Weight-loss surgery just a beginning
November 12, 2004
By Anita Creamer
The battle with extreme weight doesn't stop with gastric bypass surgery. Often, that's just another step in the process of regaining health.
Stephanie Hill-Draughn can tell you that much. Sitting in her small office in Sutter Memorial Hospital's pediatric oncology wing, where she works as a certified clinical researcher, she pulls out several printouts of digital photos taken of her not long ago.
Proof, she says, that she needs more help.
She's lost more than 125 pounds since her August 2001 surgery, and that's made a huge difference in her life - and in her health. She goes to McKinley Park and runs during her lunch hour now, this woman who could hardly huff and puff her way up the stairs in her Antelope house a few years ago.
"At the airport, I was always the first one to jump on the cart with the old people," says Hill-Draughn, 43. "And now I can go to the park and run. Me! It's the best feeling."
A sign on the wall of her office, over the computer: "I deserve love, support and to have a healthy body."
She means it.
Hill-Draughn was always chubby. Her weight always, in some way, defined her: She remembers her life by the close circle of friends she's known since her childhood in North Highlands, by the pictures of family she surrounds herself with in her office - and by her weight.
"In the first grade, I weighed 60 pounds," she says. "In the fifth grade, I weighed 134. In the seventh grade, I weighed 159. In the 10th grade, I weighed 220 pounds. I thought I was the fattest girl in the world. I was huge. When it came time to change clothes in gym class, I was completely humiliated.
"I got married and had a baby. I was 259 pounds when I had my son."
That would be Danny Draughn, now 19 and an American River College student.
"When I had my gastric bypass," Hill-Draughn says, "I weighed 330."
Her mother had died of complications from diabetes, and Hill-Draughn knew that carrying around so much weight wasn't good for her.
But more than that, her best friend was getting married, and she couldn't fit into even the largest size of the bridesmaid's dress her friend had chosen for her.
"I did a spiritual reading at her wedding, but it wasn't the same, you know," she says.
And so the surgery. In its aftermath, Hill-Draughn had to relearn her relationship with food. She can't eat cheese or avocado or anything too rich or too sweet. She can only digest a few bites at a time.
No matter. She says she'd do it all over again. The surgery changed her life.
And now she faces her next step - reconstructive surgery to remove the excess skin that hangs from her arms, abdomen and thighs.
Imagine a big parade balloon that's been partially deflated. Gravity pulls down large folds of skin all over her body. She feels lighter and healthier, but her body doesn't yet completely match the way she feels.
Clothed, Hill-Draughn looks trim and stylish. But living with the reality that her clothes hide isn't any healthier for her emotionally than living with the excess pounds was for her physically, she says.
"You lose 125 pounds, and you end up looking at this instead," she says. "It's disheartening. And it's heavy.
"People think, 'Just lose the weight, and you'll be fine.' There's no such thing. Nothing's that simple."
And so she's scheduling the first of what should be several surgeries to tuck and tighten. She grows a little testy with people who, relying on stereotypes propagated by shows such as "The Swan," condemn plastic surgery as vain and silly.
"For some of us, it's truly about leading a healthier lifestyle," she says.
Source:www.sacbee.com
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