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Brooke Stanley: Part Two
| Wednesday, Jan 9 2008 3:57 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Jan 25 2008 5:43 PM
PART ONE ... PART TWO ... PART THREE
Pink. Black. Things with skulls on them.
That’s what’s hot right now, and Brooke Stanley and her mother Robin Stanley eagerly peruse the racks at Ross Dress for Less on Rosedale Highway looking for them.
“I like polka dots,” Brooke says pulling out a black and white dotted shirt with a scoop neck. “But not this one.”
Back-to-school shopping is hardly ever fun for most families. Finding the preppy but punk clothes Brooke wants on a slim budget in size 2X to 3X for shirt and size 22 for pants is especially tricky.
“When I was big I didn’t want to wear polka dots,” Robin says. “I’m glad she isn’t like that.”
Brooke’s size makes it hard for her to shop at most stores.
At 5 feet 6 inches tall and 268 pounds, the 15-year-old is morbidly obese, by adult standards.
Brooke tries on a couple tops and bottoms. She usually goes for the longer, empire-waisted shirts that cover her stomach and rear end.
“They think that all big girls have big boobs,” Robin says of the clothing. “That’s not always the case.”
Robin, who is very svelte with a size-4 frame and bright blonde hair, knows what it’s like to be heavy, having hit 267 pounds. She had gastric bypass surgery six years ago.
Now Brooke is asking about surgery.
“I was thinking about it, and I would really want to do that within the next year,” Brooke says.
She thinks she would go with the bypass surgery her mother got, called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, where stapling is used to create a small, upper stomach pouch, which is then connected to the small intestine.
“It’s not going to be easy going through a surgery and automatically having to lose all this food,” Brooke says of cutting back on what she eats. “It’s like going cold turkey, you know?”
Brooke grew concerned after she watched an episode of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” in which 16-year-old Emily Senti, was told she is pre-diabetic. It rocked Brooke’s perceptions of her health. The extra pounds around her arms, legs and midsection were no longer just an annoyance but an indicator of bad things to come.
And surgery, Brooke feels, is the only solution.
“But the first thing that comes to my mind is, ‘Oh my gosh, what if I lose all this weight and then go through all this, and then I get pregnant?”
Some weight loss surgeries can reduce nutrients absorbed into the body, which could be a problem during pregnancy. Also, it’s very difficult to maintain weight loss during and after pregnancy.
“But then my Grammy had informed me that if I reach a certain weight, that there’s a good chance I can’t have a baby at all,” she says. “And so no matter which way I go, I’m kind of messed up, you know?”
Robin is concerned that her daughter overestimates how much the operation would change her.
She would rather her daughter give a good faith effort to lose the weight by diet and exercise. Brooke once did Weight Watchers and saw a nutritionist with Kaiser Permanente, but neither of those had a lasting effect.
“They do surgery on your body but not your brain,” Robin says. “You still think ‘fat.’”
Robin told Brooke a couple of months before that she would be monitoring what the teen ate, encouraging her to keep a diary of her meals. But with the back-to-school rush and serious problems between Robin and Brooke’s father, Christopher Stanley — they’re talking about divorce — that effort has been dropped.
Brooke maintains her desire for surgery about vanity. It’s about health.
“I accept the way I look. I think I’m beautiful. But the fact is I’m not healthy at all,” she says. “After half a mile, I’m out of breath.
“I shouldn’t be like that at this age. I’m only 15.”
Brooke was ready when her mother came into her room, telling her to gather her things.
Robin, Brooke and Brooke’s twin siblings, 9-year-old Chelsea and Chase, were moving to their grandparents’ home.
Brooke’s parents are getting a divorce after 16 years of marriage.
Brooke had cried a few times about the impending separation, but by the time her mother came into her room on that August day, she was prepared.
She got some things and helped the twins get some clothes.
When they got to her grandparents’ home, she helped keep her siblings occupied as her mother recuperated and started putting their family back together.
“Right now I refuse to cry about it,” Brooke says. “I refuse to cry about any stupid stuff now because I don’t want cry about that.”
A couple hundred feet from home plate, Brooke bides her time, arms crossed. Her softball glove hangs limply off her wrist.
Brooke’s church, Brimhall Road Assembly of God, is playing the Westside Church of Christ.
In theory, softball sounds like good exercise. But deep in right field, Brooke’s about as active as cars in a traffic jam.
She looks up at the sky. It’s the third week of August.
Over the last few days, ash has fallen, carried with the wind from the Zaca fire in Santa Barbara County.
An intimidating boy comes up to bat and hits. Crack.
The ball comes sailing straight for Brooke.
Her eyes say, “Oh, crap,” but her legs don’t move. The ball falls a few feet away, and her friend a position over throws it in.
The boy is out at first.
“You should have tried for that, Goob,” Robin says after the inning.
“The whole reason I’m out there is so I don’t have to do anything,” Brooke replies with her brace-filled smile.
As her team bats, she sits by Robin, sipping a large cherry Sprite from Sonic, her “new favorite” drink.
She’s more about the social aspect of church-league softball than actually playing it. And her teammates don’t seem to mind.
Brooke flits from conversation to conversation in her jean capris and a green, short-sleeve hooded T-shirt. Her laugh can often be heard among the hubbub of teen chit chat.
About three hours later, the team and several more from their church celebrate at a back-to-school party.
With the abandon of a girl several years younger, Brooke quickly disrobes down to a black swimsuit with pink dots, a halter top with a skirt bottom.
She and her best friend Sara Fidler, a 15-year-old half Brooke’s size, are the first to jump in.
They dunk each other, splash around and goad the roughly 20 other teens and adults milling around the patio to join them. But to no avail.
The teens soon line up and pick their way through burgers, hot dogs, chips and potato salad.
After the meal, Brooke and Sara jump back in. Their friend 15-year-old Bethany Simmons quietly looks on from a nearby table.
Bethany recently went through a body transformation of her own.
At one point, she was more than 200 pounds, she says. Now she’s down to about 170. She did it by exercising and cutting out the snacks.
“That’s a big problem for me,” Robin says, of nixing the junk.
The weight loss gave Bethany confidence, but even more so, Brooke’s exuberant nature helped pull Bethany, a self-proclaimed tomboy, out of her shell. Brooke would invite her out with friends and include her in conversations.
“I know that if she puts her mind to it, she can do it,” Bethany says.
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