Abington Memorial Hospital's Institute for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery

Successful Weight Loss Surgical Patient

A registered nurse, Paula Beam has extensive experience educating weight loss surgery patients. She speaks of it knowingly from two perspectives - as a nurse and as a patient. Paula, the clinical nurse educator for the Institute for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, was the first laparoscopic gastric bypass patient of Fernando Bonanni, Jr., M.D., director of the Institute for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.

Paula Beam celebrates February 27, not as her birthday, but as her rebirth. That's the day, in 2001, when she underwent laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery.

An overweight child who lost her excess weight in her 20s, she regained it three years later during her first pregnancy and found it harder and harder to lose weight. She developed joint problems, her blood pressure began to climb, and she found
herself out of breath climbing stairs and trying to keep up with her young children.

After working an eight-hour hospital shift, she felt so much joint pain in her knees, legs and hips that she could barely get around. She weighed 240 pounds.

"I tried every diet in the world," she says. "Nothing seemed to work. Weight loss programs. Diet pills. Fiber-cookie fads. Gyms. I starved myself for a couple weeks. I would lose weight, then gain more back. Once you're 100 pounds or more overweight, it becomes a disease and it becomes extremely hard to lose any long-term weight."

"I was wasting money and losing hope."

Then she learned about weight loss surgery, discussed it with Dr. Bonanni and ultimately became his first laparoscopic weight loss patient. She eventually lost 120 pounds and, she's thrilled to say, the weight's still off.

The slender nurse is such a believer in the life-changing procedure, she now is the clinical educator for AMH's Institute for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery.