weight loss surgery

Athena knew her life was not was it was meant to be. “I was severely hindered,” she explains. “I thought I was destined to always be obese.” Dieting, she says, never worked due to a condition called hypothyroidism, leading to a hormone deficiency. Fatigue and weight gain plague many people with this condition. For Athena, trying to lose weight was like swimming upstream. Her efforts produced minimal results. Not only was it frustrating, it was compounding other problems with her health.

Some of life’s greatest moments and accomplishments can’t be measured. The arrival of Cathy Dodson’s son, James Matthew Dodson (Mattie), is one of those moments. “I delivered my miracle baby on April 25, 2014,” she says. That day may not have been possible, Cathy says, if it weren’t for a decision she made in 2012. “I had been working on getting healthy for a couple of years, but I could not get the extra weight off,” Cathy explains. “On December 3, 2012 I had a sleeve gastrectomy performed by Dr. Brandon Varnell. My life has completely changed since then.”