A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #90 Guilt and Shame Part Two (The surgery)
You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Note: You may notice that this is coming in via Substack now instead of Tinyletter. Tinyletter is owned by Mailchimp who themselves recently got bought out by inuit. Mailchimp hasn’t been keeping Tinyletter current and not much about the website has changed over the years, which is fine but stagnation could become problematic. Anyway! I’m checking out Substack to see if I like it.
Recently, I attended a live Zoom seminar for a local hospital’s bariatric surgery program and came out of it with a 32 page document I need to fill out and send back along with my medical records, psych eval, and $300.
I have no idea how much my insurance will cover the surgery. I called my insurance company a few months back and was told, yes, they cover bariatric surgery, and for additional information, check their website which told me to call them, and the circle jerk began.
I’m lucky that I pay for the premium insurance, so my deductible is $650 in network and $3500 out of pocket and then it’s 80/20 or 90/10 after; I forget which. The seminar included a breakdown of how much the surgery would cost without insurance which is around $20-30K depending on which variety you decide on. Even for that I am not sure.
Some insurances want documentation of 30/60/180 day attempts at losing weight. Some insurances don’t allow Weight Watchers or any other paid medical program like Jenny Craig. I have no idea what my insurance allows or doesn’t allow but if WW is off the table, then I start all over.
A dear friend came to me this morning who was on the fence about the surgery and now they are thinking that if we both do it, we can support each other. It’s a long process going forward.
Now we’re a few days later and I’ve watched another seminar for another local hospital. I’ve now seen seminars for all the top centers in the city and have come away with a lot of knowledge. Dear friend is sending me medical studies like this all day and we read and discuss. We talk to other friends who’ve had the surgery (one of which we both know and we’re going to hook up with them via a video chat). I signed up at BariatricPal, with a username so it can’t be traced back to me, where I now lurk as well as lurk in a massively private FB group designed specifically for WLS. (So private, less than two dozen people are in the group.) and of course I’m on r/wls on Reddit.
So now I’ve seen three seminars and need to figure out who to go with. Dear friend mentioned that the idea of sending a hospital 32 pages of documentation and $300 before even stepping in the office seemed odd. They weren’t wrong. Said hospital wouldn’t answer my questions until they got the packet.
No one else locally was asking for that kind of documentation or cash up front. Dear friend’s application was six pages.
I was sold on the final seminar where they talked about obesity as a disease, and I didn’t fail at diets but diets failed me. Being fat was much more than overeating; it was a combination of genetics, environment, psychological, and physiological factors. There is so much more going into it than what the other two centers put out. The third hospital gave its credentials of the doctors and their own credentialing by medical associations. The other two centers could barely string together a sentence and one of them had a bored doctor just drawing on a white board.
I felt hopeful. I downloaded the third center’s packet and it contained only 11 pages.
I filled it out, being more careful with i’s dotted and t’s crossed than any of my recent papers for school. I redid a few pages several times and finally bundled up the packet with a copy of my insurance card and emailed it in.
And now I wait.
Things I Recently Wrote
· Review: No Ex Before Marriage
· Book Review: Pride, Prejudice, and Peril
· Review: The Cardboard Kingdom, Vol 2: Roar of the Beast
Wonderful Thing
Cross-stitch. I learned how to do it, poorly, all those years ago and when Erika the Librarian came to visit me at the cabin this past fall, she taught me how to properly do it. I’m struggling a bit but it’s a nice distraction from everything going on in the world. I’m almost done with my first project which I’ll post about later.
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
I continue with my lipstick craze with settling on Smashbox’s Always On Longware Matte Liquid Lipstick. I’ve got Throwback Jam and Best Life sitting in my makeup drawer. I couple them up with Smashbox’s Be Legendary Line & Prime Pencil. So far, the results have been smashing. Monday January 3rd marks the 661st day since I’ve been out of the office and to celebrate, I’m going back in to work twice a week. Now I’ll have a place to go with all of my lipsticks.
Links to Read That Are Not (Terribly) Depressing
· AITA for “perpetuating ethnic stereotypes” about Jorts?
· Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever
Get vaccinated and mask up! There is a pandemic going on.
lisa x