Chicago Sun Times | August 4, 2007 |
Saturday Final Edition
Hard to Stomach; Mother’s ordeal shows serious side effects of gastric bypass surgery’s
BYLINE: Deborah Douglas, The Chicago Sun-Times SECTION: EDITORIALS; Deborah Douglas; Pg. 15 LENGTH: 1064 words
THE ISSUE
How Star Jones Reynolds lost so much weight has been a popular topic since the rotund diva arrived on ABC’s “The View” in 1997, leaving many pounds lighter last year without a clear explanation to adoring fans and an annoyed public of how she did it. In the September issue of Glamour, which hits newsstands Tuesday, she atones for her sin of omission by writing “I’m Ready To Open Up,” openly admitting to having gastric bypass surgery.
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I couldn’t believe she ate those cookies — all of them. When I confronted Ma, she explained that after a hard day’s work, she needed a lift to start her second shift — caring for her family, which included me, my younger brother and sister and her terminally ill husband. I was 11 at the time, in a house where we had a three-cookie-a-day rule. I couldn’t believe she broke it.
Twenty years later, after years of yo-yo dieting, Ma decided to take a drastic step — gastric bypass surgery. No matter how diligent she was to diet and exercise routines, she couldn’t lose weight. So, shrinking her stomach to severely restrict her food intake, thereby causing her to lose weight, seemed like her last resort.
I was afraid for her; I even insisted she fax diagrams of exactly what her doctors in Michigan planned to do. Eventually, I supported her decision to win her weight war and applauded her tenacity. After surgery, she got up at 5 every morning to speed-walk, commune with God and do her part to maintain her massive weight drop. I never knew how much she weighed — and she would never tell — but she likely lost at least 100 pounds.
But then in June she nearly died.
She had to have an emergency hernia removal that went awry.
”You need to call your family members and tell them to come because she might not make it,” the surgeon said.
We excused ourselves to a suffocating conference room and hung on the doctor’s every word. We were all afraid to speak. So we just listened. The prognosis wasn’t good, and the family had to decide how far it wanted the doctor to go. So much of Ma’s intestines had died the surgeon said he’d have to undo her supposedly permanent gastric bypass to preserve enough to filter wastes.
Ma needed 3 feet of intestines to live. We’re born with about 20 feet of small intestine and 6 feet of colon. Ma was lucky — if you can call it that: Doctors were able to save 5 whole feet of her intestines.
While she made it through that surgery, Ma wasn’t responding: The doctors didn’t even know if there was any there there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. Her kidneys failed, her lungs collapsed, and lo and behold, her blood thinners made her blood thicker.
Would brain damage be the deciding factor to keep her alive? Would she want to live with a feeding tube? What about her mobility? So when my mother walked 50 feet on Wednesday with the help of a walker at a hospital rehab, my heart leapt.
We still don’t know why my mother developed a hernia. If she could talk — which she can’t quite yet because she lost part of her tongue because of complications of the hernia surgery — I’d like to ask her if it was worth it.
She’s laying in rehab, her face temporarily disfigured, struggling to speak, fighting chronic infections and unrelenting pain. The most God-fearing, independent woman I know must rely on nurses to move her and brush her teeth.
I also wonder what she’d think about Star Jones Reynolds’ coyness and recent revelation. I know when I’ve talked about weight-loss surgery previously, she warned me away from it. But I also know she enjoyed her smaller figure, new wardrobe and dating a debonair Tuskegee airman.
What I want to know from Jones Reynolds is: After being fat and fabulous for a good long time, duping women into thinking she mostly got rid of all that fat by a sudden conviction to exercise, eating right and some cryptic mention of “medical intervention,” does she realize what a disservice she did to those of us trying to find a workable method of maintaining healthy weight? “After I left ‘The View,’ ” Jones Reynolds wrote in Glamour, “many women told me they felt empowered by my honesty over having been fired — but wished I was willing to be as honest about my weight loss.” Me, too, Star.
Deborah Douglas is a Sun-Times editorial board writer.
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WEIGHT-LOSS SURGERY HELPS FIGHT DIABETES, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
Weight-loss surgeries do much more than help people drop pounds. It can alleviate or control other conditions exacerbated by being overweight, doctors say.
That is why Patricia Boatwright, a gynecologist from Hyde Park, decided to get lap-band surgery last October. A family history of painful arthritis kept the motorcycle-riding woman from being as active as she would like. While dedicated to exercising, Boatwright says a slower metabolism as she aged — she’s 53 — made melting the 230 pounds on her 5-foot,
8-inch frame difficult. “I thought I was cute when I was at 230,” says Boatwright, who practices at Rush University
Medical Center. “People say I look better [now].”
According to Rush’s Dr. Jonathan Myers, weight-loss surgeries can significantly affect other obesity-related illnesses, such as diabetes, sleep apnea, heart disease and stroke.
“So much of what we do is not about weight loss or weight reduction but about taking on metabolic diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure or cholesterol diseases,” says Dr. Kelvin Higa, president of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.
Weight-loss/metabolic surgeries continue to boom, from 16,200 in 1992, according to the bariatric group, to 177,600 in 2006.
“In roughly 90 percent of diabetes cases, it gets better or goes away,” Myers says. “High blood pressure gets better or goes away.”
Consider these facts from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association:
– Weight-loss surgery reduced levels of Type 2 diabetes in 76.8 percent of patients;
– About 61 percent of patients with hypertension were cured after weight-loss surgery;
– Almost 86 percent of obstructive sleep apnea patients were relieved after bariatric surgery.
These surgeries aren’t for everybody, Boatwright cautions: “Twenty-, 30- and 40-year-olds should be able to go through the behavior modifications. You have to stay motivated. You still need to do aerobic exercise.”