Our
Annual Dream Walk Event for 2009 drew record crowds
and media attention. We wish to thank everyone who
help make this our most successful event ever.
'Dream
Walk' held for weight-loss surgery patients
BY CHRISTINA HERNANDEZ | christina.hernandez@newsday.com
10:03 PM EDT,
May 9, 2009
Cindy Schreiner, 49, of
Lynbrook, said she made it down the stairs of her lower
Manhattan 
office building on Sept. 11, 2001, but was so overweight she couldn't
run away when she reached the street. A colleague helped her into a
garage.
Fern Fladell, 45, of Rockville
Centre, said she once worried her knees would give out under her
260-pound weight.
Saturday, they were among dozens of people who had undergone
weight-loss surgery who walked three miles on the Long Beach boardwalk.
The fifth annual "Dream Walk" was sponsored by New York Bariatric
Group, a private weight-loss surgery practice in New Hyde Park
"Most of these patients couldn't walk 100 feet" before surgery, said
Dr. Shawn Garber, director of the practice, which has done more than
3,000 operations, mostly gastric bypasses and lap-band implantations.
 "Just
as you treat a broken hip with a hip replacement, people who are
obese you treat with bariatric surgery," said Dr. Spencer Holover,
another surgeon with the medical group.
Saturday's walkers said they had the surgery after years of struggling
with their weight.
Schreiner topped 300 pounds when, from across the street, she watched a
jet hit the World Trade Center's south tower. After her experience in
trying to escape, "I thought . . . 'I have to change my life,' " she
said.
Schreiner had gastric bypass surgery in 2002. She's since lost about
200 pounds.
Fladell said she'd been morbidly obese since age 11 and tried
everything from diet pills to weight-loss camp, but never dropped the
pounds for good. After her 2006 bypass surgery, she went from a
clothing size 28 to a 28-inch waist. Saturday's walk, she said, is
"just our way of showing that it can be done."
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