Post Op

Yep, that's me 1 day after surgery. Still big but about 40 pounds lighter than I was a couple months ago. Surprisingly they didn't even weigh me before surgery.

Things are going well. It's been about 60 hours since surgery. I'm feeling about 85% healthy right now. The pain and the nausea has subsided dramatically. The thing that I'm so surprised about is the little amount of fluid I'm able to take in at one time. I need to be really conscious of drinking sips of water throughout the day. For someone with a normal sized stomach if you're feeling thirsty you can just take a big gulp of water. Not so with this surgery. Other than that I don't see a lot of drawbacks. Yes, I won't be able to eat large amounts of food anymore. But that's kind of what I wanted/needed anyway, right?

So, onward and upward. It's hard to believe I finally had the surgery. Now that I have I'm going to live the life I've always wanted. Healthy and happy, one day at a time.

Pre-op meeting

Well, yesterday I had my pre-op meetings at the surgeons office and the hospital. Everything went fairly smooth. No big surprises. I wish I had a definite surgery time though. I have to call Sunday night to find out for sure. If you read my previous post you'll see the cost they were going to charge me kept changing. They did keep it at $2,900. Which is about all I could afford so it worked out OK.

Everything is on track for Monday. Got my rides all set up. Even have my best bud coming in Monday afternoon just to hang out for support. That will be cool. And I found out that 4 people donated their PTO to me (3 anonymously) so I will have a full paycheck when I take that 2 weeks off. I'm so touched by this gesture from my co-workers. I didn't know I was so well liked!

Life is pretty good right now. I have a decent job, good friends, and am making healthy changes to my life. I still make the occasional bad decision and act like a douche from time to time but I think that's getting more rare.

Right now I'm just focused on being healthy and happy One Day At A Time.

Surgery Cost

Back in September of 2013 I started this process of getting bariatric surgery. At that time my "Out-Of-Pocket" max was $3,500. It stayed that number when open enrollment happened again last August. So, I knew my max I would have to shell out for this surgery was $3,500. I saved, but life happened, and quite honestly I spend a lot of money frivolously the past year. There were so many setbacks in this process many times I thought it wasn't going to happened (I'm less than 5 days away and I'm still not 100% sure it will)

The whole time I've been doing my due diligence with regards to how much it will cost me and how I'll be able to pay.  I was told the hospital would set up payment plans if you come of with, say, half the cost. Well, this POS hospital I was assigned to (San Joaquin 7th day Adventist in Bako) won't. They are just dicks there. On top of that they are so dumb there they've given me 6, (yes, 6!) different amounts to pay.  Here they are:

$0  Two months ago
$2,789  Seven weeks ago
$2,143  Three weeks ago
$3,820  8am this morning
$3,470  1pm this afternoon
$2,900  About an hour ago

What is wrong with our healthcare in this country??? How can they come up with all these different prices? Does the police or fire dept charge you different prices depending on who at the insurance they talk to? Oh, wait, they don't charger you ANYTHING because we have SOCIALIST police and fire depts! And that's how it should be.

I'm done.