The morning of change
She was up early getting ready and styling her hair as she did every morning, but this wasn’t like every morning, this was surgery day. “Today is my dream come true, finally,” said Chanin Reese.
Reese was in the Navy from 1993-1997. An injury while in service left her with major damage to her ankles. Six surgeries at the VA over the next few years left her very unstable on her feet, and after she had her son, she said the weight came on and on. She started a life filled with numerous diets, you name it she tried it, but none of them helped.
“It’s been a journey, it’s been a long road,” she said about the last four years working with a team at the Minneapolis VA to help her get some weight off of her joints to reduce her chronic pain. “They try to exhaust all other means first. There’s a lot to it.”
Her journey included a couple of spins with the MOVE! Program and medications, but they didn’t work for her. It was in the Advanced MOVE! Program that she proved to herself she was ready for a change and she could do it.
“It was two in-person appointments and then four virtual. It was exercise, it was meeting with the dietitian, mental health, the whole, you know group, team I call it. They told you what to eat and how to get to that goal,” she said. “They were strict, and that’s what I needed. I needed a routine, and that’s what I set for myself, and that’s what the advanced program helped me do. By the end of that class I had already lost 27 pounds.”
Reese looked out the window of the darkened parking lot from the third floor of the Minneapolis VA Medical Center and said goodbye to her friend Beth, a fellow Veteran and old coworker who drove her in at zero dark thirty this morning. “Today, I am having endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty,” said Reese.
Dr. Mohammad Bilal first performed endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center in 2023. The procedure requires endoscopic suturing to reduce the size of the stomach. ESG is an incisionless, endoscopic procedure that leaves no scars, and reduces recovery time. The ESG procedure allows patients to achieve significant, long-lasting weight loss and can also reverse the long-term problems with obesity. An approximate 70%-80% stomach reduction as a result of the procedure means patients feel full with less food.
The surgery will be short, and she’ll stay overnight one night so the medical team can keep an eye on her. Then tomorrow, Beth will pick her up for the first day of the rest of her life.
“It’s going to be a matter of getting used to this new lifestyle. Getting used to learning how to eat again, that’s going to be the big thing,” she said.
Reese is ready and motivated for the change. “I just want to be here for my son Cody and I want to be able to take care of my mom while she’s still here, I’m her caretaker. I just want to be here for the people that need me.”
Bilal is one of the few Twin Cities doctors who are performing endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty.