Man Who Weighed 1,000 Pounds Down to 400 Neighbors Say He Must Have 'Lost Some Weight'.
Patrick Deuel, who once weighed more than 1,000 pounds, has lost another 81 pounds in a surgery that removed a mass of fat and skin hanging from his midsection.
"He's doing well," said Dr. Fred Harris, who performed the surgery Tuesday.
The mass, called a pannus, made it difficult for Deuel, 43, of Valentine, Neb., to walk.
Surgery to remove it had been scheduled for January, but the procedure was postponed when Deuel got the flu.
With the surgery, Deuel now weighs about 400 pounds.
He could lose even more through exercise, said Harris.
"But if Patrick never lost another pound, I'd be a happy camper," Harris said.
When Deuel came to Sioux Falls for gastric bypass surgery in 2004, he weighed 1,072 pounds. An emergency required that medical EMT workers or 'first responders' try to assist him at his home.
He was so large his bedroom wall had to be cut out to extract him from his home. He was rushed to the hospital in an 'ambulance' with extra-wide doors and a ramp-and-winch system that had to be dispatched from Denver. The 'ambulance' which conveyed him from his home to the hospital gave more the appearance of being a semi-trailer truck; when the medic-responders got him out of his house, the ramp-and-winch was used to hoist him up and into the semi-trailer truck. It then followed the 'ambulance' and the procedure went in reverse when they got to the hospital, where the winch lowered him, a loading dock and freight elevator took him to a room.
Gastric bypass surgery, a stomach stapling procedure, was thought to be his best chance for permanent weight loss.
Information from: Argus Leader,
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