Butterfly
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2016
- Messages
- 157
I apologize if you see this twice, but have also posted it to the D/S forum
I'm a 45 year old woman who has been morbidly obese since about the age of 20. My weight crept up slowly year by year until I reached a little over 500 pounds 2.5 years ago. At the time, I had insurance that wouldn't pay for any type of WLS so I had to take the only money I had to self pay for the gastric sleeve. I paid $14K to a surgeon locally. He made me lose 65 pounds before he'd do the surgery and I had it done in July 2014. I worked the program pretty faithfully and got myself down to 299 pounds as of fall of 2015.
At that time my best friend passed away and I went into a bit of a tailspin. I started eating fast food too often and in amounts too large. Let me say that after about 90 days post-op I never really felt the restriction that so many people talk about so I had to just rely on measuring food and stopping when I'd eaten all I'd measured. My fast food binging lead me to gain about 60 pounds in 7 months.
In June I decided to stop this nonsense and went back to walking on my treadmill (although I could only do about 10 min a day) and measuring my food. I went to a support group meeting and was told "You should have never had the sleeve. The sleeve isn't for heavyweights. You should have had the duodenal switch. You've most likely ruined and stretched your sleeve out." I was devastated. Since the end of June I have lost 20 pounds, but feel I should be doing better since I am (no lie) eating between 700-900 calories a day only. For the last two weeks I've lost 1 pound while never eating more than 900 calories in a day.
Where I am now: I am back in college and will be starting a nursing program in a few weeks so I am not able to work full time. My low wages qualify me for Medicaid, but I believe Medicaid will not pay for the D/S surgery. It *may* pay for a revision to gastric bypass, but I am not sure. I just got the insurance about a month ago.
I get the feeling that the D/S would be the way to go if I get another surgery. I own my home outright and could get an equity loan to pay for it as long as it wasn't too much. I feel like such a failure and I'm so embarrassed to think of telling my family that I will get ANOTHER surgery.
For those of you who have had a D/S, did any go to Mexico? Any surgeons there you would recommend or stay away from? I admit the thought of going so far from home for surgery scares me quite a bit.
Sorry for the long post and thanks for any input any of you have. I've been feeling so lost and depressed about all of this.
I'm a 45 year old woman who has been morbidly obese since about the age of 20. My weight crept up slowly year by year until I reached a little over 500 pounds 2.5 years ago. At the time, I had insurance that wouldn't pay for any type of WLS so I had to take the only money I had to self pay for the gastric sleeve. I paid $14K to a surgeon locally. He made me lose 65 pounds before he'd do the surgery and I had it done in July 2014. I worked the program pretty faithfully and got myself down to 299 pounds as of fall of 2015.
At that time my best friend passed away and I went into a bit of a tailspin. I started eating fast food too often and in amounts too large. Let me say that after about 90 days post-op I never really felt the restriction that so many people talk about so I had to just rely on measuring food and stopping when I'd eaten all I'd measured. My fast food binging lead me to gain about 60 pounds in 7 months.
In June I decided to stop this nonsense and went back to walking on my treadmill (although I could only do about 10 min a day) and measuring my food. I went to a support group meeting and was told "You should have never had the sleeve. The sleeve isn't for heavyweights. You should have had the duodenal switch. You've most likely ruined and stretched your sleeve out." I was devastated. Since the end of June I have lost 20 pounds, but feel I should be doing better since I am (no lie) eating between 700-900 calories a day only. For the last two weeks I've lost 1 pound while never eating more than 900 calories in a day.
Where I am now: I am back in college and will be starting a nursing program in a few weeks so I am not able to work full time. My low wages qualify me for Medicaid, but I believe Medicaid will not pay for the D/S surgery. It *may* pay for a revision to gastric bypass, but I am not sure. I just got the insurance about a month ago.
I get the feeling that the D/S would be the way to go if I get another surgery. I own my home outright and could get an equity loan to pay for it as long as it wasn't too much. I feel like such a failure and I'm so embarrassed to think of telling my family that I will get ANOTHER surgery.
For those of you who have had a D/S, did any go to Mexico? Any surgeons there you would recommend or stay away from? I admit the thought of going so far from home for surgery scares me quite a bit.
Sorry for the long post and thanks for any input any of you have. I've been feeling so lost and depressed about all of this.
