My last update was November 27th. I have lost 10 kilos since I entered the program in June 2018. I am hoping for surgery in April. I have an appointment with a local psychiatrist (in Prince George) March 22nd. I have purchased a box of protein drinks to use for my pre-op diet, if and when I get a surgery date. The product is Opti-fast 900 which involves four bottles of product a day. My dietitian said I can take five a day, instead of four, because I know it will be a big struggle for me to meet this goal. I am using a food and exercise app called myfitnesspal.com by entering the info on my desk top and sending it as a pdf file to my dietitian, Nooshin, at the Richmond clinic. I hope to get a free cell phone from a friend, an i-phone 5, and learn how to use it for the app so then I can forgo the manual writing of the food journal. I am currently consuming about 4,000 calories a day and my app has a goal of 2500/day. It is very hard for me to restrict my diet and I am definitely not an exercise guy. I still lean toward getting the RNY surgery as my BMI is at least 45. I am 64 years old, current weight 352 pounds, and six feet one inch tall. I have another phone interview with my dietitian at the end of this week.

Thanks for sharing the link to the Ontario forum. I hope you don't mind I hyper linked it so all they have to do is click it. Thanks again

Maybe things have changed a bit. She gets 100 surgeries a year through Richmond. She picks who gets them. She does before and after follow ups and no Garrett wellness. I also had the option to go to a surgeon in Burnaby, she doesn't have as many spots there. She put me on saxenda, gave me enough freebies for 6 months and said she would give me more when those ran out. I ended up being allergic to it so have a ton in my fridge just sitting there.

Well, good luck. She said I was a good candidate, and I thought she was wonderful, too, until I started gaining weight by reducing my carbs beyond what I had already done and eating more meat to get more protein... Just don't make that mistake. She doesn't have much to offer beyond (1) Victoza, if you can afford it, (2) low-carb / high-protein, if it works for you, and (3) surgery. Be sure, also, to read up thoroughly about surgery -- especially about the chances of regain -- because she does not help at all with the mental health aspects of obesity.

There's a new drug that has been approved in Canada, Contrave. It's likely to be as expensive as Victoza, but it's a combination of 2 generic drugs, bupropion and naltrexone, and she might be willing to prescribe those now that Contrave has been approved (it hadn't been when I last saw her). However, naltrexone is still quite expensive, despite being a generic drug.

Nice that she's offering options for patients who don't live in Vancouver. That's new, too.

Nice, too, that she's suggesting fast-tracking you through Richmond, as she wouldn't do anything about the fact that a year after she agreed to refer me there, I found out that she hadn't done so...

Okay, I found this:

"In 2015, Ali became the Medical Director of the Vancouver Island Bariatric Program and built the program into a multidisciplinary bariatric program which now supervises the bariatric surgeries of over 200 patients annually. After three years as director she moved on to establish a similar bariatric program within Fraser Health region."

Ali Zentner -- Revolution Medical Clinic

Seems, though, that the Fraser Health program is a deep, dark secret... If anybody reading this is interested, it might be worth a call to her office if you want a shorter wait until surgery. As for me, I'll wait.