To begin with we applied for and received our passports. We made it to the application office early in the day (a Wednesday) expecting there to be a rather large line that would take all day to navigate. But when we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to find the place nearly deserted and the whole process was fairly painless. Ally and I each took a number then went and sat down to wait, there was only one person ahead of us and it only took five minutes for Ally’s number to be called. I waited another five minutes while Ally was giving them her application for my number to be called before going up to the window. The only painful part was the $120 fee we had to pay. They told us to expect our passports to be delivered on January 6th, but were again surprised when they tried to deliver them just before Christmas. As we were out at the time we had to wait until after Christmas to go pick them up from the closest post office.
After that we were able to actually begin planning our surgery. We had done our research and decided that Dr. Alejandro Lopez and his wife Dr. Jacqueline Osuna with “A Lighter Me” were the doctors for us. When we checked back with their website for the first time in a week or so we were surprised to find that our chosen doctors were no longer listed with the company. After further research Ally found that they had opened their own company called “Specialized Bariatrics, INC.”. Discussing the situation we both decided that we were comfortable enough with the company (A Lighter Me) to continue with them and still book our surgery.
Having been sent the necessary forms a few months before when we were doing our research on the company we now filled them out and sent them on to be considered by the surgeon (who we were still researching). Their Patient Coordinator/Sales Manager Janese, talked to us on the phone and when talking about the surgery we wanted she said that the I would probably only be able to get the Vertical Sleeve because that is what the surgeon would recommend for someone of my weight. That alone would have been enough for us to seriously consider other companies to get our surgery, but when we asked her the surgeons’ statistics she was rather rude and asked if she should go thru his entire schedule and count them all for us.
Leaving that conversation rather unsatisfied and unsettled we decided to research the company that our first choice surgeons had opened “Specialized Bariatrics, INC.”. As we had thoroughly researched the surgeons and were comfortable with them, we were only worried about the company itself. We worried about how everything would work and were we would stay. Turned out that they use the same hospital and hotel as “A Lighter Me” and their procedures are basically the same. Following the same procedure we did to contact “A Lighter Me”, we obtained, filled out and sent the required forms to begin our process with our originally chosen and vetted surgeons.
Cathy is the contact for Specialized Bariatrics and she has been great. She answers all our questions (on the phone and thru email) and she is quick in answering all our emails, sometimes late into the evening. Once we were approved for surgery and had reserved our dates (February 26th) she sent us an email with all the forms and information we would need and we went to the bank to transfer our deposit. On February 2nd we bought our plane tickets to arrive an extra day early because the flight was cheaper that way, we will be staying an extra day at the hotel in Mexico which Cathy has booked for us. More to come on the preoperative diet which we start this weekend. XOXO, Evie & Ally
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