Well, I have my very first dr apt today to get this journey started! I know I have a long road ahead of me, but I'm very excited and hopeful everything will run smoothly and there will be very few bumps in the road to approval. Day 1 marks the first step to a new beginning! Any words of encouragement or advise would be greatly appreciated!

Every great and worthwhile journey begins with the first step. Congratulations on having made yours!

Congratulations! For me, taking that first step was the hardest part of this journey.

This is a huge first step for you and the beginning of your whole new life. My main advice would be to practice patience. You will need infinite amounts of patience through this process. You'll need to patient in jumping through all the pre-op hoops, waiting to hear back from various doctors and offices. It will feel like forever! Then you'll need to be patient through your pre-op liquid diet (if you have one), which will be very tough. Then patient with your healing post-op and patient through all the post-op food phases when you are anxious to move on to more interesting and satisfying foods. And you will have to be patient with the scale! Sometimes you will love that scale and seeing the numbers fly off of it and sometimes you will be incredibly frustrated with its refusal to budge.

I just started my journey about 2 weeks ago and it's worth the wait. I will agree with others. You will need a lot of patience but the end result will be greater. Good luck with your journey!!!