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The New Me

Four Dallas women share their experiences with weight-loss surgery.
By D Magazine |
Lucia Wheat, lost 187 lbs
Surgery Type: Open RNY
Surgery Date: Sep. 10, 1999
Clothing Size: From a size 38 to a size 10
Surgeon: Dr. David Provost
The Clinical Center for the Surgical Management of Obesity, UT Southwestern Medical Center
5303 Harry Hines Blvd.
214-648-3067
On Lucia: Terry Top cashmere sweater, $210; Petal skirt, $250; and Labas handmade belt, $130 at Calypso, 42 Highland Park Village. 214-559-4300.

Obesity is a big problem, literally and figuratively. Those living with obesity face any number of serious medical maladies, including diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and heart disease among others. And that’s just the physical side of it. Emotionally, the condition can affect an individual’s confidence and self-esteem, sometimes leading to feelings of isolation and depression. Frequently, the condition is both lifestyle-limiting and life-shortening. And according to the National Institutes of Health, 90 percent of people who participate in diets and weight-reduction programs do not experience significant and sustained weight loss. Local surgeons say that percentage is higher. What does work, they say—with very few exceptions for those who qualify—is bariatric, or weight loss, surgery.

We talked with four Dallas women who have experienced these procedures—one of who has lived with the results longer than all the others combined—to find out how weight loss surgery changed their lives.

A Metamorphosis
Less than six months after her open RNY in 1999, entrepreneur Lucia Wheat of Bedford began experiencing a heaviness that was only indirectly related to her obesity. She had already shed 100 pounds and was physically lighter than she’d been in years, but she found herself overcome with inexplicable sadness.

“It was a very big change in a very short time,” she says. “I was looking at a different person in the mirror and wondering, ‘Where is the person who used to be there?’ I had been obese since I was 5 or 6 years old—a chubby little girl, a fat teenager, just a large person all my life—and suddenly I was so different, like a butterfly just out of a cocoon. I was beginning to change, and people were looking at me differently. I should have felt I had everything in the world to live for, but this sadness was on me. I finally realized that I was grieving for the person I had been, the obese person I had known all my life. Realizing that enabled me to overcome it.”

Wheat says that as remarkable as the outer changes continued to be, it was the accompanying inner changes that transformed her life. Suddenly possessed with an energy and self-assurance she’d never known, Wheat eventually began her own business. Now, as founder and president of Bearer of Light Candles, Inc., she devotes her time to inspiring others and sharing her experience.

“People so often go into weight-loss surgery feeling guilty and mentally condemned, thinking they’re taking the loser’s way out,” she says. “They think, ‘How did I let it come to something this drastic?’ and ‘Why didn’t I just lose the weight on my own? Why couldn’t I?’ Well, I think we need to stop asking ourselves why we didn’t or couldn’t and start saying, ‘Okay, if the opportunity’s before me, why don’t I? Let me do it now.’ I believe there’s a right time for everything in our lives.”

Because the FDA didn’t approve the Lap-Band procedure in the United States until June 2001, it was not an option for Wheat, but she says even if it were she would not change the surgery she had nor her surgeon, Dr. David Provost, who pioneered laparoscopic RNY in Texas.

“For me, it wasn’t just an ‘open’ procedure,” she says. “It opened the rest of my life.”

Karen Drennan, lost 110 lbs
Surgery Type: Open RNY
Surgery Date: April 22, 2005
Clothing Size: From a size 20 to a size 3
Surgeon: Dr. John H. Alexander
The Alexander Center
for Obesity Surgery
8 Medical Parkway, Ste. 310
972-247-7767
www.drjohnalexander.com
On Karen: Burning Torch metallic embroidered trench with leather tie, $634, at Elements, 4400 Lovers Ln. 214-987-0837. Betty pumps, $295, at Tory Burch,
17 Highland Park Village.
214-559-2400.

A Star is Reborn
Having shared the silver screen with some of Hollywood’s leading men through roles in films such as Scarface, Dragnet, and Night Shift, actress, model, and Flower Mound resident Karen Drennan (nee Criswell) recently got back in front of the camera for a local commercial
for a cause near and dear to her heart: The Alexander Center for Obesity Surgery.

Drennan has also appeared in a number of sitcoms and soap operas, but says she mostly quit showbiz some years back in order to home school her two sons and teach Sunday school. Until late last year, she thought fans had forgotten her.

“For 10 years I was overweight, and nobody recognized me,” she says, “but then as soon as I dropped the weight, it happened. I was on a cruise last Christmas, and somebody came up to me and said, ‘Oh, I know you! You’re Simone from Days of Our Lives!’ and it just gave me chills. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m my old self!’ It was nice.”

The reason for the suddenly regained recognition, she says, is that roughly eight months prior to that encounter she underwent an open RNY. Wheelchair-bound and suffering from severe knee problems, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea, Drennan felt that she had left the glamour of Tinseltown far behind, especially when her doctor warned her she was “a walking heart attack” and suggested the surgery. She began researching the options, and that’s when she found Dr. John Alexander, who, in a sense, offered her the role of a lifetime.

Within 10 months she lost 110 pounds, went from a size 20 to a 3, and regained “the figure I had in my 20s.” Much sooner than that, she says, the surgery cured all her ailments, but not without some initial discomfort.

“There were a few things I wish people had told me,” she recalls, “like how the first five days [after surgery] are pure hell. I’d had many knee surgeries, so I thought I was prepared, but I was definitely wondering how long it would last. By the sixth day, though, I felt so much better.”

Since then, Drennan’s progress has flowed as smoothly as sands through the hour glass, and she says that’s because she has followed Dr. Alexander’s instructions every step of the way. Because nutritional deficiencies are a risk of bypass surgery, Drennan has learned to listen to her body.

“I used to be an ice cream-aholic,” she says, “but now I never crave dairy. Now, my body craves protein, so I’m always eating beef jerky, sardines, and weird stuff like that. It’s because the body knows. If I notice too much hair in the hairbrush, I know I’m not eating enough protein, and that’s easy enough to fix.”

Seeing a need for nutritional information geared specifically for bypass patients, especially during their first six weeks after surgery when they’re on a liquid diet, Dr. Alexander is in the process of compiling a cookbook, with Drennan as the cover model.

She says her biggest success so far, though, happened during a port stop on that same cruise last Christmas when she completed a hike with her husband and sons. “For the first time, I actually did it instead of sitting in a wheelchair at the bottom of the hill taking pictures,” she says. “The kids were just ecstatic, saying, ‘We got our Mom back! You’re one of us!’ That’s my success story.”

Cynthia Lott, lost 147 lbs
Surgery Type: Laparoscopic RNY
Surgery Date: Dec. 29, 2004
Clothing Size: From a 3X to a size 6
Surgeon: Dr. Joseph Kuhn
The Weight Loss Surgery
Program at Baylor University Medical Center
9101 North Central Expy.,
Ste. 370
214-820-8220
On Cynthia: Delphyne Guiraud wool sweater with brown belt, $768, at Elements, 4400 Lovers Ln. 214-987-0837. Jeans, shoes, and jewelry are the model’s own.

A New Lease on Life
Real estate broker Cynthia Lott of Rockwall says that as recently as two years ago she was in an unhealthy relationship—with food.

“As it is for a lot of people who are obese, food was my fix-it-all,” she says. “The more I ate, the more obese I became; the more obese I became, the more depressed I would get, and in depression I would eat. It was a vicious cycle. I had high blood pressure, and every time I went to the doctor I had one more health problem related to obesity. I didn’t have very much energy; I didn’t have any self-confidence. It was getting in the way not only of my real estate career but also my life in general.”

Finally fed up, Lott attended a seminar on weight-loss surgery options and, realizing she met all the criteria, had a laparoscopic RNY just two months later—an unusually fast turnaround in the realm of bariatric surgery. Although most major insurance carriers cover the common bariatric procedures, many require a waiting period, and some even require that a patient’s weight be monitored for at least a year.

Lott says that while she attended the initial seminar with an open mind about the different procedures, she felt right away that the RNY was the way for her to go.

“Mine was a lifelong problem, and I was afraid I wouldn’t go get the fills like I needed to with the Lap-Band,” she says. “The [RNY] procedure was really quick—I was home the next day—and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Dr. Kuhn did it laparoscopically, which is so much less invasive and really aids in the recuperation time.”

Given her profession, Lott was accustomed to keeping schedules, but after surgery such maintenance took on a whole new meaning for her.

“It’s a total lifestyle change,” she says. “What you eat changes, how much and how fast you eat changes, when you eat changes; you’re forced to become a much more scheduled person. You still think about food, but you think about it more in terms of planning; it becomes more of a survival thing.”

Lott attributes her post-surgery success to two factors: “First, you have to pick a good doctor, and, in Dr. Kuhn, I know I chose the best. Second, you have to be committed to doing what the doctor says. With RNY, the stomach pouch makes it easy to follow the doctor’s rules, because you’ll be sick, if you don’t. But you have to want to make this work, and, when you do, this surgery definitely gives you a chance to have your life back.”

Arlene Peay, lost 150 lbs
Surgery Type: Lap-Band
Surgery Date: Nov. 3, 2003
Clothing Size: From a size 24 to a size 4
Surgeon: Dr. Nirmal Jayaseelan
Medical City Dallas
7777 Forest Ln., Bldg. C, Ste. 670
972-566-2263
www.texaslapbandcenter.com
On Arlene: Moschino blouse, $310; Red Engine jeans, $150; and Mesh Brow Copper earrings, $81, at L. Bartlett, 3839 McKinney Ave., Ste. 155. 214-521-3500.

Doing Unto Others. . .
Arlene Peay has worked with bariatric patients at Medical City Dallas since 2004.
Just prior to that, as a patient of Dr. Nirmal Jayaseelan, she underwent the Lap-Band surgery herself, a fact she says gives her a unique understanding of what her patients are going through.

Now a nurse practitioner for her former surgeon, Peay assists Jayaseelan in performing 15 to 20 Lap-Band operations each week. She says that even before she was on the other side of the laparoscope, she was a fan of the procedure.

“When I decided to have the surgery, I considered all the options and decided to go with the Lap-Band because it was by far the least invasive,” she says. “For me, the gastric bypass seemed too dramatic, and I was worried about the potential side effects of protein and vitamin deficiencies that can arise later in life. Plus, I liked that the Lap-Band is an outpatient procedure that’s done in less than an hour and lets you go home the same day. I think those factors are important to most people who are contemplating surgery.”

Like nearly all of her patients, Peay said she was a veteran dieter before deciding on the surgery. “Almost everyone you talk to who’s overweight has dieted in their lifetime, and they’ve never had problems with dieting,” she says. “It’s the maintenance stage, keeping the weight off, that is the problem, because typically they gain the weight—and more—back at some point. That’s how it always was for me, and it was the reason I chose the surgery, because the band is a good tool for maintaining that weight loss.”

The success of any weight-loss surgery depends on patient compliance, and a crucial part of the program for Lap-Band patients is keeping up with their regular follow-up
visits, during which water or saline is injected to refill the inner tube-like band. Peay says this procedure takes just 5 minutes. Of course, for her own follow-up visits, it’s just another day at the office.

Surgical Options

The two most commonly performed bariatric procedures in Dallas, as in the rest of the United States, are gastric bypass and laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgeries. Though both can lead to complications, the gastric banding (commonly referred to as Lap-Band) procedure is less invasive and less risky; it involves the laparoscopic placement of an inflatable band around the upper part of the stomach, which restricts the amount of food that can be consumed at one time while also increasing the time it takes for the stomach to empty. The most common weight-loss surgery is the Roux-en-Y (RNY) procedure, so called because of the Y-configuration of the intestine formed after a large portion of the stomach is physically sectioned off and bypassed. This creates a new, much smaller stomach pouch that is connected to the small intestine. The RNY can be performed laparoscopically, with five or six small incisions, or in a more invasive “open” procedure, with one larger incision. The size of the new pouch varies with different doctors, but it typically holds about one ounce of food or less, which causes a full feeling after just a few bites. Although weight loss is initially more dramatic with either version of the RNY, the weight loss with the Lap-Band tends to be about the same after two to three years.

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