First, I was required to attend an information session at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. I call in November to reserve a spot at the next available information session, and I had to wait until FEBRUARY to get in. Whoa. I thought at that point I might just give up, but I waited the three months.
At the information session, they told us about the different kinds of surgery, the prep required, and the post-op journey. At that point, I was thinking about lap band surgery because I thought the full bypass sounded too extreme. So, I made an appointment with Dr. Noel Williams who had done a gastric bypass for a friend of mine. She loved him, her mom used him, and I thought "why not?"
I met with Dr. Williams and his staff that month at a marathon appointment. It took all morning and I had to speak with the nurse practitioner, the nutritionist, the psychologist and finally the surgeon himself. Dr. Williams came in and explained to me that because I'm a type 1 diabetic, it would be best to get my weight off as soon a possible and that gastric bypass would be a better choice, but it was up to me. I decided to listen to him and signed the consent for the bypass. At that point, Dr. Williams basically said, "During surgery, I make 5 incisions - here, here, here, here and a bigger one here (he pointed to an oval drawn on a piece of paper) - Any questions?" At that point I was a little stunned at his brevity, but I didn't really have any questions except whether they were familiar with surgery on Type 1 diabetics. He assured be they were and that was that. I was given a list of what seems like a gazillion tests I needed, and was told I needed to attend three months of weight loss classes to satisfy my insurance company, so I was off to complete all that in the next three months.
I went to the weight loss classes every other Tuesday at UPenn. I had an Upper GI exam, Pulmonary Tests, bloodwork, an EKG, a Stress Echo, A sleep study, and a psychological evaluation.
I was told I had mild sleep apnea, but with the surgery I should have no problem as soon as I lost a little weight.
When I went for my stress test for the cardiologist (she required it because I've been diabetic for almost 26 years), I needed an IV of something so they could see my heart better on the machine, and that's when I lost it.
Being a fat person, it's harder for people to find your veins for bloodwork and especially for IVs. This time it was particularly bad. I had already arrived all sweaty and out of breath from walking across the hospital, so I felt embarrassed. I had to walk on a treadmill for the test and I was extremely stressed about that because of my back. They even had to call the cardiologist and ask her about it because they could see i was in no shape to do this. Then when it came time for the IV, they collapsed three veins, and I started to cry. It wasn't so much the pain (although it did hurt), but more because of the fact that I was sitting there with an open gown on, nothing underneath, a good-looking male doctor my age, and I was a fat sweaty mess who was just so frustrated with being that way, that I lost it.
Here's an example of what it looked like when they collapsed my veins:
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