Kelly H.
Hi, my name is Kelly. I am 31 years old, married to the love of my life and high school sweetheart, Mark. We have two wonderful boys Jacob (10) and Drew (6 1/2). I am a registered nurse at a Detroit hospital and I get to help catch babies for a living! It is a wonderful job. I also work with some pretty awesome people too!
I have been overweight almost all of my life. Although I was very active, I was still heavy. After being a cheerleader for 3 years, 6th-8th grade, my knees could no longer take it and I had to quit and then quickly started gaining weight. By 10th grade I was up to 200 pounds after only being 165 when I was still cheering. By the time I graduated high school I was 230. At 20 years old I was pushing 300. I was 304 when I got pregnant with Jacob in March of 1999 and then 343 when I got pregnant with Drew in 2003. I only gained 26 pounds with Jake and 11 with Drew, I quickly lost that weight after they were born only to gain it back and then some. My weight going into nursing school in 2005 was about 360 and by the time I graduated in 2007 I was over 400 pounds. Since then I slowly went up to 420 back down to 390 and then right back up to 420 which is the weight I was at when I met with my surgeon, Dr. Weiner.
I have been thinking about getting the lap-band for years and after encouragement from my friend Jenny I attended a seminar on 10/29/2009. I then went to my primary care physician (who I had only seen one other time, my doc moved to another state) and she was extremely discouraging. Not only did she tell me that I had no willpower and that I wasn't committed, she said that she wouldn't approve my surgery unless I lost some weight. She did however, give me the referral I needed and I met with Dr. Weiner on 11/16/2009. Three days later I found out that as of January 1st my insurance coverage was decreasing the bariatric coverage from 100% to 50%! This led me to a mad rush to try to get everything together to have the surgery before the end of 2009. This was a challenge!!! I didn't want to even ask my PCP after she was so rude to me, so I asked my OB/GYN to do it and she wrote me the letter I needed. I scheduled my psych eval. on the 12/2, but was told it might take a couple weeks for the report. Of course that wouldn't work so I found someone else to do the eval for me. Dr. Swiderski was amazing from the time I called I met with her a couple days later and had the report the very next day! I faxed the eval and everything was submitted to my insurange for approval on December 3rd. I emailed the clinical coordinator on Monday, December 11th and she still hadn't heard anything so on Wednesday I called my insurance company and they gave me the news that I was approved!!! I called and emailed the surgeon's office right away and they called the very next day to tell me that they didn't have room for me on the schedule before the new year. I was soooo bummed, but I asked if there was ANYTHING I could do or ANYWAY they could fit me in and she called me back a few minutes later and I will be having my surgery on 12/28 at 11am!!! I was soooo grateful!
So now here I am banded and working on the post-op diet. My first fill will be at my 6 week post-op visit with the surgeon.
