spittman
I have been over weight most of my life. My mother says that I started to gain weight when I hit puberty. I don't remember, I remember being a chubby girl, then voluptuous teenager and young adult. When I hit 30 I became obese.
I was diagnosed at 23 with Type 2 Diabetes. I have been diabetic from 11 years or so. The first few years I didn't pay any attention to it since I was young and stupid but most of all I did not feel sick. I started taking oral insulin but it made me so sick I never took it. Shame on me.
Eleven years into the future and I am now Type 2 insulin dependent, cannot get it under control and if diabetes was not enough I also became a cardiac patient. I had a heart attack at 34 years old. I am told that I was very lucky because most young women don't make it through a heart attack. I had a stent put in. My artery was 95% blocked. All this happened in October 08. Five months later March 09 I had another stent put in. I had a small blockage in October in five months it had tripled. There is another blockage as well that tripled but I cannot have a stent put in. The obstruction is too small. So I think I can go into the hospital at anytime and get another stent put in. I tell my friends that I am collecting stent. This is my way of dealing with the stress of having so many health issues all caused by diabetes. Could I have prevented it if I had taken care of my diabetes in my earlier days? I don't know and I am not going to dwell on the past.
All this bring me to April. I have decided to get VSG to help me control my diabetes better. I have Tricare Prime. I went to my PCP and he backed me up in my decision. I started to look for doctors and started to call Tricare Prime and everything was looking wonderfully. I was getting very excited that it may actually may happened quicker than expected. When I called The Maryland Weight Loss Center they passed me with their Tricare rep, Karen, she was wonderful told me all the test I needed, that I needed to wait six months and do the weight management classes. Something I had heard from other patients with Tricare but never from a Tricare rep. I was a little bummed to hear about this but I continued to ask question and she kept on answering until we got the the part of "how much do you weight."
Long story short. I have to be 100 pounds over weight no matter what. Which means I have to gain 15 pounds then turn around and loose them again while I am taking the 6 month weight management class. Karen told me it was not fair, with all the complications I had but those were the rules. That Tricare had to revise their policies. She was very helpful and told me to check Obesity Help and start looking for doctors that had self pay patients. I teared up for a couple of seconds because I had been given hope when I had called Tricare directly. I thanked her for all her help and the info she had given me. Now I am looking for doctors on my own.
