Making Rounds
A woman’s health is transformed—twice—by bariatric surgery
One night in January of 2023, Ginny Capiot found herself tossing and turning.
“I was just so excited,” she said. “Not nervous at all, but definitely feeling some butterflies.”
It wasn’t a new job, a wedding or a dream vacation that had her so giddy with anticipation, but it was something she’d been planning for a long time. The next morning, she’d be undergoing bariatric surgery.
Bariatric surgery alters the function of the digestive system to cause significant weight loss. It is for patients who have exhausted all other options for reaching a healthy weight and whose excess pounds are expected to lead to serious health consequences — if they haven’t already.
For Capiot, serious health problems had already become apparent. After being diagnosed with diabetes about 20 years earlier, she was beginning to experience complications that come from reduced blood flow in some diabetes patients: eye problems that led to worsening vision and nerve damage that caused a growing numbness in her feet.
“It was then that I started to think, OK, this is getting out of control,” she said. “I needed to do something.”
Capiot had tried many times to lose weight before, but the efforts seemed increasingly futile.
“I had dieted and dieted, for many years,” she said. “And I had periods where I would work out religiously and maybe lose 20 pounds. I just couldn’t seem to get the kind of results that would really make a difference.”
Her primary care doctor referred her to Ovie Appresai, MD, a surgeon who has specialized in weight loss surgery for the past six years. After the first consultation, Capiot knew she was on a good path.
“He was very reassuring,” she said. “He felt confident that this was going to go well and that I would have the tools I needed to make it successful.”
But Capiot still had to clear some hurdles with her insurance company. She had to commit to a strict, six-month fitness program and to learn more about how surgery would forever change her eating habits. After about nine months (and that night of tossing and turning), she was wheeled into the operating room.
“The surgery went fine, and I went right home with no problems,” she said. “I took some time off of work, but I was back up and at it by about three weeks after surgery.”
That is when Capiot put all she’d learned about her post-surgical eating habits into action. Starting with broth, and soft food like eggs and cheese, she was then able to move on to ground beef and a broader variety of foods. She can now eat most of the things she used to enjoy, but in very small servings and with special attention to protein intake.
As the numbers on the scale began to slowly dwindle, Capiot enjoyed a more immediate reward for her efforts: a complete remission of the diabetes that had caused her so many problems.
“The first time I went to my endocrinologist after the surgery, my A1C had gone down for the first time in my adult life,” Capiot said. “I cried happy tears when I saw that.”
Less than a year after the surgery, it saved Capiot’s life in a way she hadn’t expected. She discovered a strange lump near her hip and had it checked out. She learned it was a growing cancer in her lymph node.
“I don’t think I would have found that lump as early as I did if I hadn’t lost the weight,” she said. “I was able to see and feel so much more of my body and say, ‘Well, here’s something that’s not usually here.’”
A few weeks later, on the first anniversary of her bariatric surgery, Capiot returned to Dr. Appresai to have that lymph node removed. She spent most of the rest of 2024 in treatment to keep cancer at bay, with multiple rounds of radiation and chemotherapy.
Almost three years after her bariatric surgery, with cancer in her rear-view mirror, Capiot is 95 pounds lighter and feeling better than ever.
“I no longer need medication for blood pressure,” she said. “I don’t take any medication for diabetes anymore. In fact, after years of high blood sugar, now I have to be careful that my blood sugar doesn’t drop too low. I have more energy throughout the day, and I can walk a lot farther without my knees hurting. It’s just a completely different life.”
Although the benefits are clearly more than cosmetic, Capiot said she can’t deny that she’s pleased with her reflection in the mirror.
“I used to hate shopping for clothes,” she said, “but it’s a lot more fun now. The first time I put on a pair of jeans that were not plus-size, I was so happy.”
Capiot said her only regret about her bariatric surgery is that she waited so long to do it. She had worried for years about the expense, the recovery and the lifestyle changes—all of which turned out to be much more manageable than she was expecting.
“If you’re considering this surgery, it’s definitely worth asking your doctor about it and getting answers to those questions,” she said. “If I had known what my life would be like now, I would have had this surgery 10 years earlier.”
Visit capefearvalley.com/bariatric to learn more about weight-loss services.
