SUNDAY NEWSDAY, Amazing!
Hi All,
For those of you who are from Long Island and got yesterday's (SUNDAY) Newsday, check out the "LI Life' section, page 2-3.
Two amazing WLS stories/pictures; one Band and one Bypass. Not sure if it's in the City Edition.
Below is both the link AND the story.
I copied/Pasted for those who don't want to go to the Newsday site.
Here is a link to the story but there are no photos, unfortunately.
tinyurl.com/628osq
Saving their own lives
Two obese women heeded wake-up calls about their health and turned to weight-loss surgery - successfully
BY MERLE ENGLISH | Special to Newsday
August 31, 2008
As people fled the choking dust and falling debris from the World Trade Center disaster, Cindy Schreiner wanted to run but couldn't.
It wasn't fear that restrained her as she walked out of 120 Broadway, where she worked as a manager for a consulting firm just one block from the Twin Towers.
She was too heavy to run.
Schreiner, now 48, was morbidly obese, weighing 330 pounds.
"I was thinking, 'I have to save my life,'" she recalled at her home in Lynbrook recently. "I tried to run, but I was out of breath after the first four steps."
She said a colleague implored her, "Cindy, come on, you have to run."
"Please, I can't," she replied.
He managed to drag her into an underground garage and out of danger.
That 9/11 moment was life-altering for Schreiner.
"It scared the hell out of me and changed my life. I said, 'You can't live like this.'"
Today, Schreiner, executive director at a Wall Street investment banking firm, is a svelte 135 pounds. She shed more than half of her pre-9/11 weight from her 5-foot-9- inch frame thanks to gastric bypass surgery, which restricts the amount of food she eats. She turned to this option after years of "yo-yo" dieting and exercise.
Another conversion case
Like Schreiner, it was the specter of death that drove a school librarian from Huntington Station to "dig out a treasure of health" from her morbidly obese body. The motivation for Dorothy DeNoto, who weighed nearly 400 pounds, was near-fatal heart attacks her mother suffered twice and a brother once, all within a year.
Despite her crash diets and lots of physical activity, DeNoto's weight fluctuated between 155 and 178 pounds in high school. It shot up to 322 after she got married and had two sons. In December 1992 at a Christmas party for one of them, "a man came up to me and said, 'How can you still be alive? You should be dead you're so fat.'"
"I felt mortified and angry, and it did open my eyes," DeNoto said. But not enough for her to do something about it.
Then in March 2005 her mother, Carol, a petite woman, had a heart attack.
"It came out of nowhere. It kind of scared me," DeNoto, 47, said.
But the likelihood of premature death truly gripped her when her mother sustained a second heart attack in early February 2006. And three days after her mother was discharged from the hospital, Joseph DeNoto, one of DeNoto's five younger brothers, then 42, had a massive one.
"He went into a coma; doctors thought he was dying," DeNoto said. "I was terrified. I said if they make it out of this alive, I'm going to turn my life around."
DeNoto now weighs 135 pounds. She, too, opted for weight-loss surgery.
A catalyst is helpful
It is the 'ah-ha!' moment in a person's life that fuels the need for change, according to Ellen Westrich of Southampton, a clinical psychologist and instructor in psychiatry at New York Medical Center. She explained:
"When something is a problem ... it's very much in your head; it's an intellectual process. But it has to register emotionally to finally tip the scale. Until there's that emotional ah-ha! moment, it's very hard for the motivation to sustain the change in behavior."
That moment liberated Schreiner and DeNoto from years of struggle with obesity.
The National Institutes of Health defines morbid obesity as having a body mass index of 40, or 100 pounds or more above ideal body weight. Causes include eating more calories than are used; family history; metabolism and environmental factors; stress, behavior or medical problems.
About 3 percent of men and 6.9 percent of women in the United States age 20 and older are morbidly obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The condition - considered a chronic complicated disorder in medical circles - interferes with breathing, walking and other physical activities and increases the risk for heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
Weight-related health concerns never troubled DeNoto as she grew up. In high school and college she was involved in several sports, "but food was a big part of my life," she said.
Her poundage soared from the 170s when she got married, had two sons and went through separation and divorce. At about 387 pounds, she was getting heart palpitations. Doctors found that besides other health problems, she had a defective thyroid "that was so bad, I could have gone into a coma or had a heart attack. My body was shutting down."
DeNoto consulted Dr. Alan Geiss, director of the Laparoscopic and Bariatric Center at Syosset Hospital, a unit of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Geiss performed adjustable laparoscopic gastric banding on her. This, and gastric bypass, are among several surgical procedures that reduce the capacity of the stomach. The procedures are designed for individuals who cannot achieve significant weight loss through diet and exercise alone.
Laparoscopic gastric banding is a surgical procedure in which an adjustable device is placed around the top of the stomach, creating a small pouch that limits the amount of food a person can consume, making the person feel fuller faster. It is minimally invasive, reversible and requires only a two- to three-day hospital stay. In gastric bypass, most of the stomach is closed off surgically to form a small pouch that limits food intake. This procedure is irreversible and requires four to six days in the hospital. It is said to allow for more sustained weight loss.
"We have to educate the lay public," Geiss said. "People make false assumptions about the morbidly obese, that they are lazy, don't exercise ... But genetics predisposes them to a life where they are bound to food."
Another of DeNoto's brothers, Dr. George DeNoto, chief of laparoscopic surgery at North Shore University Medical Center and a colleague of Geiss', had urged her for years to do the surgery. He would say, "You're going to die. Don't you want to be around for your kids?"
A new her
The outcome of Schreiner's wake-up call was her ability to fit into a short, black sleeveless ****tail dress that was once only a dream.
"From 5, I started to get chubby," she said. "In high school I was always chunky. I played basketball and volleyball and I was constantly on diets, but I would put the weight back on."
In college and when she started to work, "almost anything I put my mind to - I was successful," Schreiner went on, "but I couldn't with the weight. At one time, I was probably as high as 350. I'd fall down all the time, because my knees and ankles would give way. ... My feet hurt all the time. Walking was a huge effort for me."
So running was unthinkable on Sept. 11, 2001.
She underwent surgery in June 2002 and lost 110 pounds the first year, 50 the next, "and the rest came off little by little."
Losing the pounds was half of the battle for Schreiner and DeNoto. Both had to contend with sagging skin. They have been undergoing body contouring, including stomach tucks and breast and buttock lifts. Each has a final operation scheduled for later this year to remove excess skin from their thighs.
"The procedures are painful but worth it," DeNoto said, "because my outside matches what I feel on the inside."
Bubbling with joy at their accomplishment, Schreiner and DeNoto are committed to physical activity and healthy eating to keep their new figures. DeNoto runs up and down the five stories and across the roof of the Huntington garage across from her home.
"I'm a fitness pirate. I plundered my body to grab my greatest treasure," she said, referring indirectly to Fitness Pirates Llc, a business she started to help those struggling with obesity and other health issues.
Schreiner works out four times a week, runs three miles each time and lifts weights. She's a member of Obesityhelp.com, a support group online.
"I feel so happy with my life right now I'm not going to waste a moment," she said.
For those of you who are from Long Island and got yesterday's (SUNDAY) Newsday, check out the "LI Life' section, page 2-3.
Two amazing WLS stories/pictures; one Band and one Bypass. Not sure if it's in the City Edition.
Below is both the link AND the story.
I copied/Pasted for those who don't want to go to the Newsday site.
Here is a link to the story but there are no photos, unfortunately.
tinyurl.com/628osq
Saving their own lives
Two obese women heeded wake-up calls about their health and turned to weight-loss surgery - successfully
BY MERLE ENGLISH | Special to Newsday
August 31, 2008
As people fled the choking dust and falling debris from the World Trade Center disaster, Cindy Schreiner wanted to run but couldn't.
It wasn't fear that restrained her as she walked out of 120 Broadway, where she worked as a manager for a consulting firm just one block from the Twin Towers.
She was too heavy to run.
Schreiner, now 48, was morbidly obese, weighing 330 pounds.
"I was thinking, 'I have to save my life,'" she recalled at her home in Lynbrook recently. "I tried to run, but I was out of breath after the first four steps."
She said a colleague implored her, "Cindy, come on, you have to run."
"Please, I can't," she replied.
He managed to drag her into an underground garage and out of danger.
That 9/11 moment was life-altering for Schreiner.
"It scared the hell out of me and changed my life. I said, 'You can't live like this.'"
Today, Schreiner, executive director at a Wall Street investment banking firm, is a svelte 135 pounds. She shed more than half of her pre-9/11 weight from her 5-foot-9- inch frame thanks to gastric bypass surgery, which restricts the amount of food she eats. She turned to this option after years of "yo-yo" dieting and exercise.
Another conversion case
Like Schreiner, it was the specter of death that drove a school librarian from Huntington Station to "dig out a treasure of health" from her morbidly obese body. The motivation for Dorothy DeNoto, who weighed nearly 400 pounds, was near-fatal heart attacks her mother suffered twice and a brother once, all within a year.
Despite her crash diets and lots of physical activity, DeNoto's weight fluctuated between 155 and 178 pounds in high school. It shot up to 322 after she got married and had two sons. In December 1992 at a Christmas party for one of them, "a man came up to me and said, 'How can you still be alive? You should be dead you're so fat.'"
"I felt mortified and angry, and it did open my eyes," DeNoto said. But not enough for her to do something about it.
Then in March 2005 her mother, Carol, a petite woman, had a heart attack.
"It came out of nowhere. It kind of scared me," DeNoto, 47, said.
But the likelihood of premature death truly gripped her when her mother sustained a second heart attack in early February 2006. And three days after her mother was discharged from the hospital, Joseph DeNoto, one of DeNoto's five younger brothers, then 42, had a massive one.
"He went into a coma; doctors thought he was dying," DeNoto said. "I was terrified. I said if they make it out of this alive, I'm going to turn my life around."
DeNoto now weighs 135 pounds. She, too, opted for weight-loss surgery.
A catalyst is helpful
It is the 'ah-ha!' moment in a person's life that fuels the need for change, according to Ellen Westrich of Southampton, a clinical psychologist and instructor in psychiatry at New York Medical Center. She explained:
"When something is a problem ... it's very much in your head; it's an intellectual process. But it has to register emotionally to finally tip the scale. Until there's that emotional ah-ha! moment, it's very hard for the motivation to sustain the change in behavior."
That moment liberated Schreiner and DeNoto from years of struggle with obesity.
The National Institutes of Health defines morbid obesity as having a body mass index of 40, or 100 pounds or more above ideal body weight. Causes include eating more calories than are used; family history; metabolism and environmental factors; stress, behavior or medical problems.
About 3 percent of men and 6.9 percent of women in the United States age 20 and older are morbidly obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The condition - considered a chronic complicated disorder in medical circles - interferes with breathing, walking and other physical activities and increases the risk for heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
Weight-related health concerns never troubled DeNoto as she grew up. In high school and college she was involved in several sports, "but food was a big part of my life," she said.
Her poundage soared from the 170s when she got married, had two sons and went through separation and divorce. At about 387 pounds, she was getting heart palpitations. Doctors found that besides other health problems, she had a defective thyroid "that was so bad, I could have gone into a coma or had a heart attack. My body was shutting down."
DeNoto consulted Dr. Alan Geiss, director of the Laparoscopic and Bariatric Center at Syosset Hospital, a unit of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Geiss performed adjustable laparoscopic gastric banding on her. This, and gastric bypass, are among several surgical procedures that reduce the capacity of the stomach. The procedures are designed for individuals who cannot achieve significant weight loss through diet and exercise alone.
Laparoscopic gastric banding is a surgical procedure in which an adjustable device is placed around the top of the stomach, creating a small pouch that limits the amount of food a person can consume, making the person feel fuller faster. It is minimally invasive, reversible and requires only a two- to three-day hospital stay. In gastric bypass, most of the stomach is closed off surgically to form a small pouch that limits food intake. This procedure is irreversible and requires four to six days in the hospital. It is said to allow for more sustained weight loss.
"We have to educate the lay public," Geiss said. "People make false assumptions about the morbidly obese, that they are lazy, don't exercise ... But genetics predisposes them to a life where they are bound to food."
Another of DeNoto's brothers, Dr. George DeNoto, chief of laparoscopic surgery at North Shore University Medical Center and a colleague of Geiss', had urged her for years to do the surgery. He would say, "You're going to die. Don't you want to be around for your kids?"
A new her
The outcome of Schreiner's wake-up call was her ability to fit into a short, black sleeveless ****tail dress that was once only a dream.
"From 5, I started to get chubby," she said. "In high school I was always chunky. I played basketball and volleyball and I was constantly on diets, but I would put the weight back on."
In college and when she started to work, "almost anything I put my mind to - I was successful," Schreiner went on, "but I couldn't with the weight. At one time, I was probably as high as 350. I'd fall down all the time, because my knees and ankles would give way. ... My feet hurt all the time. Walking was a huge effort for me."
So running was unthinkable on Sept. 11, 2001.
She underwent surgery in June 2002 and lost 110 pounds the first year, 50 the next, "and the rest came off little by little."
Losing the pounds was half of the battle for Schreiner and DeNoto. Both had to contend with sagging skin. They have been undergoing body contouring, including stomach tucks and breast and buttock lifts. Each has a final operation scheduled for later this year to remove excess skin from their thighs.
"The procedures are painful but worth it," DeNoto said, "because my outside matches what I feel on the inside."
Bubbling with joy at their accomplishment, Schreiner and DeNoto are committed to physical activity and healthy eating to keep their new figures. DeNoto runs up and down the five stories and across the roof of the Huntington garage across from her home.
"I'm a fitness pirate. I plundered my body to grab my greatest treasure," she said, referring indirectly to Fitness Pirates Llc, a business she started to help those struggling with obesity and other health issues.
Schreiner works out four times a week, runs three miles each time and lifts weights. She's a member of Obesityhelp.com, a support group online.
"I feel so happy with my life right now I'm not going to waste a moment," she said.
Hey Karen,
I read it and loved every word!
PS...love the new avatar!
I read it and loved every word!
PS...love the new avatar!
Maryellen
To visit LIPO (Long Island Post Ops) bariatric support group website click here: www.liponation.org
"WLS is a journey, not a destination (don't get comfortable) ... it's a road that we must travel daily to succeed". Faith Thomas
visit my blog at theessenceofmaryellen.com/
To visit LIPO (Long Island Post Ops) bariatric support group website click here: www.liponation.org
"WLS is a journey, not a destination (don't get comfortable) ... it's a road that we must travel daily to succeed". Faith Thomas
visit my blog at theessenceofmaryellen.com/
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