Johnna VinZant was devastated to learn that her insurance wouldn't cover bariatric surgery, something her doctor said she desperately needed.
(ABC)More Photos
"The kids are going to be so happy that mommy comes back and plays with them," said her mother, Beverly Dove. "Healthy and go bike riding and stuff."
"Don't be scared," the nurse told a teary-eyed VinZant. "Don't be. You'll be fine. Everyone does fine. Worked here a long time. There are lots of people who have this."
VinZant called home and left a message for her family before going in for surgery.
"I'm all prepped and ready to go and I just wanted to tell you I loved you and hear your voice," she said. "The hospital let me use the phone here before they took me in for surgery. I miss you very much and I love you and hopefully everything will go good. Talk to you soon. Grandma will call you when I come out of surgery. Love you. Bye."
Wittgrove performed the surgery. He is a man of science with some pretty firm opinions about the business side of medicine.
"It's mind boggling to me why insurance companies do this," he said. "For example, if you come into the emergency room with crushing chest pain, and it looks like you have a heart attack on the EKG and you happen to have some Marlboro cigarettes in your pocket, the emergency room physician is not going to say if you go on smoking cessation for three months, then we'll do your heart bypass. That doesn't happen. So it's only discrimination of people of size."
After about three hours the surgery was over. VinZant's mother, whose retirement plans are now intertwined with the cost of her daughter's surgery, was relieved to hear everything had gone well.
"Hi sweetheart," her mother said. "How are you doing? It's all over. Everything went great. No problems. No nothing with your liver. Everything is wonderful. You just rest."
A week and a half later, VinZant was ready to head home. At her final checkup, she had already lost 14 pounds, her diabetes was gone and she could walk without pain.
"I feel great, I feel wonderful. I feel healthier," she said.
When ABC News caught up with her outside the doctor's office along a beautiful stretch of California coastline, she said she was perplexed about her insurance company.
Do you have more information about this topic? If so, please click here to contact the editors of ABC News.
