THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603090051
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
THERE'S A CHAIR at Michael Stubbs' bank. It was put there for customers like him to use.
But Stubbs never used it. He couldn't wedge his 500 pounds into it.
On Wednesday, Stubbs went to the bank. He finally sat in the chair. He fit right in.
Carolyn Stubbs, one of his daughters, looks at clothes differently these day - she shops for youthful fashions, not just whatever will fit. Linda Stubbs, his wife, has a new job. Virginia Groff, his mother-in-law, feels better than she has in years.
And Kelly Stubbs, his youngest daughter, has new friends at school - some of them the same people who used to jeer her as she walked by.
Over the past three years, five members of this Hampton Roads family have had gastric bypasses, operations to help people who are dangerously overweight. Four of them have had the surgery in the past year. They've lost a total of 567 pounds - and counting.
``It's just a new way of life,'' said Linda.
Gastric bypass, like a procedure commonly known as ``stomach stapling,'' closes off part of the stomach, leaving only a small pouch. Also, part of the small intestine as a shunt to the bowels, so some of the food bypasses the stomach so it isn't absorbed well.
The smaller stomach helps the person feel full earlier. It can give patients an aversion to sweet food.
Gastric bypass is not for someone who just wants to look better in a bathing suit.
``This is not a cosmetic operation. I mean, it is, but that's not it's primary purpose,'' says Dr. Harvey Sugarman, the surgeon who operated on the Stubbses and Groff at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
Groff, like her daughter Linda and two of her granddaughters, has been fat all her life. Michael Stubbs was skinny when he was young, but started gaining weight in his 20s.
The Stubbses live in Norfolk; Groff lives in Mathews. Linda and Michael Stubbs used to run Crumb's Bakery in Newport News with Groff and her husband. Now the business has been taken over by another daughter.
The family tried ``anything you can name'' over the years to lose weight, said Groff. Nothing worked for long. In fact, their problems just got worse.
That's not an atypical experience. In an article published several years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers for the Centers for Disease Control noted that medicine has not yet developed a long-term weight loss method that works for most people.
Sugarman believes the family's obesity is due in part to heredity. ``There is a major genetic component to this problem,'' he said.
Among them, they developed almost all the serious side effects of extreme obesity.
Groff and Carolyn had problems with their knees and other joints, which couldn't handle all the weight. Linda suffered from nerve problems in her neck that made one arm go numb.
Michael had ``sleep apnea'' - a condition in which the windpipe closes off during sleeping, cutting off breathing. Eventually, pressure on his diaphragm made it hard to breathe while awake. His circulation was so bad that he developed ulcers on his legs. He had high blood pressure.
Kelly, 15 and the youngest in the family, hadn't developed a lot of the health problems yet. But she suffered from a condition in which fluid builds up in the brain, causing agonizing headaches. Sometimes, she passed out.
Eventually, Kelly, who weighed 314 pounds, was calling her mother frequently to pick her up from school. Sometimes, it was because of headaches. Sometimes, Linda suspected, it was because of other things.
Jeers and the taunts. People who shunned her.
Carolyn, 19, and 329 pounds, knew what her sister was going through. Pretending to laugh it off, then stewing over it later. Throwing your money around, just so people would spend time with you. ``It was horrible.''
It was no better in the adult world. When the family went out to eat, diners would stare at them like they were circus animals. Some would make comments. A glare from Michael - imposing at 6-foot-1 and more than 400 pounds - usually shut them up.
Linda, who weighed 287 pounds and was working as an X-ray technician, had a boss who disliked fat people. After Linda was passed over for a promotion, she quit and went to work at the bakery.
Then there were the ``friendly'' comments: ``How did you let yourself get that way? You have such a pretty face.''
Eventually, the physical and emotional toll made even moving around too much trouble.
When your knees hurt, you tend not to go anywhere. Michael has some buddies who like fishing, but he couldn't even make the walk down the pier. Kelly stopped going out with her friends; they would come see her at the house.
``You reach a point where there's nothing left for you but the food,'' Groff said, and Kelly added:
``It's like you're already dead.''
By chance, Groff met a woman who had undergone gastric bypass.
When Groff had the surgery, she was carrying 345 pounds on her 5-foot frame. To qualify for gastric bypass, a patient must be well over ideal body weight, or have some of the complications the Stubbs family suffered.
The surgery is hard. All five of them have the proof of that - scars running from the breastbone to below the navel. The risk of death from complications is about 1 in 200 to 300. Other potential complications include ulcers, hernia and low blood sugar.
Insurance covered most of the operations' costs - about $25,000 apiece for the surgery and related care. Michael's was about $38,000.
The family can see the results every day. Before surgery, Kelly's typical fare at Taco Bell would include five entrees and a large soda. Now she can eat one, plus maybe half of a second entree, along with some unsweetened iced tea.
Sugarman says patients lose an average of two-thirds of their excess weight within two years of the surgery. And they keep off most of that weight for at least 10 years.
He pushes his patients to change habits with a program of good nutrition and exercise.
Kelly says she's enjoying the new attention from boys. And it's nice to have new friends, though she knows that her real friends are the ones who liked her when when she was really fat.
Nobody in the family is model-thin, but most of their health problems have improved or disappeared. Typically, people who undergo gastric bypass don't reach their ideal weight.
``The first thing (Sugarman) said to me is `This is not a miracle. It's a help,' '' Linda recalls. But ``I kind of feel it's a miracle for me.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Bill Tiernan
[The Family]
KEYWORDS: OBESITY GASTRIC BYPASS STOMACH STAPLING PROFILE by CNB