Hi All! I am going to apologize for the wall of text in advance -- I have a tendency to be long-winded...
My name is Sarah. I'm 37, I'm married, have a 3-year old son we adopted at birth and are currently in the process to adopt baby #2. We live in a suburb of Richmond, VA with two grumpy old cats and a sweet but CRAZY two-year old French Bulldog.
I've been fat forever. I started becoming the "chubby" kid around 2nd grade and it kept going and now I'm the fat one in every room. My highest weight was 346, I think, and I'm currently at about 310-ish.
Originally, I swore I would never be one of "those people" who "take the easy way out" (good lord, if I had known then...) by having surgery. Over time, though, and with continued struggles and watching my weight go up, I realized that not only was it absolutely not the easy way, or cheating, but also that it's a critical tool in overcoming the battle I've fought all my life.
My WLS journey started in 2017. We had just relocated to where we are now, and my husband had started a new job where surgery was covered. I found a program and signed up for the free information session. The day of the session, as we all walked in and picked up our individual folders with information relevant to our insurance, the sweet woman who handed me mine told me that she didn't want me to be surprised, but that my insurance required an ENTIRE YEAR LONG program before it would approve the surgery. It was some stupid part of the coverage offered to State employees (which my husband was). I was gutted. I quietly cried through the entire program and afterward tried to figure out what to do. I had ultimately decided to just stick it out and do it, but then... my life fell apart.
Literally less than a week after I attended the session, my mom died unexpectedly. I hadn't even had a chance to tell her that I had started the process or was even considering it. As you may imagine, I was devastated. I didn't have the best relationship with my mom, but my dad died when I was 5 years old and my biggest fear was the day that I'd lose her too. I have always struggled with anxiety and depression but I fell into the deepest depression I'd ever had. Starting the surgery process was not even a blip on my radar.
Then... literally 6 weeks to the day, on July 4th, my oldest brother also died unexpectedly. His health was not great but he'd made a lot of strides in the past few years so it was a bit out of the blue. I had just spoken with him a few days prior and he was in great spirits. Soo... still didn't really feel like going through hoops at this point.
Shortly thereafter, we got a notice from the property management of the apartment we lived in at the time -- they were doing phased renovations of all their units, and ours was in the upcoming phase. Our lease was ending at the beginning of September, and we had two choices: 1) move out of our apartment into a renovated, more expensive unit and sign a new one-year lease, or 2) move out entirely, which for us would mean buying a house rather than renting another apartment. We had planned on staying another year in the apartment to save money before buying a house, but the new rate was just outside of our budget. We didn't want to move to another apartment community. So we decided to buy a house.
We started the process for that and thankfully found a home we liked pretty quickly. In the meantime, I got a new job. Our closing date for the house was August 7th. My first day at the new job... also August 7th. No biggie, my new boss was very accommodating and we arranged that I would leave immediately after orientation to go to the settlement....
The weekend before closing and my first day, my husband started to get sick. He had gone to urgent care and was given some meds so we were hopeful it would clear up fast. But... no. At 4:30am the morning of August 7th, he woke up in the middle of the night crying out in pain, completely drenched in sweat. We rushed to the emergency room where they found a microperforation in his bowel. He needed surgery. Immediately. The same day that we were supposed to close on the house. And I was supposed to start my new job.
I called my husband's parents. They were out of town and would leave immediately to get to us, but wouldn't be there for several hours. I was not going to leave my husband alone all day so I quickly emailed my new boss and asked if I could start the next day or, worst case, the following pay cycle. She felt awful for me and let me start the next day, offering to do a one on one orientation with me herself. I called our realtor, told him what happened, and he arranged to have the settlement attorney meet us in the hospital (we were TOTALLY blown away by this!). Our realtor himself even stopped by to bring me breakfast.
This whole ordeal was the start of about two and a half months of my husband being in and out of the hospital, with a total of four surgeries. We finally had a little bit of a respite from our lives completely exploding, when...
On November 12, we received a call from our adoption agency that a baby boy had been born in Pennsylvania and his mama had chosen us to be his parents. Yes, for real. We packed up and rushed to PA and then BOOM -- just like that, we were parents.
Long story short, I tried starting the process in 2017 and then my life exploded and didn't settle down for a while. I restarted the program in 2018, and three months into the program, the insurance company changed vendors for their dietary coaching program and in the switch, they lost every record that I had ever even signed up for the program. And since it had been so long since I had attended the seminar, they were making me start over from the beginning. I ended up with a really bad taste in my mouth at this point. The insurance at my new job was complete crap and didn't cover bariatric surgery at all. My husband didn't plan to stay at this job much longer, so we decided we'd wait until he got a new job and hope that his new provider had better coverage.
In 2019, I got a new job. It alsodidn't cover WLS, and it was hella expensive. So we stayed on his plan. He ended up not finding a new job until the tail end of 2020, and then started in January 2021. But it was a 6-month contract, with no benefits, but it was very likely he would convert to permanent full-time at the end of six months, so we decided to stick it out. We switched to my crappy insurance for the duration and planned to jump ship as soon as he converted. He was offered the full-time role right at six months, but poor staffing and administrative problems meant he didn't actually officially convert until about a week and a half ago.
Friends, I'm happy to say that I'm finally where I need to be. His new insurance is Cigna and it is amazing and covers a lot of things my insurance doesn't. Plus, it's saving us about $500 per month in premiums, so... yay. Literally the day after we submitted the benefits paperwork, I told my husband to get a proof of coverage letter so we could get off of my coverage, and with this I found out that our coverage began on his first day of permanent status. I had an appointment scheduled to start a NEW program at a NEW hospital by the end of that day.
My intro appointment with the surgeon is Monday, 8/23 at 9am. The coordinator called me today to verify a few things and let me know that while I was there, if I thought that I was going to pursue surgery, they would also arrange for me to have my intake appointment with the dietician at that time as well.
I am HERE. I am DOING IT. NOTHING is going to stop me now. I am one of those people who does copious amounts of research when I get a bug up my butt about something, so I have gathered just about everything there is to know about surgery, my program, pre- and post-op plans... but I do have a couple questions that I'd love some insight on:
1) I have PCOS. I know that surgery (I am planning on VSG) does a lot of good to reverse PCOS, but most of what I've found is related to the ovulation/menstruation/insulin resistance parts of PCOS. Did surgery help you with the other gross parts of PCOS, like thinning hair (I know I'll lose some right after surgery, but does it come back?), facial hair/hirsutism, and acne? I struggle with these way more than any of the other crap.
2) For pre-op and post-op diets, I know generally what to expect, but nothing seems to address.... flavor. Obviously sugar and fat are a consideration, but is there a restriction on seasonings and sauces and stuff? Also, I know foods should be sugar free, like popsicles, drinks, etc., but where do artificial sweeteners come in? Like, can I have a cup of tea with splenda in it? Or should I come to grips with drinking it as-is?
Anyway, thanks for reading my diatribe. I appreciate all of you already!
My name is Sarah. I'm 37, I'm married, have a 3-year old son we adopted at birth and are currently in the process to adopt baby #2. We live in a suburb of Richmond, VA with two grumpy old cats and a sweet but CRAZY two-year old French Bulldog.
I've been fat forever. I started becoming the "chubby" kid around 2nd grade and it kept going and now I'm the fat one in every room. My highest weight was 346, I think, and I'm currently at about 310-ish.
Originally, I swore I would never be one of "those people" who "take the easy way out" (good lord, if I had known then...) by having surgery. Over time, though, and with continued struggles and watching my weight go up, I realized that not only was it absolutely not the easy way, or cheating, but also that it's a critical tool in overcoming the battle I've fought all my life.
My WLS journey started in 2017. We had just relocated to where we are now, and my husband had started a new job where surgery was covered. I found a program and signed up for the free information session. The day of the session, as we all walked in and picked up our individual folders with information relevant to our insurance, the sweet woman who handed me mine told me that she didn't want me to be surprised, but that my insurance required an ENTIRE YEAR LONG program before it would approve the surgery. It was some stupid part of the coverage offered to State employees (which my husband was). I was gutted. I quietly cried through the entire program and afterward tried to figure out what to do. I had ultimately decided to just stick it out and do it, but then... my life fell apart.
Literally less than a week after I attended the session, my mom died unexpectedly. I hadn't even had a chance to tell her that I had started the process or was even considering it. As you may imagine, I was devastated. I didn't have the best relationship with my mom, but my dad died when I was 5 years old and my biggest fear was the day that I'd lose her too. I have always struggled with anxiety and depression but I fell into the deepest depression I'd ever had. Starting the surgery process was not even a blip on my radar.
Then... literally 6 weeks to the day, on July 4th, my oldest brother also died unexpectedly. His health was not great but he'd made a lot of strides in the past few years so it was a bit out of the blue. I had just spoken with him a few days prior and he was in great spirits. Soo... still didn't really feel like going through hoops at this point.
Shortly thereafter, we got a notice from the property management of the apartment we lived in at the time -- they were doing phased renovations of all their units, and ours was in the upcoming phase. Our lease was ending at the beginning of September, and we had two choices: 1) move out of our apartment into a renovated, more expensive unit and sign a new one-year lease, or 2) move out entirely, which for us would mean buying a house rather than renting another apartment. We had planned on staying another year in the apartment to save money before buying a house, but the new rate was just outside of our budget. We didn't want to move to another apartment community. So we decided to buy a house.
We started the process for that and thankfully found a home we liked pretty quickly. In the meantime, I got a new job. Our closing date for the house was August 7th. My first day at the new job... also August 7th. No biggie, my new boss was very accommodating and we arranged that I would leave immediately after orientation to go to the settlement....
The weekend before closing and my first day, my husband started to get sick. He had gone to urgent care and was given some meds so we were hopeful it would clear up fast. But... no. At 4:30am the morning of August 7th, he woke up in the middle of the night crying out in pain, completely drenched in sweat. We rushed to the emergency room where they found a microperforation in his bowel. He needed surgery. Immediately. The same day that we were supposed to close on the house. And I was supposed to start my new job.
I called my husband's parents. They were out of town and would leave immediately to get to us, but wouldn't be there for several hours. I was not going to leave my husband alone all day so I quickly emailed my new boss and asked if I could start the next day or, worst case, the following pay cycle. She felt awful for me and let me start the next day, offering to do a one on one orientation with me herself. I called our realtor, told him what happened, and he arranged to have the settlement attorney meet us in the hospital (we were TOTALLY blown away by this!). Our realtor himself even stopped by to bring me breakfast.
This whole ordeal was the start of about two and a half months of my husband being in and out of the hospital, with a total of four surgeries. We finally had a little bit of a respite from our lives completely exploding, when...
On November 12, we received a call from our adoption agency that a baby boy had been born in Pennsylvania and his mama had chosen us to be his parents. Yes, for real. We packed up and rushed to PA and then BOOM -- just like that, we were parents.
Long story short, I tried starting the process in 2017 and then my life exploded and didn't settle down for a while. I restarted the program in 2018, and three months into the program, the insurance company changed vendors for their dietary coaching program and in the switch, they lost every record that I had ever even signed up for the program. And since it had been so long since I had attended the seminar, they were making me start over from the beginning. I ended up with a really bad taste in my mouth at this point. The insurance at my new job was complete crap and didn't cover bariatric surgery at all. My husband didn't plan to stay at this job much longer, so we decided we'd wait until he got a new job and hope that his new provider had better coverage.
In 2019, I got a new job. It alsodidn't cover WLS, and it was hella expensive. So we stayed on his plan. He ended up not finding a new job until the tail end of 2020, and then started in January 2021. But it was a 6-month contract, with no benefits, but it was very likely he would convert to permanent full-time at the end of six months, so we decided to stick it out. We switched to my crappy insurance for the duration and planned to jump ship as soon as he converted. He was offered the full-time role right at six months, but poor staffing and administrative problems meant he didn't actually officially convert until about a week and a half ago.
Friends, I'm happy to say that I'm finally where I need to be. His new insurance is Cigna and it is amazing and covers a lot of things my insurance doesn't. Plus, it's saving us about $500 per month in premiums, so... yay. Literally the day after we submitted the benefits paperwork, I told my husband to get a proof of coverage letter so we could get off of my coverage, and with this I found out that our coverage began on his first day of permanent status. I had an appointment scheduled to start a NEW program at a NEW hospital by the end of that day.
My intro appointment with the surgeon is Monday, 8/23 at 9am. The coordinator called me today to verify a few things and let me know that while I was there, if I thought that I was going to pursue surgery, they would also arrange for me to have my intake appointment with the dietician at that time as well.
I am HERE. I am DOING IT. NOTHING is going to stop me now. I am one of those people who does copious amounts of research when I get a bug up my butt about something, so I have gathered just about everything there is to know about surgery, my program, pre- and post-op plans... but I do have a couple questions that I'd love some insight on:
1) I have PCOS. I know that surgery (I am planning on VSG) does a lot of good to reverse PCOS, but most of what I've found is related to the ovulation/menstruation/insulin resistance parts of PCOS. Did surgery help you with the other gross parts of PCOS, like thinning hair (I know I'll lose some right after surgery, but does it come back?), facial hair/hirsutism, and acne? I struggle with these way more than any of the other crap.
2) For pre-op and post-op diets, I know generally what to expect, but nothing seems to address.... flavor. Obviously sugar and fat are a consideration, but is there a restriction on seasonings and sauces and stuff? Also, I know foods should be sugar free, like popsicles, drinks, etc., but where do artificial sweeteners come in? Like, can I have a cup of tea with splenda in it? Or should I come to grips with drinking it as-is?
Anyway, thanks for reading my diatribe. I appreciate all of you already!
