Lisa's Story

Charlie Rue: I never gave up because I thought we would always find a solution. 

Lisa Rue: Back in 2015, my daughter and I had gone out to take a walk around the neighborhood and it's something we did every now and then. I had always been active, sports growing up,and we were about to climb a hill and started exerting ourselves, and I felt this excruciating pain across my shoulders, up my neck, both ears, and then my head. The pain went in exactly that order.

I made an appointment to see my primary care physician, Dr. Harrington, went in, and he felt like something might be going on with the heart. So he actually referred me to Dr. Chandra.

Charlie Rue: That was very scary. We were at a situation where if she wouldn't have came in and wasn’t paying attention to her health and listening to her body, she wouldn't be here today.

Lisa Rue: Dr. Chandra explained to me that even though cholesterol or blockages or heart issues didn't run in my family, the reason that I had the blockage was from basically having uncontrolled diabetes for 12 years.

Dr. Northup: Lisa was referred by her cardiologist to see me for a weight loss surgery. She had a cardiac history and other medical problems, severe diabetes and her weight was really not the biggest problem, it was her medical conditions that were really affecting her life.

Lisa Rue: Being diabetic and anyone who is knows it's a full-time job. It's something you really have to make a priority. I didn't do that. I had a hard time making myself a priority, much less controlling the diabetes.

Dr. Northup: Obesity is a disease. It's a disease like colon cancer and breast cancer is a disease. So, what we're looking at when we look at the obesity epidemic that we have, it's a genetic pre-disposition that's impacted by our environment and behaviors.

Charlie Rue: We want to be able to retire someday and enjoy our lives together and do traveling and just sit on a park bench and enjoy the sunset or sunrise. We could see that that wasn't going to happen with the health condition that she was in at the time.

Lisa Rue: I finally said, "I'm done. I can't do this. I don't want to be on insulin for the rest of my life.” In August of 2016, I went to one of the Dr. Northup's seminars. Stayed around afterwards asking questions. Immediately went to the table in the back, made an appointment for a consultation. My husband was there with me. We went in this together as a team.

Charlie Rue: I was excited to see the people there that had been in the same situation she was in and be able to see them after the surgery and listen to their story and to me that was proof that we can get there.

Dr. Northup: She's a very strong, intelligent person and I think she was very adamant about having her surgery in the beginning and we have an expectation here, I think in like a lot of programs, that we want them to make behavioral changes and be appropriate for surgery because we’re not worried about your three month weight loss or your six month weight loss, I’m worried about the one year, two year, ten year success rate of these patients. 'Cause we can impact how long they live by doing surgery.

Lisa Rue: I went for preop early February of 2017. Having not done exactly what I was supposed to do during this time, I kind of slipped and wasn't taking the insulin again, and thought, "Well, it’s okay, it's the surgery that's going to help me. I need to get the surgery done in order to get well." If I could just have the surgery. So I go in for the preop, blood work, x-rays, everything required. Within about a half hour, the hospitalist comes into the room and says, "We have a problem. Your blood sugar is 500. We can't do surgery." I was devastated. Even though it was 100% my fault that I couldn't do what I knew was going to help me, I was devastated. I was angry. I was upset with Dr. Northup, I was upset with myself, I was upset with anybody that I could be upset with.

Dr. Northup: I think anytime a patient hears something they don't wanna hear or hears that they want the surgery or want a procedure and someone's saying no, that's not what they expect. And I think a lot of bariatric programs, I review programs at the American College of Surgeons all over the country and I think a lot of patients don't get told no when they maybe shouldn’t have had surgery. And I think that's one thing that our Premiere program excels at is taking care of the patient first and not just trying to get more surgeries done or do another procedure. I think we take each patient individually, make sure they are appropriate for surgery, make sure they’re ready for surgery and take our time and get them to surgery properly instead of just trying to rush them through the process.

Lisa Rue: So I let it go for a couple of months. In the fall of 2017, I decided, "I'll go back and see Dr. Northup." I went in and I remember him saying, "I'm glad you're back. I'm glad you've came back.”.

Dr. Northup: I'm just here to help. Our program's here to help people. And anything we can do to help people, you might need two or three starts to get going and that's okay.

Lisa Rue: "I'm on track. The diabetes is becoming under control. I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing. I want to have this surgery, because in the end, this surgery is what's going to save my life.” So we started back up where we left off. He agreed to do that. He didn't make me start over and go back through six more months. We picked right back up. I saw the dietician for the next couple of months. And I was put on his schedule for January 10th of 2018.

Charlie Rue: The day that we went to the hospital for the surgery and they took her back, it was like,“This is truly going to happen now."

Lisa Rue: The surgery was done. There were no complications. His team was amazing from start to finish. I ended up having to stay two nights in the hospital which is normal for Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. As soon as I was able to get out of the bed and start walking, if you wanted to find me, it was in the hall. That was one of the things they say you have to do. You have to get up immediately and you have to start walking. And I did it. I walked and I walked and I walked and I walked. I walked more than I was probably supposed to, but I did it, because I knew this is the beginning of the rest of my life.

Dr. Northup: This surgery provides a little bit better impact on type 2 diabetes, especially when weight is not her primary problem, her weight wasn't as impactful as her diabetes and heart disease were. So, with gastric bypass we have a little bit more success getting rid of type 2 diabetes.

Lisa Rue: I took my last insulin shot the night before surgery. I have not had one since. As of July of this year, six months after surgery, my A1C is 5.5 and I am no longer considered diabetic. My goal has been met.

Dr. Northup:It's huge, yeah. You think about how hard we struggle managing type 2 diabetics from a medical standpoint, it's much more difficult to, you can control it, you can maintain it with weight loss sometimes you can resolve it, but there's a lot of comparison, very prominent comparison studies that were done looking at intense medical therapy versus surgical weight loss, surgical weight loss is five to one likelihood of getting rid of type 2 diabetes.

Charlie Rue: I wanted the lady back that I married. I wanted us to go out and do things and enjoy life together. That was difficult.

Lisa Rue: I would work, I would come home and nap. I would eat dinner, I would go to bed. Most of the time, my family wouldn't see me for 5, 10 minutes and that was it. But it's not that way anymore. We're active, we do things. We took it upon ourselves for the two of us to take our three grandchildren from two to eight to the Columbus Zoo by ourselves. I would've never done that , would've never. I wouldn't have had the energy to do it. But now, we can enjoy more of what life has to offer for our kids and retirement. That's one of the things my husband would always say. He would never push me or get angry with me when I wasn't taking care of myself, but he would say, "I want to retire someday, and I want you to be there to travel with. I want you to be there to live the rest of my life with." So I guess in the back of my mind then, that was part of also what helped me get to the point of doing what I had to do so that I can be there.

Dr. Northup:I think one of the most interesting things about her whole entire story is the fact that we told her no. I could've got her approved for surgery in 20 minutes, I could've done surgery and gotten paid. So, that would've been the easy thing to do. She'd have been happy not having to be delayed, you know, if we'd done her surgery. But, ethically, to me and morally in my soul I don't think that was the right thing to do.