hi I am new here

Hi everyone I am working on getting wls. and I am from Northern Indiana and I just wanted to see if anyone is close. I am from wawaka its just a little town really not much of a town anyways. Brandy

Hi Brandy! Where is Wawaka? I am originally from NW IN --- Hammond, Indiana. I moved to Terre Haute to attend college, and just ended up staying here, though. Welcome to the boards, Keep on posting. Linda Vicory

wawaka is about 10mins from Kendallville. kendallville is just north of fort wayne.

Hi Brandy, I'm from Middlebury (Elkhart area), welcome to the IN board! Hope

Welcome Brandy. If you are using the St Vincent Bariatric center, then there is a support group at Turnstone in Fort Wayne. You need to go to as many support groups as possible. It helps so much to hear the stories. OH is wonderful too. There are so many caring people. Take care. Francie

I am going to be going to the st. joseph bariatric center in fort wayne. my ins company wants a documentation of morbid obesity that had persisted for at least 5 years and my dr gave me my health profile stuff and told me to send it to my ins company its like 150pages but its not all about my weight. what do you think I should do about this? I need help I am just really down about this. Brandy

Hi Brandy, Welcome to the board. I am from Warsaw so kind of your direction. The support group that was mentioned earlier meets the second Tuesday of each month. Please come join us next month. We just met tonight. In regards to your medical records, I too had a huge handful and didn't know exactly what to do. What I finally did was sorted through and made sure I had one or two recorded weights for each of the last five years - don't include 2007 since it is early in the year. I also included the pages from the weight management program I attended for six months. And I included a few dictations from my dr where he documented discussion of weight loss recommendations, etc. I was told they didn't need blood tests, etc. unless it documents high cholesterol or something similar. Hope that helps. I am still pre-op but if there is anything I can help you with, please let me know. Peg

Surely when you went to the doctors over the last 5 plus years you weighed in from time to time. That is what your insurance company is looking for- documented weigh ins over atleast the past 5 years (one weigh in a year is sufficient) that you are morbidly obese. I got 10 years worth of records of weigh ins at 3 different docs and sent that to my insurance company. I also had my co-morbids documented too ie: sleep apnea and high cholesterol. I took my docs records and created a one page summary sheet showing my BMI and weight every year for 10 years so there was no question as to if I qualified. A couple of years I had no weights for... I was still approved in 8 days! Cheers!

One other thing- there is a forum on herer just for insurance questions. .. I found it very helpful when I was going thru the preperation/approval process. Go to Fourms and then Insurance help.