sarcastic person I am, I said "well I sure don't hear myself, but my sister sure says I do". So he said I should have a sleep study done. I had said that my PCP had referred me to have that done. When I told him who I was going to see, he quickly said it wasn't good enough. He wanted me to see the best in the city and he would call in every favor he had for me to see Dr Libby. He made (well ok, his nurse made...) all the arrangements for me to go to Providence Portland to have my sleep study done and Dr Libby to do the evaluation. This began my journey towards bariatric surgery.
I had my sleep study done the end of May 2003.
By mid May I had become very aware that the company I was working for was downsizing quickly. So I made some calls to my previous employer to see if they had openings and luckly they did. So on top of starting this process I was going to be changing jobs and insurance companies. Just prior to actually starting my new job, they asked me to move to Eugene. I agreed that I would. So by mid June I couldn't deal with the roommate i had any more so I had begun to move my belongings to Eugene. The day I was moving all my stuff I had my follow up appointment with Dr Kaplan (ENT). I drug my mom along for this one. Dr Kaplan talked about the sleep study and that i had hypopnea's, which is very shallow breathing. I didn't stop breathing as much as some, it was just that the breathing was so shallow. He very delicately suggested that I lose weight and possibly consider bariatric surgery. I had told him that I was looking into it. He recommended Dr Patterson and said he thought she was the best in the area to do it. He also stated that i needed to go to Dr Libby to have him read the sleep study and make recommendations.
Since I had moved all my stuff to Eugene with the impending move, I had packed a bag and asked to stay with my friend Tracy. She very kindly let me stay with her and the kids. A week after all my stuff was moved to Eugene, the job informed me there would be no move to Eugene. Then I realized I had no home... So dear ol'Tracy agreed to let me move in with her. I was also struggling with the Cobra payments to continue insurance for fear that I would screw everything up with my plans to have the surgery. With the new job came a lot of work. I spent most of the summer of 2003 working 12-14 hr days getting things in shape with the job. This didn't allow much time for me to work on my plans for surgery. I did make the call to
Dr Patterson's office to schedule with her. I was informed that I had to attend an information seminar and that had a 3 month waiting list. So I got put on the August seminar.
With all the work, August came quickly and I hadn't heard anything about this seminar. So I called them and was told i wasn't on the list but they could put me in the next one, but there was still a 3 month waiting list. I had a little fit and got put in the August seminar :) I drug my sister Tracie up from Eugene to go to this with me. The seminar was great, they gave me everything i needed to actually get things moving. They had a list of all the people you had to see and do before you could see the surgeon. You had to turn in your insurance information with an application to start things with the surgeons office. Next Page --> |
