I didn't think they paid for DS...I would have had it if I could have. However, I am happy to have been able to get the RNY.

I have lost so much and feel so much better. You will be happy with your results, I'm sure.
Good for you :) Keep us posted.

Thank you, Karen!  It just makes me cry if I dwell on it so I try to keep focused on moving forward and not on what I've lost.  It just all seems so unnecessary if I could have gotten the medical care that my hospital (since you're here in the Seattle area, too, you'd know them) was proporting for everyone else but their own employees.  Anyway, gotta move forward, right?

Thanks again for your encouragement!

All the best to you in your wonderful new life!

Why oh why can't the powers that be get their heads out of the sand. (really wanted say heads out of their butts!) long enough to see how much money it would SAVE them if you were healthier. I thought things had changed since my surgery in 2005. Your story sure tops mine. Damn right I'd be very bitter and it would affect any respect that I had for my employer. Absolutely unbelievable in this day and age.

Wish I could make them wake up and be the caring employers that they should be. I can say that you will never regret taking this step to regain your health. I sure don't. I"m still not at goal and still not even "normal" BMI but I am so much better off than I was pre WLS in 2005. I have my life back and can go and do anything that I want to.

 Hang in there. It is worth whatever it takes to get it done. I went from 377 lbs  to my lowest of 184. I regained almost 20 lbs but am stowly taking that off through exercise. I had let that component slide and for me it is a critical one. I don't have to like it but I have to do at least 1 hr of pretty sustained aerobic exercise about 4-5 days per week to maintain and slowly lose my regain.

Best wishes.

LOL.  I may be just a tab bit more bitter than you even.  I had a job I loved, but it became increasing harder to perform due to my super morbid obesity and my increasingly severe co-morbidities.  I worked for a hospital that had a bariatric center of excellence that advertised how weight loss surgery saved lives.  My PCP wrote a letter to the hospital administration saying how much I needed this surgery.  I could not get the surgery because our insurance would not cover any bariatric surgery.  The kicker - we were self insured and it was the hospital's choice that employees were not covered for bariatric surgery.

I have now been on disability for over 2 1/2 years and my Medicare started Mar 1.  I hope to have surgery the week of May 17.  It will be a race to see if I can have surgery, recover, lose enough weight and find a decent job in the current economy before my savings run out and I can no longer supplement my disability payment enough to keep making my mortgage payments or if I lose my home to foreclosure.  Yeah, I'm a little bitter, too.

I think you should consider seeing Dr. Srikanth.  He has an excellent reputation.  All of the DSers on the DS forum who I've met who actually had the DS surgery in Washington seem to have used him.  I wanted him but he doesn't take Medicare.

Good luck!