Hello to all.....

....I am sure this is a question that has been posted a million times now, but I would like to hear about members average time to surgery.

I'm still in the "Im thinking about it" stage, but I am registered for an information session at Banner Gateway in Gilbert, AZ.

I currently weigh 375lb, I'm 5'11" an have co-morbidities of high blood pressure, and prior surgery for an Aortic dissection because of blood pressure over 2 years ago. Had my aortic arch replaced with a darcon graft and heart valve replacement with a mechanical heart valve all done at Banner Good Samaritan in Phoenix.

I initially lost almost 90 lbs after surgery, but of course its all back again.

My current insurance is Banner Health and United Healthcare choice plus.

I also have choice plus and I had to do a six month supervised diet which I began in January of this year. I had a little hang up over the Psyc exam because of a stupid dr which cost me about two months but I was sleeved october 20th. My highest was 315 currently at 256. I've lost nearly 20 lbs in the three weeks since surgery and the wait was worth it. Good luck!

HI THERE,

I HAVE KASIER, BUT FROM WHAT I'VE HEARD IT SEEMS TO BE ABOUT 6 MONTHS. YOU WILL HAVE TO "JUMP THRU HOOPS" BUT IT IS WELL WORTH IT. I AM JUST STARTING MY 12WK REQUIRED CLASS FOR KAISER. ONCE I FINISH THAT, I WAS TOLD THAT I WOULD HAVE THE SURGERY WITHIN 1-4 WKS. BEST OF LUCK. I WENT TO THE SURGUERIES ORIENTATION LAST NIGHT, THE DR EXPLAINED THAT WITH PREVIOUS SURGERIES OR DIABETES, THAT HE WOULD RECOMMEND THE BYPASS INSTEAD OF THE SLEEVE. BUT YOU WILL MAKE THIS DECISION WITH YOUR SURGEON. HOPE THIS HELPS.

It took me about eight years, though there were distractions of my wife going thru this during that time. We decided that we needed to do something about our mutual problem. The RNY was not a solution that we could live with but when she found the DS in her research, that sounded like it did what we needed and allowed a reasonably normal postop life, so we started going to the support group/seminar meetings for the brothers Rabkin in SF (one of the few practices that did both the DS and RNY at the time, so we felt we could get a less biased view on things from them).

It took a couple of years to get her on the table after the insurance denials and going into self-pay, but it was worth it for her (six years out and still maintaining 200+ down.) In the meantime, with the normal insurance 6 month roadblock diet/exercise program I found that I actually liked going to the gym (was nice getting back into swimming after years away from it) and lost around 50 lb of my problem and some more before settling back at the down 50 level. After losing that and maintaining it with a continually evolving sanity diet and moderate gymwork, I was uncertain about needing something as strong as the DS, and the RNY was not going to happen - i'd keep the weight I had rather than subject myself to that (nor were the silly bands under consideration,) and the VSG was too new as a stand alone procedure to have enough history or insurance backing. So, I let it go for a while, maintaining what I had lost but not making any more progress (didn't want to get into any of those unsustainable diet programs that have, maybe, a 5% success rate.)

When our insurer started covering the VSG last year, it was time to look at it again with the confidence that I had regain issues under control so that I didn't need to do the DS with its better regain resistance. We had continued going to the support group meetings fairly regularly so it was pretty seemless in starting the process again, mainly more formally documenting the diet and exercise efforts for the obligatory insurance 6 month deal (surgeon doesn't have any special pre-op program) until all the paper could be put together for submission.

So, eight years is the long answer, but after deciding finally to go for it, it took around ten months to get all the insurance nonsense together and take the walk into the OR (yeah, they walked us in there...) Six months later, I'm down 90lb with another 10-ish to go, depending upon how the body composition ends up.

Thank you all for your posts to this question....

...The Banner web site basicly says "It depends" but I guess I will see in the seminar. My Nepherologist is urging me desperatly to do this. because I went thru all the supervised dieting and counseling from my first stay in the hospital for my dissection and then the rehab afterwards he seems to think I should breeze thru it Lose the 20-30 lbs and go stright to surgery.

Guess we'll see.

Phillip

I have medicaid and I started this whole thing September 26th and I will be having surgery on November 30th. I have a great surgeon who believe in me having the surgeon and has done everything accurately and quickly to make sure I get the surgery sooner rather than later.

I started this journey in 8/1/11. I have Kaiser (Richmond) and after taking a few classes, seeing the psych and the Nut, I have my pre op 12/7/11. I was told to take a week to 10 days off work to heal (more if I was a lumberjack, lol).

My father started this journey in September and he is self pay and is having his surgery on 12/15/11.

I think the average time is 3 to 6 months...