How Long did it take for you referal?

How long did it take you? From the time that you went to you PCP and the time you heard back from the surgeon?

Hi Jeanine, I went to the information session first.  Set up an appointment for an evaluation by the surgical team, then told my pcp that I was planning the surgery.  This was over 13 months ago, do not recall the exact timing, but things went pretty quickly.  Started the whole process in Feb, did the 6 months of diet with the nutritionalist and had my surgery in sept.

What are you hearing for timing for yourself?

It took me about 5 months total between the time the PCP recommended me and the time I had the surgery.  That was relatively quick.  I was not required to do a 6 month diet; instead it was two weeks of liquids before surgery.

Usually there is an initial seminar to attend.  Then you meet with the nurse, nutritionist, physical therapist about exercise, the psychiatrist and then the surgeon.  You will need to get blood drawn and they may also require that you get an EKG and/or a stress test done.  I'm probably forgetting some things but it's a general idea.  Every surgeon is different.  I wasn't working while I was going through the process so I was all over them like hair on a gorilla getting all the stuff done. My persistence paid off.  They may also require a sleep study to see if you have sleep apnea.

I say call the surgeon and find out what the story is.  They may be waiting to get enough people together for a seminar or just be very busy.  Good luck!

Colleen

For me it was about 8 months from start to fini****oo started at the surgeons office with the initial consult. then went to my pcp told them what i was planning, and did my 6 month supervised diet through them. They had to chart very speciic information on each visit. Without these specific things being charted, insuance would not have accepted it. My surgeons ofice provided me with the list of what HAD to be charted, and I made a copy of it, and asked my PCP to attach it to the inside of my file so they could refer to it each visit and be sure to cover everything. Once my 6 months of supervised diet was completed, i was then sent through the rest of the process such as psych eval, nutritionist, labs, gallscan etc.

hope this helps