Stacy had struggled with her weight literally since kindergarten. But it hadn’t affected her confidence in herself and her ability to focus on the good things about life.
Then came an awful incident that shook Stacy to her core. After the loss of her mother, the family decided to take a trip together to Alaska and fly to the top of Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America.
The pilot of the small engine airplane that was to take them had an incident where an obese passenger experienced cardiac problems in-flight. Stacy overheard him on the radio vowing never to take chances with “people like that” ever again.
True to his ill-thought word, the pilot took one look at Stacy and refused to fly her up the mountain. Her father, husband Dennis and young daughter Kendall witnessed the confrontation.
Stacy was mortified, even though they eventually found another pilot to take them up to Mount McKinley. Standing at the summit, looking over the breathtaking vista and northern skies, Stacy vowed to change her life.
“Right there on that mountaintop, I decided,” she said. “Life had been a certain way for so long, and now it was going to be different.”
It was one of the worst, and best, days of her life.
A 37-year-old recreational therapist at a local residential center, the Columbus resident had previously attended an informational session at the Weight Loss Institute of Columbus Regional Health a couple of years earlier. She hesitated at the time, worried about the impact of such a procedure.
With her newfound resolve, Stacy returned to the Weight Loss Institute and learned about a new type of surgery called bariatric sleeve gastrectomy. It immediately seemed like the right option for her, and she entered the standard evaluation period near the beginning of 2012.
At first her family had planned to pay for the procedure out-of-pocket, but the fates aligned when her employer was bought up by another company. As part of their revised health benefits, the bariatric surgery was covered by her employer-provided insurance.
In just over one year since the surgery, Stacy’s weight has plummeted from 364 pounds to 190 pounds. She still has more weight to lose, she says, but it’s already created a tremendous impact on her lifestyle.
Perhaps the most important is her ability to interact with Kendall, now age 7, in ways that she never could before. This includes swimming, soccer, softball and more. The self-described “sideline parent” is now right in the middle of things.
Recently they took a trip to New York City, and Stacy found herself able to walk all around the city, taking in the sights and activities. “I was able to go to amusement parks and get on rides without considering, ‘Is the (safety) bar going to be able to close on the roller coaster?’”
Stacy says this first year since her life-changing event has mostly been about the lifestyle transition, and learning how she had utilized food as a coping mechanism since childhood. Instead of filling herself, now she’s filling her life with new experiences.
And Stacy is already making plans to return to her personal point of no return: the family is going back to Mount McKinley in 2015. “McKinley is the physical representation of the proverbial mountain I had amassed with my weight.”
Only this time, Stacy will climb part of the way to the top herself.