Tia’s weight loss journey spans rehab, injury and disease recovery

When you are morbidly obese, that’s the only thing many people see — including some doctors, says Tia Coffee.

She would know. With weight that topped out at 426 pounds, Coffee struggled with addiction, injuries and illness for years. All anyone paid attention to was her weight.

At times, she felt more judged for her weight than her drug addiction.

That’s why it took some time for Coffee to trust the MultiCare Center for Weight Loss & Wellness. But when she finally reached out, she says they were among the first health care professionals to see beyond her weight to the real person who was struggling.

“I remember going to see a specialist for my back. He literally didn’t look me in the eyes,” she recalls. “He just said, ‘You have some bulging discs.’ He saw me for four minutes and told me ‘You definitely need to lose some weight.’”

The visit was so abrupt, the doctor’s nurse apologized.

But Coffee, 43, was used to it. Doctors told her to “just lose weight” after suffering a torn meniscus from a fall down a flight of stairs, she says. She later learned that she likely broke her shin bone during the fall, but was never treated for it.

She developed cellulitis and spent three days hospitalized after suffering from lymphedema that was triggered, she believes, by the fall and exacerbated by her weight. Lymphedema causes fluid from the body’s lymphatic system to accumulate and cause swelling. Coffee nearly lost her leg.

Through it all, she was addicted to methamphetamines, defying the stereotype of an emaciated meth user.

“I was a fat addict,” she says. “This was all backwards.”

Seven years ago, at the age of 36, Coffee moved to Lacey to be near her mom and went into rehab for her addiction. She’s been clean and sober since.

But even after entering recovery, she still had to deal with the lymphedema, and her weight was making it worse. Her mom had undergone successful bariatric surgery years earlier, but Coffee felt she was in a conundrum: the surgery would help her manage the lymphedema, but she worried the disease would make her a poor candidate.

That changed when she met James Sebesta, MD, at a bariatric surgery seminar hosted by the MultiCare Center for Weight Loss & Wellness – Tacoma.

“He just asked me to trust him,” Coffee says. “He seemed to sense that I didn’t trust many people. It was me and my mom for a very long time.”

She was originally scheduled for bariatric surgery in 2019.

“But then I sabotaged myself when I couldn’t stop smoking,” Coffee says.

While declining to do the surgery, Dr. Sebesta didn’t give up on her.

“He said ‘I’ll be here when you’re ready,’” she recalls.

Coffee continued to work with the Center for Weight Loss & Wellness, getting her weight down to 352 pounds. She saw Dr. Sebesta again after successfully quitting smoking.

“He was like, ‘I knew you would come back!’” she says.

Coffee had the surgery on Aug. 17, 2020.

“Being a recovering addict, I was worried because of the pain pills,” she says.

Dr. Sebesta told her he would put an order in for pain meds if she needed them.

“I said, ‘I won’t take them,’” Coffee recalls. “Which I didn’t. I only took the pain meds that they gave me while I was in the hospital.”

But going without pain meds wasn’t agonizing.

“I honestly didn’t have a lot of problems,” she says.

Today, Coffee is down to 187 pounds and feeling happier and more hopeful than she has in years.

“I’m not going to lie,” she says. “There are days that are better and days that are worse … because lymphedema has done a number on my nerves.”

The weight loss has enabled Coffee to handle her own wraps and compression dressings needed to treat her lymphedema.

Prior to the fall that triggered her disease, she worked as a dental assistant, but has been on disability since.

“My next goal is to get off disability,” Coffee says. “I want to go back and finish the two years of college to be able to make dentures.”

More immediately, she’s looking forward to her niece’s upcoming high school graduation. Before her weight loss, she missed birthday parties, graduations and other family celebrations because “being in the car for just an hour was miserable,” she says.

But she won’t miss her niece’s ceremony.

“I get to be at the graduation. I get to see this,” Coffee says.

And that’s the most important part of her weight loss journey.

“I get to show up for my family and be present,” she says. “I got my life back.”

Coffee says she wouldn’t have survived if not for her mom.

“I thank God for my mom every day,” she says.

And now Coffee hopes that as her mother gets older, she can be a support for her.

“I get to be there for the ones that matter most,” she says. “That means more to me than anything.”