Met with the surgeon, all systems go!
I met with the surgeon today, which is the final step before submitting for approval to my insurance company for the Gastric Bypass surgery.
I discussed with him some of the fears I had about getting the surgery done Laparoscopicly, which involves making 6 small incisions, instead of the open surgery which is as it sounds, one large opening in the middle of the stomach/abdomen.
I had heard a lot of talk of how the open had far less complications, and how healing was faster with the oeen surgery. My Dr. put a lot of those fears to rest, and explained that a lot of that information is outdated. I brought up the fact that my friend had the open procedure, and was told at the time it was the safer of the two procedures. The surgeons response made a lot of sense. The surgeon who preformed my friends procedure was a pioneer in the field. He'd been doing the surgery almost since its inception, and thus, with him, it is ultimately safer to do the surgery as an open procedure, because he was not trained in the Laparoscopic procedure. He put a lot of my fear at ease by explaining that he has done over 1000 procedures at this point, and that he is well past his "learning curve". That was something that really clicked, after all, Doctor's are just like anyone else in the sense that while they are learning and growing in their career, they make mistakes that seasoned veterans are not apt to make nearly as much. He also addressed the healing aspect of the Laparoscopic procedure, and explained that since the incisions are much smaller, they heal faster and greatly reduce the risk of infection.
I have to say, all of this sound really good.
So, after all was said and done, we finished up by going over any last questions that I might have, and he said they will begin submitting for approval to my insurance, which should be done by some time the week of July 4th. They are fairly confident that with Blue Cross Blue Shield everything should be approved quickly. I'm crossing my fingers they are right! If all goes well I'll be set to schedule the surgery, which I am still hoping to do in mid-August.
I discussed with him some of the fears I had about getting the surgery done Laparoscopicly, which involves making 6 small incisions, instead of the open surgery which is as it sounds, one large opening in the middle of the stomach/abdomen.
I had heard a lot of talk of how the open had far less complications, and how healing was faster with the oeen surgery. My Dr. put a lot of those fears to rest, and explained that a lot of that information is outdated. I brought up the fact that my friend had the open procedure, and was told at the time it was the safer of the two procedures. The surgeons response made a lot of sense. The surgeon who preformed my friends procedure was a pioneer in the field. He'd been doing the surgery almost since its inception, and thus, with him, it is ultimately safer to do the surgery as an open procedure, because he was not trained in the Laparoscopic procedure. He put a lot of my fear at ease by explaining that he has done over 1000 procedures at this point, and that he is well past his "learning curve". That was something that really clicked, after all, Doctor's are just like anyone else in the sense that while they are learning and growing in their career, they make mistakes that seasoned veterans are not apt to make nearly as much. He also addressed the healing aspect of the Laparoscopic procedure, and explained that since the incisions are much smaller, they heal faster and greatly reduce the risk of infection.
I have to say, all of this sound really good.
So, after all was said and done, we finished up by going over any last questions that I might have, and he said they will begin submitting for approval to my insurance, which should be done by some time the week of July 4th. They are fairly confident that with Blue Cross Blue Shield everything should be approved quickly. I'm crossing my fingers they are right! If all goes well I'll be set to schedule the surgery, which I am still hoping to do in mid-August.
posted by Josh at
1:02 PM
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