She takes weight off her patients’ minds as well as their bodies

Christi Keliipio was constantly tired. Her knees hurt all the time and so did her hips. When she had to fly somewhere on business she would never go to the bathroom on the plane because, at 275 pounds, she was too big to fit inside the cabin restroom. She had grown up riding horses but when she went on a cruise she was not allowed to participate in shore side activities, including horseback riding, because of her weight. “I broke down in tears,” she said.

Today Keliipio is a mere whisper of her former self. She has shed 130 pounds and her dress size has gone from a 26 to 8’s and 10’s. Several years ago she underwent bariatric surgery on the mainland. Her stomach was made smaller, reducing the amount of food she can eat and the amount of calories her body can absorb. After her weight loss, her husband surprised her by taking her to Waimea where he had made arrangements for her once again to ride horses.

Keliipio was one of those patients for whom dieting turned out not to be the remedy to weight loss. But as she tells others, the operation was only the first step toward recovery to a stable and healthier life. “A lot of people think that bariatric surgery is going to be easy, that it’s a magic bullet. That’s not the way it works,” she says. “Patients will go through stages of adjustment not only physically but also psychologically.”

Psychological changes begin with recognizing that life is no longer about craving food and trying not to eat, like when you’re on a diet. It’s about learning how to eat the right things in moderation and how to start exercising.

In her case, Keliipio began her mental adjustment in about the second week after surgery when she “just started bawling. I realized that I could never go back to the way I used to eat. It was a grieving process. It was a place in time where I knew this was truth, and that I had made a decision and now had to move forward.”

Keliipio’s insight about bariatric surgery as part of a process toward healthier living is especially helpful in her profession. That is because she is director of the bariatric surgery program at Pali Momi Medical Center, established about a year ago and led by Medical Director Mark Grief, M.D. She is the only bariatric program director in Hawai‘i who has been through the surgery and works directly with the patients to help guide them to success. Keliipio remembers, “Before my own surgery, I didn’t tell many people what I intended to do because I was afraid I was going to fail. I had failed so many times before on my diets.”

She says of her patients, “I talk to them about what they will be going through so they don’t feel alone. It’s not always easy but I can buck them up mentally if they hit a wall. They call me at any time just to talk.”

How does someone determine that they are a possible candidate for this kind of surgery? “It’s the person who has tried every diet, who is tired and exhausted,” she says. “They feel they’re at the end of their rope, or they’re somebody younger who doesn’t want to spend the rest of their life in their current situation.” Patients are typically about 100 pounds or more overweight.

Besides improved self-esteem and feeling better, major weight loss brings other, less obvious advantages. Most obese patients are also living with one or more serious ailments such as diabetes, high cholesterol, gallbladder disease, coronary artery disease and osteoarthritis and other co-morbidities. Bariatric surgery is often effective in treating these conditions. In a study of 104 patients, 90.8 percent of patient conditions were improved or eliminated a year after the operation.

One patient Keliipio has helped succeed is Clesson Werner, 32. He was big even as a kid and found himself hitting 330 pounds as an adult. “My whole family is six feet or taller and even at 330 a lot of people didn’t know about my problem,” he says. “Being 6 feet 2 inches tall helped distribute my weight, but I knew I would develop some serious problems if I didn’t change my ways. I have a strong family history of diabetes. Both my grandfather and grandmother died from complications related to diabetes. My grandfather lost both legs because of diabetes and I didn’t want that kind of future. Plus when my son was born, I didn’t want him to grow up in a world revolving around food. I wanted to get out together, and be active.”

Werner says Keliipio was an excellent source of support and advice both before and after his surgery. He says he faced tough times after the operation both physically and mentally. “Christi’s role was huge,” he says. “Having someone there for you who understands what you’re going through makes a big difference. If it wasn’t for Christi, and the support of my wife, this wouldn’t have happened.” Werner had his surgery at Pali Momi last May when he was 330 pounds. He saw his weight drop to 244 before Christmas and his target going into the New Year was 230 – just 14 pounds to go.

What would he tell others who are considering surgery?

“Do it,” he says unequivocally. “It will change your life. It is one of the hardest, and the best thing you will ever do.”

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