Obese mother of 13 adopted kids gets a miracle

Blind and diabetic, the mother of 13 adopted children expected to die.

Cheryl Whitten had been plagued by health problems for most of her 46 years. Doctors diagnosed her with diabetes at 19. She suffered her first heart attack at 36 and her second at 43. In 2005, Whitten underwent quadruple bypass surgery, spending a month recovering in the hospital. When she left, her weight ballooned to a new high.

Depression struck. She ate to feel better. She grew larger. Depression continued. She ate to feel better. She grew larger - up to 303 lbs.

By 2007, death seemed imminent.

"I just wondered if I would be alive in a year," she says now. "I didn't see a future."

But her children needed her. Many of those in her care, ages 7 to 31, have special needs. Some are severely autistic; others suffered childhood trauma. Her husband, David Whitten, couldn't support them alone.

She needed to shed the weight. The family needed a miracle.

Then one happened. A local doctor moved by Whitten's selfless care for the bakers dozen donated weight-loss surgery to the struggling mother. One year and nearly 100 pounds later, Whitten sees a future where she the end of her road.

Health problems

Cheryl Whitten has always struggled with her weight.

As a teen, Whitten played basketball, sailed and hiked, but despite some fluctuation in her weight, she always stayed heavy. She dieted to no avail.

Her health degenerated greatly after her second heart attack, which claimed her mobility. She began to gain weight. Her vision failed, her joints stiffened and she depended on a host of medications. She spent hours on oxygen, which she need to survive.

Doctors told her she had five years to live, but odds were she would have died within two. Her weight made exercise impossible, and surgery was her only option - except that it was beyond what she could afford.

Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery costs about $16,000, doctors say. With 13 children at home, the Whitten family didn't have a spare $16,000 lying around.

The kids

"This is going to take a long time," said Benjamin Whitten, 9.

At the request of his parents, he and his brothers and sisters assemble in their Edinburg home.

Benjamin, or Ben, a native of Korea, was born with Dandy-Walker Syndrome, a deformity marked by the fusion of parts in the brain. Surgery as an infant saved his life, and the Whittens took it from there.

Happy, healthy and impatient, Ben now argues with a sibling about who gets to sit on his adopted father's lap. The argument continues as other children file in. Martin, 9, and Jimmy, 12, enter the room. Both boys have Down syndrome.

Douglas, an 8-year-old with autism, enters from the kitchen drinking vitamin-enhanced milk from a small can. Nearby, Catherine, a 19-year-old student at South Texas College, brushes her 12-year-old sister Andi's hair. Andi spent her formative years in Romanian orphanages, which often lacked running water.

The other stragglers arrive. Finally, mother Cheryl crosses the room in 12 strides. The group settles in, and a photographer snaps the picture. They scatter.

"Before the surgery, I wouldn't have been able to walk across a room this size without having to stop and rest," Cheryl said.

Giving back

Cheryl Whitten grew up as an adopted child of a family in Houston. Her siblings and even her cousins were also adopted. To her, adopting was a normal way to start a family.

By 1995 she had adopted four children. She had also met her future husband through the Internet. David, a widower, had himself adopted 10 children with his first wife, because they couldn't have children of their own. After months of online correspondence, David and Cheryl met at an adoption conference. They married soon after.

The Whittens currently have 13 children living at home and 13 grown children living and working through out the country. David and Cheryl study at the University of Texas-Pan American, taking graduate school courses in rehabilitation counseling.

"David and I enjoy the kids very much," she says. "We've adopted because we enjoy them, and we have the skills to help them. We're not perfect. We just love them."

But raising the children can prove costly. The Whittens receive much help from the state, but they have little extra money. To feed the group, they go to Wal-Mart every other day. During one trip they buy four loaves of bread, two and a half dozen eggs, four packages of turkey hot dogs, and two packs of chicken breasts. That doesn't leave much leeway in the budget - especially not for weight-loss surgery.

Kindness of strangers

Enter Dr. Luis Reyes, a Monterrey-born and Ohio State University-educated surgeon.

Based in McAllen, Reyes has performed about 1,300 weight-loss surgeries in the Valley for the past six years.

He doesn't make a habit of doing the procedures for free, but he made an exception for Whitten. She had no health insurance, a life-threatening condition and the children.

"I mean, I don't know anybody who has 13 kids, and despite her inability to function, she is still responsible for the kids," he said. "We needed to act sooner rather than later; otherwise it was going to be more difficult for her and us."

On Jan. 14, 2008, Whitten underwent the surgery. She carried a calendar of her children's pictures to the operation remembersPaula Kilgore, who was the bariatric coordinator at Rio Grande Regional at the time of Whitten's surgery.

Kilgore, who now performs those duties for McAllen Heart Hospital, describes Whitten as an ideal patient. After the surgery Whitten committed herself to a healthy lifestyle. She exercised, dieted and attended support groups, which Kilgore led.

One year later, Whitten has lost 98 pounds. And she will likely continue to lose weight, Reyes said.

"Dr. Reyes saved my life," Whitten says.

The future

Cheryl Whitten sits in her living room, two children playing near by.

She unzips her purse and pulls out a laminated card. On one side is a snapshot of herself before surgery. The other side has pictures of activities.

"I want to ride a rollercoaster again; I want to play with my kids," she says. "I have a high school reunion I want to go to. I couldn't have done these things before the surgery."

And all these goals are represented on the card. When temptation to eat strikes Whitten, she pulls out the card. She gazes at the images, and the hunger dies away.

Matthew toddles toward his mother. The 7-year-old suffers from Apert syndrome, which causes his skull to bulge. At birth, surgeons separated his fused fingers.

Matthew tells his mother something in a language only she can understand. She rises, walks across the room without stopping and takes his hand. She turns and walks back, again uninterrupted, and sits in front of the computer. He sits on her lap and reaches for the computer mouse with tiny, crooked fingers. Cheryl smiles.

"I just wanted to be there for my kids," she says. "Some of them have special needs. Some of them are going to need me for life, and I want to be there for them."

For the first time in years, she believes she will be.

Zack Quaintance covers features and entertainment for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4447.