Attleboro Couple Loses 300 Pounds

An Attleboro couple together lost 295 pounds with gastric bypass and Lap-Band surgeries.

 After endless diets including Weight Watchers and Atkins, Eddie and Heather Porreca, who both struggled with their weight since their childhood, opted for surgery at Miriam Hospital, which was recently designated as an American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) Bariatric Surgery Center of Excellence.

For Eddie Porreca, 39, it was the day that he describes as “snap, crack and splash” that he decided he was going to face his struggle with weight.

 It was August 15, 2007 when Porreca was at Bearcroft pool in Attleboro. Porreca, weighing 420 pounds, attempted to jump off the diving board when it snapped and left him with a broken ankle.

 “For me, it was my epiphany,” he said. “After major surgery on my achilles and a full-leg cast I had plenty of time to do some soul searching and to reflect and figure out where I’d go from here."

 In February 2008, after speaking with his primary care physician and researching the various weight loss surgeries online, Porreca made an appointment to discuss surgery.

“I didn’t talk to Heather about it at all,” he said of his wife. “It was taboo for both of us and it was unspoken.

“A week before the appointment, I broke the news to her and told her I was going to meet with these folks.”

 Porreca’s decision was met with pure silence.

 “My initial thought was he is going to die,” Heather Porreca said. “And I thought 'I know if he does this then I will have to look at how I do things' and I didn’t want to do that.”

Heather agreed to support her husband so long as he never asked her to also make the same decision and undergo surgery to lose weight.

Facing Their Demons

“Bariatric surgery is a very personal decision,” Porreca said. “It was demons that we had to fight on our own.”

For Eddie Porreca the demons were portion control and recognizing when he was full.

“You can spend your whole life lying to anyone and getting them to believe you, but the first step is to stop lying to yourself,” he said.

 The couple sat their three children at the kitchen table to explain the surgery and why daddy needed to do it–“to have daddy around forever and ever.”

 It was a long, five-month process from the time he first met with doctors to his surgery day, June 24, 2008.

 Porreca had to undergo a sleep study, which found he suffered from sleep apnea. He also underwent an upper gastrointestinal exam, an ultrasound, which determined that he had an over-sized and fatty liver, and a stress test that involved injecting a syrup into his body to make his body work harder . Once the physical tests were out of the way, Porreca also had to go through a psychological exam.

“For his height he was 200 pounds overweight,” Porrecca's surgeon Dr.Vithiananthan said. “He had to weigh around 200 pounds and in essence he had two people in him.”

 The family kept the plans for surgery under wraps.

 “I didn’t want anyone’s positive or negative opinion,” he said. “It was personal. “I had done all my homework, preparation and soul searching," he added. "I had to be selfish and it had to be all about me.”

Going Under

The long, five-month process was complete and it was time for his life-changing procedure. He had followed Dr. Vithiananthan's instructions to the tee and did not waiver from it. “It allowed the surgery to go perfectly and it was a catalyst for me to have tremendous success,” he said.

 Porreca had surgery on Tuesday, returned home on Wednesday and walked to to ambulate the same day. He was back to work on Friday.

 “I shot right out of the gate full-steam ahead,” Porreca said. “Surgery was not the beginning for me, it was one of the first steps along the way."

 “He has not gained a pound and has broken all expectations,” Vithiananthan
said. “He is so committed to it and that is the most important thing for maintenance. And the right attitude.”

Inner Turmoil

 While Porreca was starting his new, active lifestyle and keeping to his promise to never suggest his wife undergo surgery, Heather, weighing 330 pounds, was left to deal with her own personal turmoil.

 “I had said to him 'don’t talk to me about surgery, I’m fine the way I am,'” she said. “I watched Eddy transform into someone I never thought he’d be. He’s running 5Ks and triathlons and quite frankly I cold not keep up.”

 A feeling of jealousy also came to the surface. “My own insecurities made me question his faithfulness,” she said. “I thought ‘why would he want to be with me he is an active person and I’m not and we have nothing in common now.’”

 Porreca put Eddie through the ringer she said.

 “It was two years after my initial visit and I could sense the buildup," Porreca said of his wife. "We were at eachother’s throats for no particular reason and it’s because she was battling her own demons."

 A few days after the blowout, Heather told Eddie she wanted to have surgery and asked her husband for help.

 “Once he told me that he would do anything to help me, I felt lighter and I let go of feeling like a failure,” she said. “I get goosebumps just thinking about it because I’m not good at asking for help, but I had to take off this robe of fat and give it away.”

A Growing Need

 Porreca opted for a different surgery and chose gastric bypass, a much more invasive surgery that takes a person’s stomach, the size of a football and makes it smaller.

“We make it a small, egg-size stomach,” Vithiananthan said. “By doing that you are limiting how much you eat and you are not going to absorb as much.”

 She had a few procedural challenges on the table, took two weeks to recover and had to drain fluids from her body for a week.

 “My post op was the hardest part,” she said. “I had to drink at the top of the hour and eat at the half and is hard because you have no appetite, but you have to stay hydrated. I was also really fatigued."

 It will be one year in June since Heather’s surgery and she has already lost 115 pounds.

The Porrecas are not alone in their fight against obesity, the number two cause of death in the nation, according to Vithiananthan. Approximately 10 to 15 percent of the nation's entire population is considered morbidly obese, he said. In Rhode Island alone, approximately 600 weight-loss surgeries are performed each year.

Researchers have also found a correlation between obesity and heart conditions, according to a Feb. 8 study by Dr. Lee Kaplan, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Loss Center. Researchers studied 400 severely obese people with an average age of 42 who had gastric bypass surgery and compared them with a group of more than 300 in the same weight and age bracket who did not have surgery.

On average, those who opted for surgery lost 100 pounds and dropped their BMI from 48 to 32. They also had smaller waistlines, lower blood pressure and heart rate, healthier cholesterol levels and less insulin resistance.

"Our society does  not accept obesity," Vithiananthan said. "They are really hidden and hide behind desks and tables and no one notices them."

 “The most common complaint about surgery is that it is the easy way out,” Vithiananthan said. “But it is not, it is like training for a marathon.”

 In order to be considered for surgery, individuals must meet certain criteria including having a body mass index  (BMI) of 35 or above with  a medical condition or a BMI of 40 or above without a medical condition. Individuals must also have the mental capacity to undergo surgery.  

The Porrecas’ journey is not over. Heather has more weight to lose and Eddie has to stick to a healthy diet and stay active to maintain his weight. "Chances are she is going to exceed Eddy’s weight loss," Vithiananthan said. 

So much has changed since their surgery. The couple can now sit on an airplane without using a seat-belt extender, they can easily tie their shoes and they sled and skate with their three kids. 

"They will live longer and set an example to their three children," Vithiananthan said. Now they have gone to this different world. That is what people do. If you talk to our patients they will tell you 'I was in a different world and I never want to go back there.'"

Living close to an intersection with three fast-food chains, which they call "tasty corner" doesn't help, but the family remains committed to a lifestyle of staying active and eating healthy no matter what it takes.