Nov. 26--The sun was setting as Judy Brown, a 53-year-old Victoria woman, was signing her will.
The next morning would bring a new day and, hopefully, the start of a new life.
"This is my will," she said, cradling the legal document. "Where do I sign it?"
She sat in her oversized wheelchair in the balding front yard of a dilapidated apartment.
Her best friend and daughter chatted about who would get the television and the pets if she didn't survive. Brown puffed on a cigarette. She wasn't nervous, but was looking forward to one thing.
"Freedom," she said. "Being free. Not being so cumbersome I can't live for myself as much as I want to."
Brown had lived with abdominal pannus, a large mass of excess body tissue, for more than 20 years. The mass was so large it hung from her chest to her knees, making everyday functions nearly impossible for her to do on her own.
It now weighed 80 pounds, and she was unsure if she would survive the surgery to remove it.
A new life
Brown lives in an apartment nearly in shambles. The ceiling is falling in and there are no windows. She lives mostly off of food stamps and a $695 disability check, most of which goes to pay her medical expenses and veterinarian trips for her dogs Hazel, Bootsie, Baby, Daisy and Belle Star.
This holiday season, she's happy for the gift of life, freedom and a body that's 80 pounds lighter.
On Aug. 4, Brown went into surgery at DeTar Hospital Navarro weighing 430 pounds to remove the mass that had been growing since she suffered a back injury in 1986.
"It feels different," she said a few days after her surgery. She held a cigarette in her hand and her hair was neatly smoothed. She was still recovering at Warm Springs Outpatient Services, but was happy to be free.
Brown lifted her blue gown. More than 50 staples clinched her skin together where the mass once was. Although she was in pain, she stood and did something she'd always wanted: She danced.
"I'm too sexy for my body," she sang softly while smiling and gently shaking her hips with her arms at her side.
"It feels new," she said after taking a seat. "It feels better. I don't have to worry about people looking at me funny. That's the one thing that people don't understand: that just because you have an (infirmity), a problem, doesn't mean that you're not human too."
A look back
"She'd stay in her bedroom a lot; she wouldn't come out," said Wendy Vychron, 34, Brown's only child. Vychron now lives in LaPorte, but recalls the times she lived with her mother after her injury.
"She just deteriorated after that," she said. "It went from she was an active person to just barely wanting to get out of bed."
Brown said she used to enjoy gardening, going to church and worked as a nurse's aide, then stopped.
"The mass just kept getting bigger and bigger as the years went by," Vychron said.
Dr. Sean Hamilton, a surgeon at DeTar Hospital who performed Brown's procedure, said he believed the situation was the result of Brown's poor nutritional habits and a hereditary component. But the surgery was the only way for her to lose the mass.
"Even her losing weight, this redundant skin would always be there," he said.
After years of searching for a doctor to perform the procedure, Brown and her daughter had nearly given up.
"We went through several doctors who would not even attempt it," Vychron said. "We would literally walk in the office and the doctors would say, 'No, there's no way.'"
Because of her size and poor health, Brown was unable to travel. She missed the births of her grandchildren, her daughter's wedding and the funeral of a close friend.
She reached a point where she didn't want to live any more, but credits her faith for helping her make it.
"I had already given up," she said. "If I didn't have the faith, I wouldn't have."
Then Brown met Hamilton earlier this year, the only doctor who agreed to operate.
"Something about her," he said. "After reviewing her medical condition, I don't think she really had some of the diagnoses that were carried on her chart."
Brown was grateful.
"I said if you do, I'll hug and kiss you all over and call you my son," she said, smiling.
After the surgery, Brown saw her feet for the first time in years.
From here on
"My life has changed," Brown said. "I have a better life now, and I'm looking for the rest of it to be straightened out."
Brown is thankful for simple things like being able to stand and not be tired. But the journey continues.
"Anyone who goes through kind of a change in their body image will have to go through some kind of adjustment," Hamilton said. "You see it frequently in the morbidly obese in their own self image. I think for her at this point she just needs to continue to get encouragement."
Brown is less homebound. She wheels around on her motor-powered wheelchair in the streets, visiting friends or eating at Christ's Kitchen. She hopes to continue physical therapy and even get a job, but her poor health continues to get the better of her.
Weeks after her operation, she was hospitalized with cellulitis, a condition of severe swelling in her legs.
"It's OK," she said from her hospital room. "God knows what He's doing."
The future is uncertain, but Brown is hoping for the best.
"I just kind of leave it in the hands of the Lord," she said. "It might be that I'm sick again," she said. "It might be that I'm better and can help somebody else."
-----
To see more of Victoria Advocate, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com.
Copyright (c) 2009, Victoria Advocate, Texas
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.