JenBurris
A princess in the making
Dec 14, 2006
I'm Jennifer Burris and 40 years old. I am married to Dan for 11 years. We have two children, Mindy 21 and Matt 16. We also have a wonderful grandson, Kainin 2. I am lucky enough to be on the journey with my wonderful husband Dan. For about a year Dan considered weight loss surgery and of course I supported whatever decision he made. February of 2006 he made an appointment for orientation with a surgeon at St. Vincent's Carmel in Indianapolis, Dr. Christopher Evanson. I went to the appointment with him and at the end of the presentation I decided this was for me also and filled out the paperwork right then.
We only had one denial from our insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield. The denial was because we just had not turned in all the information they had asked for in the beginning. Dan was great dealing with all the paperwork and making all the appointments we needed and had to go to. Then we got our approval letter and it went extremely fast and smooth from then on.
Dan's surgery was June 9, 2006. He had one slight complication where his oxygen level kept dropping in the recovery room. They kept him in there for an extra hour or so. A couple weeks later he had the normal pain in the left incision by the bellybutton, another round of pain medicine took care of that. He has been scoped twice since then. He had a 1 mm outlet hole in his pouch, that is so small he was even having trouble swallowing his saliva. Dr. Evanson stretched him back out to 14 mm and has had no problems at all since then!!
Then along comes my surgery date on July 25th. I wasn't really too nervous since I had been through it with Dan. I did have a hard time with making the Living Will. That was a little weird. I am not a religious person but was more than happy to have the hospital chaplain pray for me before surgery. The surgery went smoothly. I also had a large, grapefruit size, umbilical hernia repaired. The hernia repair site was the most painful part of my experience. I also had the same left incision problem. The pain was explained to me as the nerve endings were healing back to muscle instead of nerve and any body movement would pull on those nerves causing pain. I had to go in and get cortisone and marcaine injections 4 or 5 time. The numbing medicine was great and lasted for weeks. I am having some severe muscle weakness in my thighs now and in physical therapy for that and hoping to recover from this soon. I can't describe, as I'm sure you feel the same way, what a wonderful experience this has been and continues to be.
As of today, December 14, 2006, Dan has lost 107 lbs and I have lost 65 lbs. Woohoo!!!
We only had one denial from our insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield. The denial was because we just had not turned in all the information they had asked for in the beginning. Dan was great dealing with all the paperwork and making all the appointments we needed and had to go to. Then we got our approval letter and it went extremely fast and smooth from then on.
Dan's surgery was June 9, 2006. He had one slight complication where his oxygen level kept dropping in the recovery room. They kept him in there for an extra hour or so. A couple weeks later he had the normal pain in the left incision by the bellybutton, another round of pain medicine took care of that. He has been scoped twice since then. He had a 1 mm outlet hole in his pouch, that is so small he was even having trouble swallowing his saliva. Dr. Evanson stretched him back out to 14 mm and has had no problems at all since then!!
Then along comes my surgery date on July 25th. I wasn't really too nervous since I had been through it with Dan. I did have a hard time with making the Living Will. That was a little weird. I am not a religious person but was more than happy to have the hospital chaplain pray for me before surgery. The surgery went smoothly. I also had a large, grapefruit size, umbilical hernia repaired. The hernia repair site was the most painful part of my experience. I also had the same left incision problem. The pain was explained to me as the nerve endings were healing back to muscle instead of nerve and any body movement would pull on those nerves causing pain. I had to go in and get cortisone and marcaine injections 4 or 5 time. The numbing medicine was great and lasted for weeks. I am having some severe muscle weakness in my thighs now and in physical therapy for that and hoping to recover from this soon. I can't describe, as I'm sure you feel the same way, what a wonderful experience this has been and continues to be.
As of today, December 14, 2006, Dan has lost 107 lbs and I have lost 65 lbs. Woohoo!!!
