To say that one woman has single-handedly changed the shape of bariatric surgery in America sounds like it couldn’t possibly be true…unless you know the woman who did just that.
Jeannie Colter, or “JC” as she is known to her many friends and colleagues in the bariatric industry, has been an incredible force in bariatric surgery in the last 15 years. She is not an innovative surgeon or a political mover. She is not a huge, imposing figure. She is a diminutive, feisty, straight-talking nurse who left her medical practice behind to dedicate herself to her passion for changing lives in another equally consequential way.
Her introduction to weight loss surgery grew out of her professional curiosity; when a surgeon at her hospital began to perform bariatric operations, she wanted to know what he was doing. From her position in the operating room, JC could see that the surgery was infinitely more important than most people realized—more even than some of the surgeons who would eventually devote their practices to this life-saving, transformative, and distinctly personal surgery envisioned at the time.
JC became passionate about weight loss surgery when nearly the only publicity the technique received was the occasional reference to the highly suspicious “stomach stapling” that some people were, it was thought, reckless and desperate enough to embrace. And, when the opportunity to join a young entrepreneur in the growth of his visionary new Website—ObesityHelp.com—she realized the power of the site to spread accurate information and to bring together professionals and their potential patients in unprecedented ways, and she ultimately chose to leave behind her work with hundreds in order to reach hundreds of thousands.
It wasn’t only the lives of weight loss surgery patients, however, that would be forever altered by contact with JC: hundreds of surgeons would find themselves devoting their lives to what has since become the medical gold standard treatment for morbid obesity and associated metabolic conditions.
One such surgeon was Dr. Terry Simpson. “In 2000, I had a small but successful surgery practice outside on Phoenix, AZ,” Dr. Simpson says. “I had been seeing patients in the Gila River Indian Community since 1991 for a wide variety of problems and doing weight loss surgery on some of them. I was performing laparoscopic RNY surgery, which was still a bit unusual in 2000, but at the time I was satisfied with limiting my weight loss operations to Native Americans and quietly continuing my general surgery practice.
“Then I received a phone call from Jeannie Colter. She identified herself as a registered nurse and asked how many weight loss cases I was doing. I reported one, maybe two a week—a happy number for me. ‘In a few months you will be doing four or five a week,’ she said. And she was right.” Before long, Dr. Simpson’s entire practice was devoted to weight loss surgery, and, due in part to JC’s urgings, it had expanded to encompass more than just the Native Americans he had previously served. According to her, other people needed access to his skills. He soon realized she was right.
Dr. Simpson says that JC is “responsible for the success of tens of thousands of weight loss surgery patients. Her vision and understanding of patients and surgeons alike made her uniquely qualified to guide patients and surgeons through the maze of bariatric surgery.”
Dr. Simpson is only one of about 700 surgeons who received those phone calls from JC, out of which rich professional relationships and lasting friendships arose.
Dr. Todd Overcash of Florida Bariatric Center says, “I have known JC for over six years—an absolutely amazing woman who has worked in all aspects of bariatric patient care. She has passion about Obesity and first-rate patient care and the education of patients. I felt amazingly close to JC, though we never met face- to- face, mainly because we share the same passion about our patients and because of a personal connection because her disease process affected both of my parents.”
To know JC is to respect her ability to get things done. Never one to be daunted, JC even sought to change the very nature of weight loss surgery. Dr. Simpson says, “In the late 1990s, some of us had laparoscopic fellowship programs that were based around surgery of the foregut, primarily teaching fellows how to do laparoscopic hiatal hernia surgery. JC pointed out to a number of us that the Roux-en-Y (RNY) procedure should be the basis of the fellowship, not just hiatal hernia surgery. Consequently, these programs transformed into fellowships where bariatric surgery was the foundation, and the “debate” between those who did open surgery and those who did laparoscopic surgery virtually ended.”
JC is all business when it comes to what she wants to accomplish, but she faces the world at large with an undeniable sense of humor. JC shares one of her favorite moments since joining ObesityHelp: “Eric Klein, CEO of ObesityHelp, proudly walked into the office with his arms full of protein snacks for the staff. We have many WLS post-ops on staff and Eric wanted to be sure that the office was well-stocked. With good intentions, Eric had stopped by Cost Plus and picked up large containers of beef jerky. However, after he set the containers down on a table and let staff know he had protein snacks—enough for months—laughter erupted. He had bought doggie beef jerky treats! Protein for the pooch, not for the pouch! We had a good laugh.”
Whether it is time for a laugh or time to cry, JC is not one to lose sight of people. ObesityHelp is all about “Making the Journey Together,” and JC has always made her work about just that. She has always taken calls at any hour of the night or day if it means touching lives. She recalls, “I never minded receiving calls at any hour. If it meant helping a patient connect to a surgeon, or helping a surgeon or bariatric professional to become part of the ObesityHelp community and to connect to a patient, it was always a pleasure.”
JC’s hope has been to “be able to reach out to as many morbidly obese patients as possible, to ensure that they are able to make informed decisions to obtain quality care as they travel the journey through weight loss surgery and on to more productive and healthier lives.” She says, “It has also been my hope to bring bariatric professionals together where technique, professional experiences and networking further support the mission to achieve quality patient care.” Few people realize their hopes so completely in their lifetimes. Still fewer work so hard to achieve them.
JC’s involvement in the fight against obesity has slowed a bit in the past several months due to her own personal fight against cancer, which is quite possibly the only thing that could prevent her from pursuing all of the passions that fill her life. However, that doesn’t mean her legacy is faded or her hand is unfelt in the work that remains to be done. To the contrary, she has paved the way for others of us to travel the road she marked out before us.
Known as the woman Dr. Simpson calls a “force of nature”, JC shows us that no task is too difficult, no odds are too great, and anything worth doing can be done—given a bit of tenacity, plenty of elbow grease and a whole lot of heart.
