So starting where I left off I went several more years on physician monitored diets.. The best one was the Optifast program where I drank shakes and ate bars for about 6months.. but that didn't last long at all... then the Protein sparing modified fast... that was prolly the worse diet ever considering my dislike of meat..
Now that leaves us to after my move to Colorado. I started looking into the gastric bypass as an option with the coverage under tri-care insurance and worked on the path to surgery. This was the craziest adventure ever.. if there's one thing that I can stress over and over again is... check, double check, triple check your surgeon!!!
The first surgeon I had seen I thought checking out her history was good enough. I liked that she came from a large place and was close to home for the dr visits. The first of many mistakes to come from this surgeon was having a office staff of one person. Although this person was very nice his mistakes made it impossible for me to trust that I wouldn't be killed over something as crazy as paperwork.
- Spent 3 months requesting records from previous doctors. the information was completely irrelevant for my surgery approval because they were older than 1 year!!
- Mailed in paper work (or so he said) to the office located in California.... Ya my insurance provider only accepts fax and has a office located literally across the street from the physicians office... Needless to say my surgery was denied because they never received any supporting documentation to approve for the surgery. Actually , they only received a letter stating that I wanted to have surgery.. nothing more... sooo clearly they had to deny it.
- Ontop of all that I was left with the job to appeal with my insurance company.... the office staff and physician had no clue how to appeal (even when they said they worked with my insurance company before)
If that's not enough to make you lose faith... I never heard from the surgeon since the first visit 9 months prior and there would be months when the office staff would not return a call.
After this crazy mess I started looking for a new surgeon. I came across The Denver Center for Bariatric Sugery and Dr. Snyder. This is the first time I found a surgeon who I didn't think was a jerk. He's very honest, open, and down to earth to actually help ME!!
Dr. Snyder's team was amazing from the begining. They knew how to deal with my insurance provider and was amazed with the poor work that has been completed.
What really made up my mind was an old lady in the waiting room. This lady was talking to me about how she loved Dr. Snyder. This was the only surgeon that was willing to help her out because her weight was trapping her into other medical conditions. Most surgeons only care about their success scores and do not want to risk looking good on paper. As I said before, Dr, Snyder is very different. He has confidence in his abilities and knows what he can do and how he can help others.
From start to finish it took less than 1 month to get everything set up for surgery!!!!!!!
