This insurance thing is taking some time. The first inquiry was denied because my doctor's office hadn't sent the referral correctly. Now that I've officially been referred to the surgeon, they had to appeal the decision. I should probably have had my doctor write another letter of medical necessity, I have a feeling they're going to deny it again due to it being "cosmetic". Worse come to worse, I'll pay for it. It isn't much comparatively.

I asked my boss when a good time to take a week and a half off would be and she said not til early January because we're still slammed and short staffed. Hopefully by then there will be a lower animal population and we'll have new people all (or mostly) trained up.

Setting things in motion for my second surgery. There a a couple of really exciting things about it. One is that I can probably get it covered by insurance so long as my doctor writes a letter stating that it's not a cosmetic surgery. The other good thing is that it can be done as an outpatient surgery, so even if I do have to pay out of pocket it will be well under a thousand dollars.

The recovery time will supposedly be a bit shorter than the first one. I am trying to store up enough PTO for about a week and a half, which, with weekends added will be adequate. Work is really rough right now as we're very short staffed and the population is very high, so I don't know if they will even approve a long absence as I'm one of very few staff who have been around long enough to train new people properly. So with that and insurance, I may have to wait until January. I was hoping for early December.

I want to get it done in the winter so everything will be healed up for next summer. Hiking, swimming, running. I am excited to work out and be comfortable without a shirt.

I need to start paying more attention to my diet and exercise again. The change of seasons really messed it up for me.