Yesterday, I had a consultation with Dr. Michael Schweitzer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Bariatric Surgery. As you can see from a picture at Pumpkin's 5th birthday party, I'm a big girl. Lucky for me, he thinks I'm a good candidate for bariatric surgery -- fat enough to qualify, but not so fat or so sick as to be a huge surgical risk -- so we are going forward. I had been thinking about a gastric band because (1) it's easily reversible if need be, and (2) the surgery has a lower complications and mortality rate (which makes sense because you're not resectioning anything, but instead, just adding an implanted device). I was also concerned about constriction in a healing roux-n-y'd stomach being a problem for some of my meds. I'd heard from a roux-n-y patient that she had to crush all her meds before taking them for a few weeks, and darn it, I need those extended release meds! Extended release meds are uncrushable. Dr. Schweitzer assured me there wouldn't be a problem. So now we're going forward with the paperwork. Next stop: a medical necessity letter from my primary (not a problem), a nutritionist appointment and a psych eval. Meanwhile, I'm keeping on at Curves.
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