Approved! Yeeeee Haaaawwww!
My surgeon submitted me to PacifiCare for approval after my appointment with him on Thursday, June 7, and told me to expect to wait two or three weeks for an answer. I was fine with the wait - I've been waiting since November. As some of my earlier posts have indicated, however, I have been on pins and needles wondering whether I would be required to do a six-month multidisciplinary weight loss progam. The answer is NO.
I got a call this morning from Dr. Schwartz's office that they were still waiting for the results of my psych eval (which the psychologist should have faxed to them three weeks ago
) and that PacifiCare had said that the missing eval was the only thing holding up my approval. I had Dr. Schwartz's office call the psychologist and then left him a message myself, asking him to fax the eval immediately and then call me.
When 3:30 rolled around without any call from the psychologist, I called the surgeon's office again just to see whether they had received anything. No, they hadn't, but Laurie (whom I may start referring to as "goddess of WLS") had just spoken to PacifiCare a few minutes before and explained to them that the eval was completed successfully and should have been faxed on May 21. She jokingly told me that she had "put her life on the line" with PacifiCare, but it worked - they approved me based on her vouching for my eval.
And after all that, the psychologist finally faxed the eval to the surgeon and left me a message
Now I just need to set up a date - I can have any Tuesday in July, but my original hope was mid-to-late July (which works well for a variety of reasons), so it will likely be July 17, 24, or 31. This is finally going to happen!
