So, the OH conference was...

OK. 

The organizers did a good job. The speakers were good. It was really geared more toward postops. But someone won a free lapband (down in Mexico). 

I saw people I recognized: OU rockstars Andrea U. and Melting Mama.

Dr. Garth Davis (from Big Medicine) sat down next to me and made tweaks to his presentation on his Macbook right before he spoke. He talked about nutrition and processed foods. 

Mary Jo Rapini gave a great presentation on sex after surgery at the end of the day. She probably would've cleaned up if she had a table selling the stuff she was showing to the attendees.

Most of the presentations I went to were about plastic surgery.

I won a bag of goodies. 

Vitalady was a life saver. She had a whole bunch of different things to try. I bought a couple of protein bars. One of them got me through the afternoon. (It was really good, too! I'll be buying more of them.)

Things I would've loved to see: more free samples. A couple of tables closed down before I could get to them. If you go, get there early to hit the tables. 

I skipped some of the social stuff because I had to take advantage of being in civilization to get some shopping in.

Lunch was pretty funny -- what are they gonna do? They had three kinds of salad -- chicken, tuna and egg -- and lettuce to wrap it up in. They also had fruit. AND ICED TEA (not everyone's rules are the same). 

Not sure if I'll go again (depends on the agenda). But it was nice to get away.

Sounds overall pretty cool, Patti.  What did you learn about body lift / panni / tummy tuck / etc. type of surgeries?  I must admit plastic surgery is on my mind a LOT.  The $$$ primarily, but just wondering what will work best for me down the road.  I have a lot of "higher than the belly button" loose skin so I'm guessing the full tummy tuck instead of just the panni will be necessary.  It'd be nice to win the lotto and get a full LBL :)

This is what I remember:

Insurance will not pay for body lifts or tummy tucks.

They may pay for a panni, but they don't really look good/normal unless you have it with a tummy tuck (and you may lose your belly button). You can combine insurance work with stuff you pay for.

One of the docs recommended getting your surgery done relatively local so complications are easier to deal with. (I guess I'm lucky in that regard, because I live close to LA.) He said that if there is an issue with his work, he'll redo it for free (don't know about all the other costs of surgery).

Find a doctor who specializes in weight loss patients. Dr. Agfa (from Long Beach) said most plastic surgeons do one body lift a year. Weight loss patients aren't like normal folks who are just going in for a boob job or a tummy tuck -- our skin is more damaged. Revisions to plastic surgery cost twice as much as the initial procedure.

Don't do anything where you'll be out longer than 4 1/2 hours.

As for price, I'm sure that would vary on where you have it. One group of doctors said $4000 for every little procedure (tummy tuck, boob lift, butt lift, etc) if you were doing multiples at one time. Another said $15,000 to $20,000 average price. This may be cheap because I'm in Southern California where EVERYONE has plastic surgery.

One of the docs said we need 2 or 3 letters of medical necessity for work like pannis if you want to try and have insurance pay for it. They need to be from different docs (PCP, orthopedist, etc.).

Kaiser patients are out of luck. HMOs are difficult.

When I get home, I'll look at the paperwork I have and put up some websites for the doctors I saw speak.