It All Starts With Orientation

Today How many times, for how many different diets do you go forward with the idea, Today is the first day of the rest of my life? Well, it is no different when you make the decision to go forward with bariatric surgery. In fact, during the orientation, they try to make it quite clear, that this, more than any diet, is for life. For the orientation, the first thing you do is re-review your medical history with some of the office staff. Now mind you, you have already entered into their website, reviewed it over the phone when they call to set up the orientation, but one more time you are reviewing your history. Overkill? Not really. Each time you review the medical history, something might float up and you can add another piece of information to the file they are building on you. It is amazing how you can forget things, and only during the third or fourth iteration does it come to mind. In my case, there was also a brief exam assessment of my abdominal area because of two surgeries which took place in 2008. They wanted to be sure there wouldn’t be any conflict with where they needed to make incisions for the laparoscopic surgery. In addition to that, you have your official starting weight taken, and they take a picture of you for their records.

And of course, there is the paperwork. No visit to any doctor’s office for the first time is complete without having to fill in all of the paperwork. One of these days, we’ll be allowed to have a computer file of all the information which we will transfer to their system, and therefore alleviate the need for us to fill the paperwork out, and anyone else to key it into the system, thereby simplifying and speeding up the whole process. Part of the paperwork that is required to be filled out is a personality assessment test of 144 True/False questions. My complaint with that test was there was no room for explanations. Of course, if there was room for explanations, it would have taken me forever to complete.

The orientation was designed to provide people with some basic education about the types of bariatric surgery offered by the group, as well as advising us what the requirements were before we could be scheduled for surgery. The practice had certain base requirements that had to be met, and then your insurance could tack on additional requirements. One such insurance related requirement could be a doctor’s supervised diet for a period of 6 months, or it could be two years. I felt fortunate to learn that my insurance carrier did not require anything above and beyond what the doctor’s group required. Those requirements were to attend an orientation (check), attend at least one support group meeting, have a psychological evaluation, attend a nutrition class, and attend a talk given by one of the doctors. Until all of those requirements were met, they would not submit the request to the insurance company for authorization.

I realized right then and there that this process would take a little while, because until they had the authorization from the insurance company they wouldn’t schedule the surgery. Those in the room who were dismayed at having to have on record a six month doctors supervised diet as a requirement from their insurance company really didn’t have anything to worry about, they could go through that hoop while waiting for all of the rest of the stuff to happen. The number of educational requirements made me feel quite comfortable with the group. I can’t imagine going through this process without first having done the appropriate research, and understanding what some of the potential complications are, and how to avoid them. The time between sign up and surgery is necessary because to put it simply, there is a lot to learn.

One of the most important things I heard during the orientation meeting, which I had not gleaned from my research to date was that post surgery I would be able to eat one bite every ten minutes. Do you know how long ten minutes is? When you’re doing something that captures you ten minutes flies by in a snap. When you’re sitting at a table waiting to take the next bite of food, ten minutes can seem like forever. I think that one concept hit me the hardest of all of the information which was given during the orientation. This was something I really needed to get my mind around. I knew I ate too fast, but waiting between bites for ten minutes seemed insurmountable at that moment.

Upon completion of the orientation, the pre-op coordinators came in and spoke with each of their patients and provided us with a packet of information. We also put our personality assessment test into a white envelope which was to remain sealed and to be delivered to the psychologist would provide the evaluation. Then we were sent on our way and would be contacted about when we would be scheduled to attend the doctors talk and nutrition class. We could attend any support group of our choosing and then have our certificate signed and turned in to signify attendance. And it was back to wait mode.

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LK Gardner-Griffie
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