? Sounds easy enough to me. Now, can the ultra thin, anorexic looking nutritionist PLEASE SHUT UP?!? (Actually after the insurance talk, she did shut up. And the silence was the best thing I'd heard all day).

FEB 11 & 12, 2010
11 days into the month and I finally got my new insurance card for my new insurance carrier. I quickly faxed it over to my favorite insurance specialist at the surgeons office. The next day, I received a call from her that I finally have confirmation that I am DEFINITELY covered by insurance for some form of bariatric surgery. I still don't know which ones, but according to the insurance specialist, my new carrier is very good about covering whatever the doctor requests. So that was a VERY good day.

FEB 16, 2010
Its echo day! I'm mostly excited about this test, but I have NO idea why. Why would I be excited about getting pictures taken of my heart? I don't know, but I am. I was also excited that I took the whole day off for this test, but I didn't have to be there until the afternoon, so I spent the morning watching Olympic curling. I still don't fully understand that sport, but I like watching it! Anyway, I got to the office, met my echo tech and we got right to work. She started by taking the regular echo pictures. Mostly that didn't really involve anything major for me other than laying on the exam table quietly, but there were some times I felt like she was really jamming that wand in to my chest. And I don't care how hard you push, my ribs aren't going anywhere. Then, she hooked me up to a 10 lead EKG (which doesn't sound like much but that's a lot of wires hanging off your chest!) and called in a nurse for my stress echo. Now, I'm going to try to make this next part seem as dramatic as it actually was, but I will warn you that it seemed like a really BIG deal at the time. So, they put me on a treadmill and asked me to walk. The first 3 minutes were nice and slow. Then the treadmill jumped speeds and it was a little faster. At some point I asked how long I would be on the treadmill and the answer was until my heart rate reach 190 bmp. Are you F-ing kidding me? 190?!?!? So I walked for the next 3 minutes until the treadmill jumped speeds again. I'm not a runner and probably hadn't been on a treadmill since high school gym class! This was getting WAY out of control and I could hardly keep up! I made it about 8 minutes and my heart rate hit 185bmp when the nurse called it. And when I say she called it, I mean: she hit a red PANIC button on the treadmill which DEAD STOPPED while I was walking/running on it. Not cool. Then the echo tech was yelling for me to get on the table for the echo because apparently she only had 1 minute to get all the pictures of my heart she needed OR, I'D HAVE TO DO THIS ALL OVER. NO THANK YOU! (Note: This is still stressful for me and I'm typing this part SO fast. . .time to slow it down. . .) But everything worked out well and she got all pictures she needed. Start to finish, I was only in the doctors office for about 45 minutes. Well, I'm glad a took an ENTIRE day of vacation for this, but I did glimpse my Cardio-god on the way out. Also on the positive side, before my echo, my blood pressure was pretty high. After it was over, it had dropped back to a normal level, which the tech said was a side effect of the exercise.
Now doesn't that just open a brand new can of worms?

So I'm still awaiting my echo results. I have an appointment tomorrow for those. And I've made some progress on the side effects of exercise, and that will be my next post.