How It Decided Me

3 weeks. That's how long I lasted before I called my surgeon's office to see if they'd heard back from my insurance company. As luck would have it, they had just gotten a response that afternoon.

"I'm so sorry. They said no."

What?? How?! I worked my butt off for this! I proved I was committed. How can they say no?

It turns out that an insurance company gets to say whether or not you're killing yourself too fast or too slow. It turns out, I was killing myself slowly enough to where it would take a while. You know, at least 10 years, before I died because of my weight and so weight loss surgery wasn't "an urgent priority" to them for me. The other problem (oh the irony) was in them forcing me to lose weight for 6 months, my qualifying co-morbidity of hypertension healed itself. So, I was "fine" now. Makes sense, right?

There are no words to describe the complete and total devastation I felt that day. All hope I had felt over the last six months was gone, robbed from me. I could barely breathe. I sobbed in my boyfriend-at-the-time's arms and told him I wanted to die. I knew myself better than anybody on this planet knew me. I knew I would gain the weight back, plus some, if I didn't have the help of this tool. I wasn't capable of losing the weight on my own and without surgery, I knew I would die.

Naturally, I coped with food. I was right - I did gain the weight back. All of it. Plus some.

Thankfully, the story doesn't end there.

My surgeon had one last idea - an off-change, last ditch effort to get the insurance god's to change their minds. One qualifying co-morbidity was sleep apnea. I had absolutely no symptoms of sleep apnea - I didn't snore, I didn't have nasal issues, I breathe fine. There was practically a 0% chance of my having sleep apnea. Still, I made an appointment with the specialist, arranged for a sleep study (in the comfort of my own home - how cool is that?) and had one very interesting night of sleep looking like a robot.

A few days later, my surgeon submitted an appeal to the insurance company with a copy of the results of my sleep study: I had sleep apnea. We were all SHOCKED .. and thankful .. but mostly..just..shocked. It took my breath away .. HA. #BadJoke

So I waited again .. and I waited .. and I waited. I decided I wasn't calling to check for updates. If this was going to happen (and I highly doubted it would), I'd let it come to me. I was done chasing down dreams that ended in disappointment.

On Friday, June 23rd, I got the call: "We did it!" I was approved.

Despite all the odds, despite all the times I'd been told no, despite all the lies I fed myself for days and weeks and months - I thought I'd chosen this for myself, but really - it chose me.