Weight-loss surgery

Patient stories

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Weight-loss surgery turned Kay into a big loser

Kay before Kay after

Kay Lewis had been fighting her weight for nearly two decades. She made the decision to turn things around the day she realized her weight made it impossible to be the mom she wanted to be. “I knew it was time for change when I refused to go on the Ferris wheel with my son because I knew I wouldn’t fit,” said Lewis, who weighed 312 pounds at the time. “It literally broke my heart and I realized that I was not being the mother to my children I wanted to be, or needed to be.”

Her newfound determination to find a solution led her to weight-loss surgery at Medcenter One. “I didn’t want to fail one more time. I wanted a life-long solution that I could live with and my family didn’t need to make exceptions for,” she said.

Lewis would go on to lose more than 140 pounds after the November 2005 surgery. What’s more, her blood pressure has dropped from an alarming 172/89 to a healthier 132/72 and the chronic pain from carrying too much weight has disappeared.

“I think Medcenter One’s Dr. Brent Bruderer said it perfectly: ‘I will give you the tool, and you need to use it,’” said Lewis, who eats the foods she enjoys, but in smaller portions. “I always felt like I was living to eat, and not eating to live. Eating is not a sport to me anymore.”

Gastric bypass surgery made Darla a big loser

After a 40-year sentence, Darla Pruett has finally been released from her prison: obesity. In July 2002, she had gastric bypass surgery at Medcenter One Health Systems under the care of Dr. Brent Bruderer.

Prior to surgery, Pruett, a registered nurse in Q&R Cardiology, struggled with obesity her entire life.

“I went over 200 pounds my sophomore year of high school,” Pruett said. At one point, she lost 70 pounds, but gained it back along with another 30 or 40 more.

At 5’6” and 335 pounds, she was in constant pain. Her body hurt every morning when she got out of bed and her obesity was driving her cholesterol and blood pressure to dangerously-high numbers.

“My knees hurt when I walked. I would take one step at a time walking down the stairs,” Pruett said. “My life was like a ball and chain to obesity.”

Pruett said before surgery the first thing she did when she walked in a restaurant was to look around to decide where she was going to sit. She would quickly study the room to see where she could walk through the tables without bumping into anyone.

“I’d have to look at what kind of chairs they had and if they weren’t big enough, I’d have to ask for a different chair. That was always a constant fear.”

According to Dr. Bruderer, a gastric bypass surgery candidate must be 100 pounds overweight and have a body mass index of 40 or higher.

“Medical complications resulting from obesity like high blood pressure also factor into the decision to do surgery,” Dr. Bruderer said.

As a registered nurse, Pruett often had to sit down and rest on the job. But soon after she began to shed the extra pounds, her job became a lot less work.

“My work has changed. I’m more efficient,” she said. “And my patients don’t even recognize me.”

Pruett said a gentleman coming in for his flu shot asked her, ‘What ever happened to that nice nurse Darla? I haven’t seen her in a long time.’ She looked up at the man who she’s known for about 10 years, smiled and said, ‘It’s me!’

After losing 170 pounds, Pruett has been freed from the ball and chain of obesity. When she gets up in the morning she doesn’t ache. She can shop wherever she likes and she can sit down and cross her legs, something she forgot she could even do when she was overweight.

“My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.”

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