My company only knew that I was having hernia surgery and I had to use my vacation time to take off of work. Regardless of what your surgery was (heart, boobs, etc) you would have had to use your vacay time. You do not get paid for Medical leave. I did not get paid for maternity leave. If you requested a non paid leave, you would still have your paid vacation time. But, with that being said, that was a crappy response from HR. My work is the same way. They are not "fat friendly" and the 3 in my office are male chauvinist so I didn't tell anybody.

My company has medical leave in place in case anyone needs to be out for whatever reason. Surgery, pregnancy, etc. But they decided mine didn't COUNT towards my medical leave because I had "elective surgery".

Well that is BS. In that case, couldn't pregnancy be considered "elective" lol? You have a legit fight on your hands. Sorry this is happening. Good luck to you!

In the future for anyone reading this- your company cannot legally ask you what your medical issue is and why you need the time off. They can require documentation from your doctor to confirm it is medically necessary, and outlining the duration of your leave. The doctor office will know how to write the letter to "count" legally without breaching HIPPA and privacy practices. If you voluntarily disclose to your company what you are having done, it opens you up to discrimination- unfortunately I learned the hard way about that :( 

Agree that a medical leave may not be paid... unless she has available sick leave. She should be able to use those without question.

My company covered it without question.  At the very least you should be able to use your sick time as opposed to vacation.  Not fair!

That's exactly my point. We have medical leave in place for such instances, but they decided I couldn't take it because my surgery was elective.

I think that, unless you have documentation from pre-op stating that they would give you medical leave, you're out of luck.  I'm sorry.  

Unfortunately, no formal documentation. Only two conversations I had with HR before my surgery. But, I'm not done with it. I was told I had medical leave time for surgeries and I intend to escalate it.

I hope that you're able to get somewhere!  From reading the rest of your comments to the post, it certainly seems like you could make a case.  I'm sorry that your company is screwing you on this.