Lowcountry coach continues to lose weight after community paid for gastric bypass
By: | WCBD
Published: January 04, 2012
It's a small thing...the thought of his nieces sitting on his lap, that brings tears to Clay Owens' eyes. When asked if he was looking forward to the opportunity, he struggled to answer without crying.
The hundreds of pounds that created a barrier between him and the people he loves...are gone...His wife Suzie explains,"Now he has a lap, and they can sit on his lap. They love their Uncle Clay and that is going to be wonderful for him to actually have a place for them to sit."
Clay Owens has easily lost the weight of a man - or two - in the past two years. Once weighing 660 pounds, two years and a regimented diet have carved out a new man with a trim face and transformed body.
The latest surgery to remove excess skin the most rewarding for the football coach and history teacher at Hemingway Middle and High School.
"To me I couldn't see it, but this I can see. I can see the quantitative part of it. When I woke up in the recovery room I started feeling around, to see exactly what was still left and what was gone."
What is gone? 47.5 pounds of excess skin. "I've told people all I ever wanted to be was normal, because 660 pounds is just not normal."
Clay's weight-loss and his life owed to members of his community who took it into their own hands two years ago by raising money for the gastric bypass surgery...and every surgery since. "Without that I am pretty sure I would have died in the last two years sometime."
Owens now trying to save others by speaking out against insurance companies, like his own, who do not pay for the surgery. "The insurance companies need to cover the gastric bypass. It is not a surgery to change people, it is a tool to get people healthy."
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