Love Loud and Hurt Hard
Water, walking and willpower were the three words Angela Kay Sweeney lived by when she reached her highest weight of 419 pounds. Having her first and second baby and all the stress that came along with parenting did not help her eating habits, until one day her daughter said something to her.
“I was really excited to take the girls to school together one day, and sometimes they say ‘Kids say the darnedest things,’ my oldest daughter said, ‘You can come to school mom, but you’ve got to lose a little weight first.’ And that was something that I was not ready for, but yet, I think as my journey went on, I found out that I raised a little girl to be very open and honest about her feelings,” Sweeney said.
From that moment on, she never looked back and shed all the weight off naturally by cutting her portions dramatically, turning away from the bubbly soda and lots of walking. Motherhood became much more important to her, and she wanted to be able to do things with the kids. She knew getting herself in better health would gradually lead to a better lifestyle.
Once she made it over that mountain losing over 200 pounds, Sweeney was still feeling extremely insecure about her body due to all the excess skin hanging off of her arms. She hated that she had to limit the things she could wear after losing all this weight just to save her the embarrassment of showing off her least favorite flaws about herself. Of course, being the go-getter that she is, she decided to have the skin removed by a local plastic surgeon in Traverse City, Mich.
There happened to be just one doctor in the area that accepted Sweeney’s insurance for the procedure, and she could not have been more thrilled to stumble upon this man. He assured her that he could most definitely perform this surgery correctly and convinced her that she would look how she always dreamed of looking. While in his office, she even noticed plastic surgeon plaques and certificates hanging around, reassuring her that this doctor was legitimate.
Sadly, nobody could have seen what was coming next for Sweeney. She felt fairly good the day of the surgery and went under the knife without too many worries.
The surgery ended up taking longer than expected, and the doctor told Sweeney’s husband, Joel, that he had a few things to touch up the next time. The doctor specifically told both of them to keep her arms wrapped in the bandages for a few days. He could not sew up the open wounds because when he tried in surgery, Sweeney’s vitals dropped and they almost lost her. So, they were instructed to leave her arms wrapped as the swelling went down.
Walking into her home should have felt like more of a relief than it did for Sweeney. As the night progressed, the pain became excruciating under her arms, until it became unbearable. Her and Joel called one of their friends who happened to be a nurse to come check out the wounds.
“Over our entire marriage, I only saw Joel cry one time when his grandma died, but when I saw tears rolling out of his eyes I knew something had to be wrong,” Sweeney said. “It was the most gruesome thing I have ever seen.”
Now officially disabled, Sweeney started losing everything. Her cleaning business that she ran on her own for fifteen years, her control over her emotions, almost having to amputate both of her arms, and the most important of all, her family and marriage began to fall apart. They were obviously all there for her, however this situation was not exactly familiar to a family who had been accustomed to their mom constantly on-the-go, to watching her writhing in pain. The family did not know how to help her, simply because they could not help her, and it affected everyone negatively on multiple different levels.
Sweeney could see that her three children needed her, but she was bed ridden for six months straight after the doctor botched her arms.
“Why didn’t he get punished for hurting or taking someone’s life away? Why is he any different from a murderer, or a thief, or a rapist, or somebody who has done tragedy to someone’s life? (They) should have to legally face their victim and I think that that would probably help a lot of people too in recovery,” Sweeney said.
Her anger towards him is boiling on the inside, however she has been trying to get in closer touch with her faith so she can learn how to move on and forgive this man that ruined her life. She did hire a lawyer to take down this doctor, except he escaped to a different state just in time. He is no longer allowed to practice in Michigan, but is to this day still operating on other people. Sweeney’s settlement should be finalized over the summer of 2016.
Sweeney did catch a bit of a break when she sent in her application into the Hollywood show, “The Doctors,” and actually made it on the television show. They sent her and Joel out there for a consultation to see if they could find something that could be done to help her, and it turns out they could. Sweeney was given the gift of a reconstruction surgery from a different surgeon in Traverse City and she was beyond thankful for this blessing.
Since the reconstruction surgery, she is feeling much better because they were able to remove some of the issues the first doctor had done and given Sweeney more of her mobility back in her arms. She is now almost able to lift her arms as high as she once did, but they still suffer and give out quicker than she would prefer. It does not matter how her arms feel from day-to-day though because she is a fighter and she believes in happy endings. There is no way she is going to make it this far and not continue to push through.
“When I was younger, I lost a friend, and his mom always told me that God always promises happy endings. And right now it’s not happy, so there’s got to be more to it than this. So I’ll fight until we figure it out,” Sweeney said.
This story was completed in May 2016.