Hells to the NO!!!!

Eddie and I talked about going through this 1-800-GET-THIN place. I was not thrilled about it. It gave me a bad feeling. But he started the process anyway to see how far he could get. The first thing he did was go to a medical facility and have some blood work done and an endoscopy. On our way there though, we went to his primary care doctor and had a full physical. This may seem strange, but the physical had been scheduled months before and I wanted his current physical condition in his medical record.

We got the blood test results back from the primary doc a few days later. Blood sugar was normal. Cholesteral and triglycerides high.

Eddie went back to the homeless shelter, I mean, 1-800 offices, to do an overnight sleep study to see if he had sleep apnea. I had suspected for quite a while that he did suffer from apnea. He does the strangest things in the middle of the night and he is never fully rested in the mornings.

Now that all the testing was done, all we had to do was wait to hear back from the 1-800 people and schedule surgery. But we didn't hear back from them for quite a while. Eddie called them almost every day for a month and wasn't able to speak to anyone.

Eddie actually got a call from our insurance provider to offer him support as he goes through this surgery and transition. She asked Eddie if the doctor had explained to him how to handle his diabetes. WAIT! WHAT?????? Eddie doesn't have diabetes. The insurance person said the report the doctor sent over showed that he had diabetes and sleep apnea. This was the first we had heard any of this. We knew for sure his blood sugar was fine when he did the blood tests. The insurance person also asked if he had been fitted for his CPAP (sleep apnea machine). NOPE!!!!! We hadn't heard anything about the results from the sleep study.

So now we started to really think about this 1-800 place more and more. The surgery was to be done at a surgical center in either Beverly Hills or Doheny. Eddie got a call with the surgeon and the location and date. So Eddie started researching this doctor. Come to find out he had just lost a LapBand patient on the table that week. He decided right then and there that he was NOT having this doctor work on him. In his research he found the doctor had been in several different states. It just didn't feel right.

Then we started researching more about the 1-800 people. It made us sick to find out that 1-800-GET-THIN is their 3rd name so far. They keep getting sued and just changing their name. The "surgical center" in Beverly Hills has also changed it's name 3 times because they keep getting shut down, yet they are still owned by the same 2 people. I would call them doctors, but they have BOTH had their medical licenses revoked. These two men are the ones who own 1-800-GET-THIN. (Which has now been asked by the makers of LapBand to quit using the words "LapBand" in all of their advertising. They are giving LapBand a bad name.)

We also started to find reviews from other people who have gone through the 1-800 people. The same story as ours. They had a lot of tests run, insurance was charged up the wazoo for the tests and then you can't get in touch with anyone at the 1-800 center anymore.

Eddie was able to convince some girl, probably a newby, to fax him his blood test results from the testing they did. His blood sugar levels were normal. They just falsified the report that they sent to the insurance company.

About 5 months passed and all of a sudden Eddie gets a call from someone with his sleep apnea results. He has moderate to sever sleep apnea. His airway closes an average of 22.5 times per hour and he had 2 hours where his airway closed 35 times each hour. Someone was out to our house the next week with a CPAP machine. The first night he used it and woke up rather refreshed the next day.

It has been 6 months since the 1-800 debacle. Needless to say, he didn't get surgery through them. During those 6 months though, he was back to researching and finding someone else to the LapBand from. Insurance told him that since he was already approved, he just needed to find a different doctor and have his authorization switched over to the new doctor.

Here we go again...

The One

After we moved to our new home, Eddie started up the search again for a procedure that would best fit him. He sat me down one night and proclaimed that he found "the one"! 

He told me there was this new procedure called LapBand. It was supposed to be minimally invasive, out patient surgery, and REVERSABLE.  He knew this was what he wanted to do.

At the time every billboard in southern California and every commercial break on the radio was for 1-800-GET-THIN.  They were really pushing the LapBand. 

He talked about the LapBand for months, but it was all talk. Until one day a year later he told me he had an appointment with the 1-800 people. I thought, "Ok, I'm going with you and checking these people out."

I'm so glad I went. This place was not at all what I expected. It was an office from the early 1970s. We got there and they put us in a room that had two rows of chairs and a bed. Not a hospital bed or a gurney. A real queen size bed with sheets and blanket.  My first thought was to run if this is where they were going to do the surgery. No freakin way was I going to support my husband going under the knife in this crap hole.

At one point some crazy skinny lady came in and told us how happy she is with the LapBand and she lost 150 pounds and life is wonderful.

We were eventually taken in to a room that had an exam table and another bed. What was up with the beds?  does this place become a homeless shelter at night?

A doctor (I'm not so sure he really was one) came in and explained how the LapBand procedure worked. I asked questions about diet and also about complications. He seemed completely annoyed by my questions.
I was so glad to get out of that place. We were going to talk about things and see what to do next.

Oh and I found out the beds were for sleep apnea testing.  (And homeless people when they don't have many patients)

Just kidding about the homeless people. 

The search...

Eddie started looking at the different types of surgeries he could get. He was first thinking about just the regular old gastirc bypass. At the time, that was what was most popular and all we had heard of really. So we went to his primary care doctor to get a referral to a gastroenterologist.

His primary doctor wasn't really into the idea of surgery. He had said he had a few patients who had done the bypass and were miserable. This didn't discourage Eddie though, he had his mind set that he wanted to get this done and he was moving on to the next step. A consultation with a gastro doc.

At his visit with the gastro, he was told that the doc wouldn't preform the surgery unless Eddie went through 6 months of medically supervised dieting through the Sharp weightloss program. (Hmmmm...through their own program huh?) He knew he wanted this done and he was willing to do what he had to do to get it done. He went to the weightloss meetings and found out he needed to buy the Sharp weightloss food. At $300 per week. RIGHT!!!! Because so many people can afford to spend $1200 a month on food for ONE PERSON. That just wasn't going to happen.

After this discouraging turn of events, Eddie put the idea of weight loss surgery on the back burner for a while. We were in the middle of trying to short-sale our home and find a rental. But I always knew this was in the back of his mind while we were dealing with other things in our life and that the search would start up again when our life settled down a little more.

In the beginning....

I love my husband dearly and I think he is perfect in every way!! He has been talking about doing something about his weight for as long as we have been together. The first time I heard him mention doing anything was when we were first dating back in 2004, but he didn't start doing anything at the time. He had actually mentioned at the time getting LIPOSUCTION. I was scared he was serious and would start researching it. I have learned that once he starts researching something he wants, it is only a matter of time before he gets it.

Eddie has decided to get surgery to lose weight. I want to document our journey with this blog and get some pictures of his progress so he can look back and see how far he has come. (With Eddie's approval, of course. I better go ask him if I can do this...)

It's no secret that Eddie and I have horrible eating habits. If you know me then you know about my "-itos diet"' Doritos, Fritos, Burritos, Taquitos, Cheetos. Tonight I actually contemplated having squirt cheese and crackrs for dinner.

I know I am an enabler in Eddies eating habits. I started cooking more meals when the kids came along. I challenged us both to go a whole week with out any fast food AND with out any Coke. WE DID IT!! After that he switched to drinking Diet Coke and hasn't had regular Coke for a year and half. We did go back to fast food, but I try to cook most of our meals.

I have weight to lose as well. I just don't have the drive to do anything, yet. I did buy a treadmill though. ;-)

A few years ago I made Eddie get a physical. He was told that he needed to lose weight. It wasn't a matter of IF he might get diabetes, but WHEN he will get it. He has had high cholesterol for quite a while. He has had some blood pressure problems lately too.

He loves his children and wants to lose the weight to be around for them for MANY MANY years to come. So....

He has decided to have surgery to lose the weight.

The search for which type of surgery is best was about to start. When my husband researches something, he goes all out. He reads every online post he can find. He researches the locations, the doctors, the procedures, the past patients, everything he can get his eyes on. This would mean several hours every night on the computer for him and hours of me having power over the remote control. Gossip Girl, here I come...