The alumni page at Worthington Christian School’s website includes a story about Dr. Timothy Custer, a Grace College graduate and the son of long-time Charis Fellowship pastor, Jim Custer and his wife Triceine. Tim and his wife Katie live in Lancaster, Ohio, where his practice is located. A portion of the story appears below. Click here to read the complete article.
Custer enjoys watching patients turn their lives around through bariatric surgery
“Dolores (not her real name)” didn’t walk into Dr. Timothy Custer’s (WC ’87) office at the Fairfield Healthcare Professionals General Surgery River View in Lancaster. The 65-year-old woman had to be rolled in. Confined to a wheelchair, she felt she had three constants in her life: taking her medications, smoking, and waiting to die.
“She weighed close to 360 pounds and was taking about 13 different medications for 15 different medical problems,” Custer said. “She went from living in a wheelchair and waiting to die to weighing 135 pounds, not needing every single one of her medications, and all of her medical problems are gone. She’s having the time of her life.”
What made the difference for “Dolores” was bariatric surgery, which includes procedures such as Roux en-Y bypass, sleeve gastrectomy, and biliopancreatic diversions.
Bariatrics is not a simple snip-it-and-fix-it surgery for those who want to shed a few pounds. It is a radical, last resort for patients who haven’t lost weight through multiple diets and weight loss programs. In order to qualify for the surgery, patients must be over 18, have a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40, or a BMI of 35-39 accompanied by a complication like diabetes, hypertension, or sleep apnea.
Custer, who has been married to his wife Katie for 24 years, lives in Lancaster. The couple has three grown children, Leah who is a nurse at Grant Medical Center, Luke who is a senior at Cedarville, and Hope, who is a freshman at Mount Vernon Nazarene.
Custer did his pre-med work at Grace College and graduated from medical school from The Ohio State University.
“I wanted to be a surgeon from the time I learned there were doctors who do surgery,” Custer said with a laugh. “But when someone mentioned bariatrics, I was like ‘Why would you want to do that? That sounds horrible.’”
Click here to read the complete article.