Angel Parrish’s episode of My 600 lb. Life (S3E5) was a rollercoaster of setbacks and triumphs. At the start of the episode, Angel had almost given up on her life and a series of roadblocks thwarted the hope of her weight loss surgery with Dr. Nowzaradan.
Angel’s eating problems started after she got pregnant at age 14. Her mother gave her an ultimatum that she couldn’t stay at home if she decided to keep her baby. Angel didn’t have anywhere to go, so she made the decision to place her baby in adoption. The decision haunted her, and she started binging to cope with the immense emotional pain she felt.
She met her partner Donnie when she was about 405 lbs., and he had no problem with her weight at the time. Donnie says he was attracted to Angel’s personality. “Angel was constantly smiling back in those days. I don’t get to see much of that anymore,” Donnie says in the episode, which aired in 2015.
After Angel gave birth to their son Andrew she suffered from postpartum depression that lingered for years. She put on 200 pounds since his birth, and found herself stuck in bed all of the time and unable to care for herself.
Because she couldn’t care for herself, she also couldn’t be an active mother to Andrew. At the time they started filming for Angel’s episode, Donnie says he had reached a breaking point. He felt like a single father most of the time and was planning to leave Angel if she was unable to turn her life around.
Angel knew she was at a crossroads in her life and could lose Donnie, Andrew, and her own life if she didn’t make drastic changes soon. By the time she made it to her appointment with Dr. Now, she was worried that she was already too far gone.
She wasn’t, however. She gained hope and determination from her Dr. Now appointment and spent the next few months completely focused on weight loss. She severely restricted her eating to the point where she was able to lose 163 lbs. in two months.
Dr. Now said its not uncommon to lose this amount of weight at 600 lbs because it takes such a huge amount of calories to maintain such a high weight. From here on out, though, he thought Angel’s weight loss should stabilize and he felt she should be careful to not lose weight too quickly. He immediately approved her for weight loss surgery.
A month later Angel gets her weight loss surgery, which she’s extremely grateful for because she never expected anyone to help her. The weight loss surgery didn’t go as planned, though.
When going into the surgery, Dr. Now was worried because Angel has had previous abdominal surgery, which could have left scarring. In the middle of surgery he encounters thick scar tissue and had to end the surgery before he could complete the gastric bypass.
Not being able to complete the surgery “shattered” Angel and left her demotivated. Afterwards, she was in severe pain from the surgery, but had none of the benefits.
As she recovered, Angel worried that she would “lose everything” if Dr. Now couldn’t do the surgery again.
Thankfully, Dr. Now was able to perform surgery on Angel again. During the first surgery he had been able to remove enough of the scar tissue to allow him to complete the bypass the second time.
As Angel healed and continued with her weight loss, she was able to participate more in her son’s life. Soon though, she had another obstacle.
She suffered from severe nausea, and went to the hospital without contacting Dr. Nowzaradan. While at the hospital, she was diagnosed as malnourished and they gave her a feeding tube, which required more surgery.
Once Dr. Now found out that Angel had gotten a feeding tube without consulting with him first, Dr. Now was extremely upset and asked Angel to come to his office in Houston, TX immediately.
Dr. Now she didn’t need a feeding tube and that she got one because the doctors were shocked by her recent weight loss.
He said the feeding tube had undone the effect of the bypass, and had contributed to a stall in her weight loss.
She wasn’t healed enough to remove the feeding tube at the time, but Dr. Now was able to take out the drainage tube and close up the feeding tube.
After these stressful events, Angel continued to lose weight and started to feel better about herself. The episode ends with her exhibiting a new confidence as she goes clothes shopping with Donnie.
“That’s the woman that I met. A year ago I had reached my breaking point. I didn’t want to see her just lay there and die,” Donnie says. “Angel’s weight loss has totally saved our relationship.”
Angel was able to keep the weight off and posted an amazing update photo in 2018 on Facebook. Since then, she has stayed off of social media and had not appeared on the update series Where Are They Now?.
