Every bariatric doctor requires that you attend an informational seminar before you can make an appointment with him/her. About 4 years ago AR and I attended one, well sort of. We went to the meeting. We filled out a TON of information and then we went into this room filled with a hundred people. It was so crowded that we could not even sit together. Before the meeting even began, AR signaled to me that he wanted to leave. We left.
He said he was looking around the room and just did not want to be there with all of those people. That night we went online and ordered food from Nutri-system. We did pretty well with that plan too, but it was very expensive to buy the food. It wouldn't have been so bad if we were just buying the Nutri-system food, but we still had to buy all the fruits and veggies that were needed to supplement the NS food. We stopped buying the food. We got fat again.
Fast forward to July 2006. AR wanted to look into weight loss surgery again. He did all of this research to find the best place and the best doctor. He scheduled an informational meeting for August, and he wanted me to go with him. Okay, I figured I would go to support him and to listen to the info that they would tell us about the surgery. I've been thinking about this anyway for the past year. In my mind, I had figured that I would do the lap band surgery. My recollection was that the death rate & complications were less.
The meeting was held in the waiting room of the doctor. You know, it really isn't a good idea to squeeze 30 fat people needing weight loss surgery into a tiny room. There was barely room to breathe. We were packed in pretty tightly. I wanted to sit in the front row so I could get a good look at whatever it was that we were going to see.
This was the first time I saw Dr. Bypass. He is tall and has blondish/gray hair. He wore a crazy pinstripe suit. The lapels were pretty wide and so was the pinstripe. He looked, I don't know, eccentric. He also had an assistant with him. I have seen the assistant on three separate occasions and this kid has never said a word. He just follows Dr. Bypass around holding a cup of coffee, but says nothing. I am not sure of what he actually does. Anyway, his assistant was there.
Dr. Bypass is very passionate about his work. He started explained how both surgeries worked. He explained that the death rate is the same for both. Both are done laproscopically. They both have risk of complications. People who have the lap band do not lose as much weight as those who have the bypass. It is possible to achieve similar weight loss with the lap band, but that requires a deep determination by the patient to work out vigorously.
While Dr. Bypass was drawing how he re-routes the intestines for the bypass, AR leaned over and said he would be back, and left. I figured he had to go to the bathroom. When he came back, his face was pale. I asked if he was okay, and he said yes.
He went on to describe the benefits of the surgery too. Most diabetics leave the hospital no longer needing any medication. You reduce risk factors for contracting various cancers, as well as reducing chance of heart attacks and strokes.
How well you will fare in your weight loss has been tied to how well you follow doctor's instructions and how often you see him for follow up visits. He does not charge a fee for follow up visits. His studies have shown that patients who do not follow through with office visits, gain weight back. A patient has to commit to seeing him One week after surgery, two weeks, after surgery, three weeks, four weeks, once a month for the first year, every three months for the second year and twice a year for the third year. He will tell you at every visit how well you are doing, if you need to change the path you are on to meet your goals, if you need the lap band adjusted etc...People who do not follow up, do not fare well.
Dr. Bypass requires that you have all of this bloodwork done to see what you pre-surgery levels are of everything that you can imagine. The list of things the lab had to test for was so long, it filled two prescription pad pages. Patients also need to see a nutritionist, have a psychological evaluation by a psychiatrist, get an EKG and a chest x-ray, all before you can make an appointment to see him. After the meeting, the receptionist handed out booklets that had all the information for what we needed to do.
While waiting for the elevator to take us down to the garage, AR asked me what I thought. I was pretty excited by everything I heard. I said I wanted to do it. He said that he didn't want to do it! Two completely different reactions to the same information. When AR left the meeting, he went to throw up. He said he was disturbed by the graphic illustration of the surgery. I said not only did I want to do it, but that I wanted the bypass and not the lap band.
It was ironic. I was really only going to this meeting to support AR and then he decided he wasn't going to do it and I decided that I was. AR is frightened at the thought of surgery. He doesn't handle pain too well. He sees how determined I am now and fully supports me. Now he is talking about maybe doing the lap band surgery. As long as I don't croak, I'm pretty sure he'll do it.
Showing posts with label information. Show all posts
Showing posts with label information. Show all posts
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Monday, September 15, 2003
The Information Meeting
I was so excited about the meeting because if we liked them, then we could start the process, whatever that entailed. The weird thing is that I couldn’t tell anyone about this at work. It’s like having this great secret that you cannot share with anyone. I didn’t want word to get out about this until I was ready to share that information; still, it made the day go by excruciatingly slowly. I even left a little early because we had to be in New York City by 6:30 pm.
We’re true New Jerseyians; we do not take public transportation into NYC. We drive and then complain about having to pay $50 to park the car. We got into the city pretty quickly and set about to find the meeting place. It wasn’t at the adoption agency’s office. It was on West 14th Street at the YMCA. We found it easily and there was a parking garage only a block away. So far so good, right? We went to the YMCA and there wasn’t any sign indicating there was a meeting for the adoption agency. I asked someone at the desk, but they knew nothing about it. They asked someone else, who said they were unaware of any adoption agency meeting. I immediately went into panic mode.
Maybe this whole thing was a scam. Why on earth would an adoption agency have a meeting at the Y anyway? Just my luck to pick the wrong agency, right? I whipped out my cell phone and called CHI. Maybe we had the wrong address. It was 5:30 and no one was answering the phones. I was put into general voicemail and I left a rambling message about being at the Y and they didn’t know anything about the meeting and perhaps I had the place or date wrong and could someone please call me back as soon as possible if anyone is there and….Well, you get the rambling idea.
I hung up the phone and proceeded to burst into tears. Not that I attracted any attention whatsoever. I mean, this was NYC after all. AR couldn’t understand why I was so upset. To me, this was the start our journey to a baby and I didn’t want any roadblocks so early into it. He calmed me down and we decided to get something to eat and would come back closer to 6:30.
We only walked about half a block and found a McDonalds. I never eat at Mickey Ds because 1. I was a vegetarian and #2., I can’t get things my way there, but I really didn’t care at all on this particular evening. We sat down to our meal. I had a diet coke and French fries. AR had a Big Mac. Gross. It was at this point that I started to notice all of the unsavory characters in the joint. Looked like gangland to me and I wanted to leave the second we were done.
We walked back to the Y and Albert went back inside to see if anything had changed. Perhaps a sign had gone up or someone else would know something. Nope, no change in that regard. At 6:20, 5 people dressed professionally walked past us, smiled and went into the Y. We just knew that they had to be the adoption agency. We trailed after them and sure enough, that is who they were. I was relieved. This wasn’t a scam, and everything was going to be all right.
They took a few minutes to get set up and put signs around. Other people started showing up. There were about 8 other families/couples there for the meeting. They began by talking a little about themselves and CHI. Then they asked each family to introduce themselves and say what country they were interested in adopting from. We went first and said China. Everyone else was interested in Russia or former parts of Russia.
The coordinator of the China program went over all the basics of who can adopt from China, how long the process will take and costs and travel time. To adopt a healthy child, Chinese law requires that the parents be over the age of 30. China has an upper limit of age 55 for parents. Parents aged 50-55 must be prepared to accept a child of 3 or older. The parents also need to have sufficient income to support the child and to be in reasonably good health. We we fit all of these requirements.
The wait time in 2003 from when your dossier (documents) were all completed and sent to China was 18 months from log in date (LID) to a referral. The LID is when the Chinese government actually officially acknowledges receiving your paperwork. They ensure all the requirements are met and then they match your dossier to a child. When the match is done, your agency is sent a referral for you. The referral is contains some photos and some information about how old and where your baby is in China.
Once you have your referral, you then will travel to China eight weeks later to get your baby. You usually spend 12 days in China, but some people arrive earlier to sight see before meeting the baby. The agency arranges all in China flights and hotels and you arrange the flights to arrive in China and go home.
The process takes a long time. There are a lot of documents that you need to get together for your dossier. Even if you are an eager beaver, you still are subject to delays because of government delays at the local, state and federal levels. Once the paperwork is sent to China, the paper chase phase is over. Everything is out of your control at that point and you are then officially waiting. The good news is that everything is pretty well organized and time frames are predictable.
We listened to the spiel about the Russian program too. Things were not so predictable there. The program is not centrally administered through one area as it is in China. Each province of Russia can have different forms to be filled out and different fees. The time frames are not predictable. Once Russia has your dossier, you could get a referral in as little as 4 weeks or as long as 6 months. You do not get a photo. You must fly to Russia to meet the child. If you decide that you would like to adopt the child, you fly back home and complete more paperwork and then you have to fly back to Russia to finalize the adoption and bring the child home.
I asked how many referrals were refused in Russia. The answer was 1 in 3. I was shocked! Even though you specify that you want a healthy child, the referral you receive might be for a child with special needs, so that is why the referral gets refused. If you refuse the referral, they will try to show you two more children to adopt, but if you refuse them, you go back home and wait for another referral. Then you have to fly back and do the meet & greet again to decide if you will accept the referral. Again, if you accept, you fly home and complete the paperwork, and then you have to fly back to get your child. Three flights to Russia is not uncommon for one adoption, and this can get very expensive.
They had answered all of our questions and they had families who recently returned from China and Russia there with their children. They told us their experiences and answered all of our questions too. We were very pleased with the meeting. AR and I decided to hand them our application and check for $100. They were surprised, but I told them that we were sure about them and adopting from China. I also asked them to ignore my crazy voicemail that I had left for them. I was hoping that when they heard it that they wouldn’t brand me a lunatic and throw out our application.
Now we had to wait to see if they would accept us as clients. Our first test of many to come.
We’re true New Jerseyians; we do not take public transportation into NYC. We drive and then complain about having to pay $50 to park the car. We got into the city pretty quickly and set about to find the meeting place. It wasn’t at the adoption agency’s office. It was on West 14th Street at the YMCA. We found it easily and there was a parking garage only a block away. So far so good, right? We went to the YMCA and there wasn’t any sign indicating there was a meeting for the adoption agency. I asked someone at the desk, but they knew nothing about it. They asked someone else, who said they were unaware of any adoption agency meeting. I immediately went into panic mode.
Maybe this whole thing was a scam. Why on earth would an adoption agency have a meeting at the Y anyway? Just my luck to pick the wrong agency, right? I whipped out my cell phone and called CHI. Maybe we had the wrong address. It was 5:30 and no one was answering the phones. I was put into general voicemail and I left a rambling message about being at the Y and they didn’t know anything about the meeting and perhaps I had the place or date wrong and could someone please call me back as soon as possible if anyone is there and….Well, you get the rambling idea.
I hung up the phone and proceeded to burst into tears. Not that I attracted any attention whatsoever. I mean, this was NYC after all. AR couldn’t understand why I was so upset. To me, this was the start our journey to a baby and I didn’t want any roadblocks so early into it. He calmed me down and we decided to get something to eat and would come back closer to 6:30.
We only walked about half a block and found a McDonalds. I never eat at Mickey Ds because 1. I was a vegetarian and #2., I can’t get things my way there, but I really didn’t care at all on this particular evening. We sat down to our meal. I had a diet coke and French fries. AR had a Big Mac. Gross. It was at this point that I started to notice all of the unsavory characters in the joint. Looked like gangland to me and I wanted to leave the second we were done.
We walked back to the Y and Albert went back inside to see if anything had changed. Perhaps a sign had gone up or someone else would know something. Nope, no change in that regard. At 6:20, 5 people dressed professionally walked past us, smiled and went into the Y. We just knew that they had to be the adoption agency. We trailed after them and sure enough, that is who they were. I was relieved. This wasn’t a scam, and everything was going to be all right.
They took a few minutes to get set up and put signs around. Other people started showing up. There were about 8 other families/couples there for the meeting. They began by talking a little about themselves and CHI. Then they asked each family to introduce themselves and say what country they were interested in adopting from. We went first and said China. Everyone else was interested in Russia or former parts of Russia.
The coordinator of the China program went over all the basics of who can adopt from China, how long the process will take and costs and travel time. To adopt a healthy child, Chinese law requires that the parents be over the age of 30. China has an upper limit of age 55 for parents. Parents aged 50-55 must be prepared to accept a child of 3 or older. The parents also need to have sufficient income to support the child and to be in reasonably good health. We we fit all of these requirements.
The wait time in 2003 from when your dossier (documents) were all completed and sent to China was 18 months from log in date (LID) to a referral. The LID is when the Chinese government actually officially acknowledges receiving your paperwork. They ensure all the requirements are met and then they match your dossier to a child. When the match is done, your agency is sent a referral for you. The referral is contains some photos and some information about how old and where your baby is in China.
Once you have your referral, you then will travel to China eight weeks later to get your baby. You usually spend 12 days in China, but some people arrive earlier to sight see before meeting the baby. The agency arranges all in China flights and hotels and you arrange the flights to arrive in China and go home.
The process takes a long time. There are a lot of documents that you need to get together for your dossier. Even if you are an eager beaver, you still are subject to delays because of government delays at the local, state and federal levels. Once the paperwork is sent to China, the paper chase phase is over. Everything is out of your control at that point and you are then officially waiting. The good news is that everything is pretty well organized and time frames are predictable.
We listened to the spiel about the Russian program too. Things were not so predictable there. The program is not centrally administered through one area as it is in China. Each province of Russia can have different forms to be filled out and different fees. The time frames are not predictable. Once Russia has your dossier, you could get a referral in as little as 4 weeks or as long as 6 months. You do not get a photo. You must fly to Russia to meet the child. If you decide that you would like to adopt the child, you fly back home and complete more paperwork and then you have to fly back to Russia to finalize the adoption and bring the child home.
I asked how many referrals were refused in Russia. The answer was 1 in 3. I was shocked! Even though you specify that you want a healthy child, the referral you receive might be for a child with special needs, so that is why the referral gets refused. If you refuse the referral, they will try to show you two more children to adopt, but if you refuse them, you go back home and wait for another referral. Then you have to fly back and do the meet & greet again to decide if you will accept the referral. Again, if you accept, you fly home and complete the paperwork, and then you have to fly back to get your child. Three flights to Russia is not uncommon for one adoption, and this can get very expensive.
They had answered all of our questions and they had families who recently returned from China and Russia there with their children. They told us their experiences and answered all of our questions too. We were very pleased with the meeting. AR and I decided to hand them our application and check for $100. They were surprised, but I told them that we were sure about them and adopting from China. I also asked them to ignore my crazy voicemail that I had left for them. I was hoping that when they heard it that they wouldn’t brand me a lunatic and throw out our application.
Now we had to wait to see if they would accept us as clients. Our first test of many to come.
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