Meet Kim Brown --
Lifesaving
Surgery, New Look
F
irst-time visitors to Coastal Carolina Bariatric Center may not believe that the petite woman
who greets them once weighed 290 pounds. While she did not save many of her “before” photos, Kim Brown, who now weighs 130, keeps one at her to desk as proof so others will see the possibilities for change in their own lives. “I want them to see it can be accomplished,” she says. Her experience with weight-loss surgery and the support that she received from Dr. Neil McDevitt and his staff made such an impact on her that Brown recently joined them as a medical office specialist. Like many patients, she tells a story of heartaches and celebrations. “I was always very small in my high school days,” recalls the 43-year-old, who is 5-foot-3 inches tall. “Everybody kept saying, ‘You need to gain weight,’ and I did. And I kept gaining.” She married at 23, and a year later, she became pregnant and gained close to 60 pounds more, reaching a weight of 290. “It caused my blood pressure to just go off the roof, and I was borderline diabetic.” She developed pre-eclampsia, a dangerous condition for mother and baby, and her placenta ruptured. After an emergency C-section, her daughter was born with brain damage
and died about two days later. Brown sunk into depression and avoided thinking about her weight. She had a miscarriage a year later, and while she ultimately had a successful pregnancy with the birth of her son Alex when she was 26, she struggled afterward to lose the weight. Her health declined over the next decade, and the hope of having another child faded away. “I was constantly sick with colds, and tired, and wound up having sleep apnea.” Her oxygen levels were low enough that her doctor considered putting her in the hospital. “If you don’t do something, you are not going to see your son graduate,” he warned her and referred her to Coastal Carolina Bariatric Center at Summerville Medical Center (SMC). In 2012, she went to a seminar with Dr. McDevitt, and started his pre-surgery program. She worked hard to eliminate bread,
Kim Brown rice, pasta and sweet tea from her diet while counting steps with a pedometer, trying to reach 10,000 a day. “My goal is to get you healthy,” Dr. McDevitt told her as he and the others at the center kept her motivated. She lost 30 pounds the first two months and was down to 250 at the time of her gastric bypass surgery at SMC. The surgery reduced the size of her stomach and rerouted the path her food takes during digestion, resulting in fewer calories absorbed. Kim now feels full after only a few bites of food. Over time, she dropped from a size 22 to her current petite size 6 or 8. She no longer needs blood pressure or glucose medication or her sleep apnea machine. She no longer struggles to go upstairs and now walks in 5Ks.
She also learned it was possible to have another baby, even in her early 40s. This time, she only gained 18 pounds during her pregnancy, and within two weeks of the birth of her son Walker, “our miracle,” she had lost her pregnancy weight. “A lot of people will tell you, ‘You took the easy way out because you did surgery,’” she says. “It’s not the easy way. The way I look at it, the only thing I cheated was death.”
*** Summerville Medical Center and Coastal Carolina Bariatric Center are accredited by the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP). www.flower townwomanonline.com
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