dianeseattle
Member
So many people have insurance exclusions or lack of financial resources to get approved for WLS. But It can easily and successfully be argued and given approval if you follow Social Security guidelines.
I qualified as disabled for other reasons, mostly relating to PTSD because of a savagely abusive childhood and multiple suicide attempts & hospitalizations. But in all that shame and depression, all that feeling worthless, I never thought about a surgical cure for obesity. I was a thin adult most of my life, and gained weight after giving birth, which I was able to lose through Weight Watchers. But of course, I gained it back because I wasn't addressing the underlying issue.
I remember the insults and mockery from people who had known me as thin, including jealous siblings who wanted me to fail, but I was conditioned from childhood to believe I was worthless. Some of you may have had the kind of mother I had, where you couldn't say one public thing about a success you'd had without being told to shut up and quit bragging, then adding a list of your flaws for good measure.
Let me say it took a long time to understand my mother's motivations. Many years later I accumulated a number of anecdotes from her mother and siblings and realized how hard they hammered on her to believe she was ugly. She was, by the way, a natural beauty, with legs a movie star would envy. But man, did her detractors do everything they could to shut her up. She'd known my father since primary school and he got his hooks into her good, making sure she did everything to pleasure him and once in a while, rewarding her with something like a mink bolero to keep her attention.
But what had happened was, in 1941 after Pearl Harbor, they both began to race against time to get married before he was called up. He needed legal approval from his parents; curiously, girls could marry at 18, but boys couldn't marry until they were 21. Anyway, they got married and while they waited for the war to heat up, she became pregnant with the first of her 8 children and gave birth in late 1942.
She was tied to the children, the housework, the farming, canning, picking berries in the commercial fields to put in the rainy day can, obedient in every way women were supposed to be in those days. In the meantime, my dad traveled for a living and had many girlfriends in many towns, which I found out much later.
My mom believed that it was her sex appeal that kept their marriage together, or that she had to be sexy in order to keep his attention. Physically, I resemble my mom and she noticed that as she was watching me grow up. So she did everything she could do to wipe out my self-esteem.
That's a simplified version of the story, but it's MY story, and it was enough for me to recognize all the attention I got when I was thin, and how little I got when I became obese. This trajectory led me into a decidedly self-destructive life. Nuff said about that.
I thank god for the kindly doctor who just offhandedly suggested I should have WLS because I was 100 pounds overweight. This is where my knee-jerk obedience to authority figures came in handy.
My obesity led to my disability and numerous health problems, including pre-diabetes. Because of that doctor, because he understood Social Security's rules, he was able to write the letter that saved my life.
For anyone here who is frustrated about the process, do you know you can go to a Social Security office and tell them you have a debilitating disease that is standing in the way of your very existence? You can. And if they say no, there are more steps built into SSA approval that will move you forward, and if you stick it out and get a Social Security case manager to help you, you can win.
The hard part is admiting you have a disability. That's just like the alcoholic who has to admit he's powerless over alcohol. If we weren't powerless over our eating disorder, we'd all be thin. Res ipsa loquitur."The thing speaks for itself."
I qualified as disabled for other reasons, mostly relating to PTSD because of a savagely abusive childhood and multiple suicide attempts & hospitalizations. But in all that shame and depression, all that feeling worthless, I never thought about a surgical cure for obesity. I was a thin adult most of my life, and gained weight after giving birth, which I was able to lose through Weight Watchers. But of course, I gained it back because I wasn't addressing the underlying issue.
I remember the insults and mockery from people who had known me as thin, including jealous siblings who wanted me to fail, but I was conditioned from childhood to believe I was worthless. Some of you may have had the kind of mother I had, where you couldn't say one public thing about a success you'd had without being told to shut up and quit bragging, then adding a list of your flaws for good measure.
Let me say it took a long time to understand my mother's motivations. Many years later I accumulated a number of anecdotes from her mother and siblings and realized how hard they hammered on her to believe she was ugly. She was, by the way, a natural beauty, with legs a movie star would envy. But man, did her detractors do everything they could to shut her up. She'd known my father since primary school and he got his hooks into her good, making sure she did everything to pleasure him and once in a while, rewarding her with something like a mink bolero to keep her attention.
But what had happened was, in 1941 after Pearl Harbor, they both began to race against time to get married before he was called up. He needed legal approval from his parents; curiously, girls could marry at 18, but boys couldn't marry until they were 21. Anyway, they got married and while they waited for the war to heat up, she became pregnant with the first of her 8 children and gave birth in late 1942.
She was tied to the children, the housework, the farming, canning, picking berries in the commercial fields to put in the rainy day can, obedient in every way women were supposed to be in those days. In the meantime, my dad traveled for a living and had many girlfriends in many towns, which I found out much later.
My mom believed that it was her sex appeal that kept their marriage together, or that she had to be sexy in order to keep his attention. Physically, I resemble my mom and she noticed that as she was watching me grow up. So she did everything she could do to wipe out my self-esteem.
That's a simplified version of the story, but it's MY story, and it was enough for me to recognize all the attention I got when I was thin, and how little I got when I became obese. This trajectory led me into a decidedly self-destructive life. Nuff said about that.
I thank god for the kindly doctor who just offhandedly suggested I should have WLS because I was 100 pounds overweight. This is where my knee-jerk obedience to authority figures came in handy.
My obesity led to my disability and numerous health problems, including pre-diabetes. Because of that doctor, because he understood Social Security's rules, he was able to write the letter that saved my life.
For anyone here who is frustrated about the process, do you know you can go to a Social Security office and tell them you have a debilitating disease that is standing in the way of your very existence? You can. And if they say no, there are more steps built into SSA approval that will move you forward, and if you stick it out and get a Social Security case manager to help you, you can win.
The hard part is admiting you have a disability. That's just like the alcoholic who has to admit he's powerless over alcohol. If we weren't powerless over our eating disorder, we'd all be thin. Res ipsa loquitur."The thing speaks for itself."
