This week I moved ahead a little further on my weight loss surgery journey. On Monday I had my initial supervised diet and exercise session with my primary care physician. It’s basically a 2,000 calorie diet with a 30 minute a day treadmill exercise routine. My doctor is very much in favor of me moving ahead with this diet. He believes that it will reduce my risk of another cardiac incident and possibly solve several of my health concerns.

This 12-week diet is a requirement of Aetna for approval of any gastric surgery, including the lap band. That starts the clock ticking. It will be a 12 week routine with monthly physician visits. I will end this phase on May 5 and will enter the insurance approval process, which could take 2-3 weeks. In the best case scenario, I will have surgery in mid June. I believe that it will occur most likely in late June to early July.

I also began a series of medical testing on Tuesday with a psychological evaluation. The purpose is to see if you are psychologically ready for surgery and understand the possible life changing consequences of the surgery. It lasted about 2 hours. The case worker administering the evaluation told me that she thought I was very prepared for the surgery. So, it looks like I am sane enough to lose some weight.

Next week I have a grueling 5 hour series of tests at Summa. I decided to just get the bulk of these tests done in one setting. So, I scheduled them all on the same day. It will be nice to know that they are done and behind me. I am flying through the flexible spending account money this year!