I made the five-hour drive to St. Louis from Dubuque the night before the seminar and stayed with my brother and sister-in-law. My mom met me the next morning at the hospital and there were probably 15 people in the session. Dr. Scott was the surgeon speaking that day and would be my surgeon through this whole process.
He went over the causes of obesity and the scale of it using BMI. Most people wouldn't believe this, but I fell in the most extreme range of 40 BMI: Morbidly Obese. Standing at 5'5" and weighing over 240 pounds, I was morbidly obese. I remember looking at that chart five times before I finally convinced myself that I really was in that category.
The surgeon mentioned that obesity is a disease that many people associate with being lazy, but doctors and surgeons don't believe that is really true. He used the example of many morbidly obese individuals are very successful in life-- they go to college, get advanced degrees, work hard for a living. There is much more to being obese than just being a lazy person.
There is no cure for obesity, but the one treatment that has been proven effective is weight loss surgery. When I used to think of weight loss surgery, I thought of liposuction(which is cosmetic surgery, not weight loss surgery) and the drastic and dangerous stapling of the stomach. I had no idea there were so many choices now.
I did know that I did not want to do anything I couldn't undo so my best option was Lap-Band surgery, which is reversible if something should go wrong or I decided I didn't want/need it anymore. Lap-Band surgery is usually an outpatient procedure where they make three to six small incisions and place a band around the top of your stomach, right below your esophagus.
This requires you to eat your food very slowly and chew it to a toothpaste consistency so that it can go through the band easily into the stomach. What the band does is sends a message up the nerve to your brain telling you that you are full. You can eat about half a cup or a cup of food over a minimum of twenty minutes so that you do not overeat, which can result in your getting sick or even causing the band to move or stomach expand.
The band has a port attached to it that is placed below your skin in your lower stomach. To adjust the band they inject saline into it to tighten the opening of the band, or they remove saline to make it looser. They don't actually "adjust" the band for a few weeks or month after the surgery to give your body a chance to get used to having the band there and set nicely with your esophagus creating a little bulge over the band to better hold it in place. Once they do adjust the band, it makes you feel full quicker and for about 4-5 hours before you feel hungry again.
I had done so much research about the band that I didn't learn too much new information about the surgery itself at the seminar, but I did learn about the process to actually get the surgery.
Next steps were
-- Schedule a consult with the surgeon
-- Participate in the psych evaluation at the surgeon's office with the psychologist on site.
-- Get blood tests done to check thyroid levels
-- Get clearance from a primary physician for surgery.
Once all of that was completed, the surgeon's office would then submit it to my insurance company, who if they approved of the need for the surgery would pay for 80% of the costs.
I immediately made an appointment for my consult and psych evaluation for right before Christmas and then got cleared for surgery by the second week in January. Now all that was left was to wait on my insurance company to approve!
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