By: Shelagh McNally for Reflux1This past Feb. 14, Patrick Deuel kept a Valentine’s Day promise to his wife and did something he wasn’t able to do for eight years. He took a walk with her outside.
In June 2004, Deuel was dying of obesity. He weighed 1,072 pounds and had been housebound for seven years. His wife turned to the League of Human Dignity for help when Deuel became completely bedridden. The organization arranged for a wall to be torn out so Deuel could be lifted by a crane through his garage and placed into special cargo truck to be transported to the Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D. When Deuel arrived at the hospital he was suffering from heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. Since he had trouble breathing and was actually malnourished, doctors refused to give him gastric bypass surgery. For the next four months he lost weight the old fashioned way: Through exercise and a 1,200 calorie-a-day-diet. Deuel lost 421 pounds and on Oct. 26, 2004, he had gastric bypass surgery. Afterwards he was able to walk with the help of two walkers and it looked like he might be heading home. But because of his weakened immune system, Deuel caught a staph infection, which delayed his release. On Dec. 3, he underwent surgery again and a debridement pump was attached to the opening in his incision in order to drain the infection. Deuel lost another 41 pounds and by January 2005 he was ready to head home weighing 612 pounds. “We’ve given him another shot at life and I hope he seizes on it,” said Dr. Fred Harris, leader of the nine-person medical team responsible for Deuel’s care at Avera McKennan Hospital.
When Deuel returned to his home in Valentine, Neb. on Jan. 24, he walked through the front door this time. In the weeks since leaving the hospital, Deuel has enjoyed the freedom from the rigid diet and rigorous schedule of physical therapy. “Things are going pretty well,” Deuel said. “After seven-and-a-half months of being gone, it's absolutely marvelous to be home.” But his biggest accomplishment was being able to make his wife Edie happy by taking his Valentine’s Day walk with her. “I walked outside as far, or farther than I did the entire time I was in the hospital. It was something that for Edie needed to be done,” Deuel said.
Deuel continues his battle with his weight and hopes to get down to 300 pounds by continuing his 90 minutes of leg exercises and 90 minutes of occupational therapy per day while experimenting to see what foods his new stomach can tolerate. His progress is being monitored by the hospital in the form of weekly exercise and food logs sent into hospital. In the final weeks of February it appeared that Deuel was giving into temptation. On his last interview he admitted to taking up smoking again and to eating more that the doctors said he could. Whether he is able to lose anymore weight remains to be seen. As Harris explains, “We've given him the tools. If he goes home and uses the tools correctly, he'll have a much more mobile life .
