Wednesday June 8th 2011 - More information on the progress and cost of surgery

Before I bore you with my accounting, I would like to update you on the calendar expectations. My insurance file has been sent to the insurance and Eileen from the surgeons office thinks we could have an approval within a week. Possibly Monday.

Once I have insurance approval I can schedule a date for the surgery. Yea! If my approval comes in quickly, I could have a date as soon as after the Fourth of July. Hopefully before I go on a working vacation in Santa Fe New Mexico. I believe that would be one the week of the 25th or so. Unless there are some unforeseen complications, this should be an outpatient one-day surgery.

Now for the money:

• The insurance splits my benefit of $7500 as $4500 for the hospital and $3000 for the surgeon.
• The hospital requires either $6500. They require this amount to be paid one week before surgery. If they do not need all of the money, I will get a refund. Then again, if things get complicated, I might need all of that money.
• The surgeon has a contracted rate of $1800 so there will be money left in the benefit for the post-surgery appointments (the first three are covered in the initial $1800). They will use the benefit until it is gone and then I will have to pay out of pocket, but the $1200 will go pretty far.
• Since I am paying the anesthesiologist in advance, I will only need $1050.
• Since I am paying the surgical assistant in advance, I will only need $270.

The surgery is total costs  $15,320 USD. After the hospital rebate it could be ultimately $14,000. I am going to need $7,820 by the week before surgery so basically by the end of the month.

I have the 2500 Euro ($3,500) from France and potentially $2,800 from the sale of the two Cemetery plots. Roughly I have $6,300 leaving a difference of  $1,520. If I had to I could put that remainder on a credit card.

Then again, maybe I'll get a surgical loan for $5,000 and stash the extra $1,000 or so in savings.

Bottom line: I can afford this and I am ready for this. I need this. I could potentially have the surgery done by this time next month. One more month of being this weight! If I work as hard as I did when I became vegan and exercised like I was on Biggest Loser, I could have lost as much as 110 pounds by January 1st 2012! And by this time next year, considering a slow down in weight loss, I could have lost as much as 160 pounds in the first year! Then I will only have 50 pounds to my target weight of 190 pounds. That would be awesome. Ideal weight within the next two years!!!