[Jacob Miller] Hi, I'm Jacob Miller and I'm fifteen-years-old.
What brought me here was I've been big since I was one-year-old.
I was 52 pounds at one-year-old, and I haven't stopped growing since.
[Narrator] Jacob Miller's weight was killing him.
By the time he was a teenager, he was gaining one hundred pounds a year.
At his heaviest, he was 6-foot-5 and 707 pounds, and he was just fifteen.
This is Jacob's story.
[Jacob's Grandfather] Yeah he is my boy.
I tried to carry him across the street when he was a year-and-a-half-old.
I had to sit him down in the middle of the street. I couldn't carry him. I said, "here, your dad can carry you."
[Jacob's Father] Jacob was born five weeks premature.
If he would've been full term, he would've been just about 12 pounds.
[Jacob's Grandfather] He was already a big baby. He was full grown when he was 4 years old.
He is quite a character, quite a character.
[Narrator] Jacob was always bigger than the other kids and an easy target for jokes.
The bullying became so bad in high school that he switched schools.
On top of feeling like his body was wearing out, he was depressed.
[Jacob's Mother] It breaks your heart.
I mean really, it does because of course no parent wants their child to ever find mean people in the world.
And to know that people are gonna pick on him just because he looks different, it's not fair.
[Jacob's Classmate] It's very difficult because everybody is so quick to judge you.
No matter what it is, like your hair, the way you dress. anything.
[Jacob's Mother] But when we switched schools is really when it hit him hard.
It was in a whole different environment and, you know, it was a very hostile environment.
[Jacob] I would get out of the bathroom, and I'd come back and my milk carton was open.
I could've swore I didn't open it, and then I would take a drink of it and my friend leans over and goes,
"Hey, that kid just spit in your milk and you didn't even know it."
[Jacob's Father] I've always been concerned and we've taken him to several doctors
and tried to figure out what the problem was medically.
[Jacob's Mother] The fact that he grew so quickly at such a young age should prove that there was something going on there,
and many, many doctors said that there's hormonal conditions in the brain that they haven't identified yet,
that could be 10 to 15 years before they know what was going on.
He can't go 10 or 15 years because of the rate he's growing.
We need to do something before it gets to be too late.
[Jacob] So tomorrow is my surgery, I'm nervous, but I'm excited at the same time.
[Jacob's Father] We're here to get the gastric bypass surgery done on Jacob and try to get him to help lose some weight.
[Narrator] Jacob followed a restricted diet in the weeks before his surgery and the pounds started coming off.
He lost 77 pounds before his operation and proved he was serious about losing weight and really getting healthy.
[Dr. Tom Inge] You know at a weight of 700 pounds, um, none of our body systems were made for that kind of weight.
And the kind of places where we see this being a real problem are with the heart, with the lungs,
in particular with sleep apnea...
[Jacob's Father] ...Obviously diabetes, he's had several cases of cellulitis in his legs, heart disease...
[Jacob's Mother] ...Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. I mean those are all conditions caused by being overweight.
[Jacob's Father] And especially being only 15 years old and over 600 pounds is quite concerning.
Even for me, you know as big as I am, I know that that's not normal for a kid to be that big.
So something had to be done.
[Jacob's Mother] You know, his insides aren't keeping up with the outside.
As a parent, I felt like it was the last resort for me, but it was the step that I had to take.
I mean I don't feel like it's the fix-all-cure-all, but at least it's going to slow him down enough
to maybe give us some time to do some research to figure out what's causing his growth.
[Dr. Inge] So today, as we've talked about, we're gonna put the little cameras in and the instruments in and we're gonna look at your stomach.
And we're gonna make your stomach much, much smaller, about the size of an egg.
We will hopefully not encounter a lot of opposition inside but there could be challenges that we find
from just the amount of belly wall you have.
So, we may have to do some special tricks with our anesthesiology colleagues to make some more room.
So those are the only other, other things to mention.
Alright, Jacob Miller, date of birth 4/25/1998
[Jacob's Father] Uh, I'm very nervous.
The, the surgery, I won't...I won't lie, it scares me.
Obviously I wanna do something for him, to get his weight down, and if this is the extreme
that we have to go to, then that's what we'll do because whatever he needs done is best for him.
So yeah, it's concerning. I'm concerned as a parent but if it's best for him, then I'm sure that everything will go fine.
[Jacob's Mother] I haven't been able to sleep all week. I've been really nervous for him.
But I know it's gonna be life-changing and I'm excited for what the future holds for him.
[Narrator] Beyond recommending changes in diet and exercise, doctors don't have many tools for treating severe obesity.
Even surgery is no quick fix. Jacob and his family saw surgery as the second chance for him.
It could be the turning point that would put him on the path to good health.
A team of specialists help prepare him for a life-changing operation.
Then his surgical team got started on his transformation.
He was back there for about five hours, but Dr. Inge said it took about three and a half hours for the actual surgery.
What Jacob wanted most was a shot at what his friends seem to have: good health.
He wanted to walk down the hallway without feeling winded.
He wanted to go to school dances and ball games.
He wanted to feel more like a kid than an overgrown adult.
[Jacob] I have now officially lost over 100 pounds.
I am really prided myself, actually.
My next goal is 150 pounds, and I'm ready for school, but--and I'm excited to see how everybody reacts.
I think they will be surprised when I walk in the door.
[Jacob's Mother] School shopping, it was exciting.
I could actually go and buy regular socks for him.
Usually I had to get big and tall socks because his feet were so big.
The swelling is going down so much in his feet that now I can buy regular socks just off the counter,
so that very exciting.
557. That means you lost about 50 more pounds.
ouch.
You lost 150 pounds, yay!
[Narrator] Jacob's step-grandfather used his late wife's last social security check to buy Jacob a YMCA membership.
[Dr. Inge] What is your diabetes medicine these days?
[Jacob] They took me off of it.
[Jacob's Dietician] School is starting right? So do we have a plan for breakfast?
Do we have a plan for what we are going to do for lunch time?
[Jacob] I think some of the challenges I'm going to have is eating my own lunch,
Not being able to eat the school lunch because I really like some of the school lunches.
But it'll be alright. I'll work it out.
[Jacob's Classmate] Jacob has changed a lot, like he's done really good with the new diet he is trying to go by,
and--and I know he was in and out of the hospital a lot.
And for him to come to school every day and smile like he does, it's unbelievable.
[Jacob's Teacher] He's talked a little bit to me about some other troubles he had at his old-school.
Here at New Miami, we're a pretty tight community.
We accept people here and our kids are very accepting of anybody.
And now he is a Viking, so he is one of us.
[Jacob] Hey it's me, it's October 14, 2013. I just want to say school is going great.
Everybody's shocked to see my weight loss.
I've lost 176 pounds.
[Jacob's Best Friend] He's really outgoing. We went to homecoming together,
and instead of sitting he was actually dancing and stuff.
It's like huh, he is a dancer too? He was like, "I really can't dance, but I'm going to try it."
[Jacob's Classmates] Something that people might not know is that he is very nice.
Funny, awesome guy. Great to be around.
Good at everything. He's really smart.
[Narrator] Jacob marked weight loss mile stones with rewards like concert tickets,
but his checkup six months after surgery was a real reality check.
[Jacob] I've went down from a 10x shirt to a 5x shirt.
I've went from 5x pants to like 3x pants.
[Narrator] Weight loss can be a bumpy road.
The scale and his care team didn't always tell him what he wanted to hear.
[Jacob's Dietician] You are kind of hitting a stand still, right? And what I said is we aren't going to cry over spilled milk,
but what we are going to do is identify--and we've identified some things--
and now we are going to talk about how we're going to do it,
how we are going to implement the plan that we have. Does that sound good? Okay.
[Narrator] Jacob leaned on his dietitian, his family, and close friends for support when he fell short of his goals.
[Jacob's Mother] I do, I think I have a lot more support professionally,
but I also think Jacob is more mature now, and he understands himself.
[Jacob's Dietician] ...And I think things that are dry are very hard to digest.
Your stomach doesn't have enough acid right now to break all that down...
[Jacob's Mother] So I feel like it's not all on my shoulders as the parent.
He's able to step up and say, "I have to do this myself." You know, "mom's great but she can't do it for me.
[Jacob's Dietician] Are you measuring your portions? [Jacob] No.
[Jacob's Mother] So it's like he's still eating with his eyes instead of with his brain and stomach.
[Jacob's Dietician] So you get the measuring cup out that I gave you long time ago,
and you measure it Jacob, and you stick with that cup.
[Jacob's Father] He is still a kid, but he has to realize that I can't do it for you, you have to do it yourself.
[Jacob's Dietician] You have to stick with your plan because now we know what happens when we don't stick with the plan, right?
You get off track.
[Jacob's Father] And I think he's realized that now, and you know, we're just hoping for the best.
[Jacob's Dietician] So your just off track, you haven't fallen off the train.
You're still on the train, okay? And we're going to go in the other direction.
[Jacob] I'm doing pretty good.
I've had a couple issues and I slipped off the road, but I got right back on.
My friends have been with me the whole time through thick and thin. I appreciate it so much.
[Jacob's Classmate] I'm not a dietitian so I can't really help him, but I can try.
[Jacob's Best Friend] One of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to try and get healthier too to help him out. So just be positive.
[Jacob's Teacher] I've gone through a similar program that Jacob has gone through
where I had to start eating right, exercising before they would do the surgery.
It's been a hard road because I was five hundred pounds.
And I've talked a little bit to him about how hard it is, I mean you really have to exercise and you have to stick with it.
or it's all for nothing.
[Jacob] It's hard but not as hard as it was before surgery.
Before I couldn't do anything.
I would walk for 5 minutes then I would have to sit down.
Now I can walk for a half hour and not sit down.
[Dr. Inge] Jacob really came to us with what I would say is a very unique form of childhood obesity.
I would say the highest weight that we have ever seen.
It was quite literally a black box,
unkown exactly how he would respond to surgery, how much more weight he would lose.
Now it turns out, he did lose more weight after the surgery.
And has now maintained his weight loss over the year without regaining metabolically.
He is much healthier for having lost that weight and kept it off now with the surgical procedure,
than he would have been at any time in the last five years
[Narrator] Today, Jacob weighs 530 pounds.
His diabetes is gone, and his sleep apnea is better.
He can fit into the front seat of a car, and soon he'll be in the driver's seat as he continues his journey.
[Jacob's Teacher] He's not done. He's got some ways to go, but at lest he is going in the right direction.
[Jacob] It's a lifestyle change. You have to change pretty much everything about you.
But it's a change for the better.
You have to work for it.
[Dr. Inge] Promise? [Jacob] Mhm. [Dr. Inge] Alright, good job. [Jacob] Thank you.