I was just wondering what to expect like.. I am leaning mostly towards working with alighterme and dr Lopez. Anyone who as worked with them, what is the process like from when you first contact them? Is it all on the phone? Skype? Email? What kind of timeline is it? Do they reply quickly? Is there an approval process like with insurance? How long was it from the time you first made contact to when you actually had your date scheduled?

The reason I ask is because I want to get my surgery done before my 24th birthday on October 31st. Would that even be possible?

You could probably schedule your surgery for next week if you wanted to! Pick up the phone and make the calls... I went with Mexico Bariatric Center, but I called around to many different places. They all just have you fill out a health questionnaire and approve you for surgery based on your questionnaire. I called in November and could have had my surgery the same month... but needed to get together some money and I wanted to lose some weight first in order to reduce my surgical risk and to not have to pay the high BMI charge(I went from a 55 BMI down to a 48 BMI by surgery day) so I scheduled my surgery for March.

Hi there! I'm Self Pay also...going to Mexico, but to Dr. Aceves.

I'm pretty sure the process is pretty much the same with any of the doctors down there. So here's my answers:

Contact, timeline, etc..... Email. (I haven't had to call the patient coordinator at all. Usually I get a response to my emails within a few hours...sometimes minutes.)

No approval process like insurance. There is a form you'll need to fill out with basics like height, weight, age, comorbities, BMI, current medications etc, and then the doc will approve you. I'm sure there are some reasons for denial...but I don't think there are many if you are mostly healthy except for general comorbities (high blood pressure, sleep apnea, high cholesterol, etc).

I had my actual date scheduled within a week of initial contact. They could have scheduled me as close as 4 weeks out, but I chose to wait until June 7th for scheduling reasons. (trip to hawaii coming up in 3 weeks and my husbands school schedule had to be worked around).

And absolutely by your birthday. I would think if you got your paperwork in next week, and your deposit, you'd probably be able to get a June date.