My 600-lb Life followed Dottie Perkins Potts, a 34-year-old mother of two boys. Dottie weighed over 640 pounds. When she gave birth to her first child, Daniel, she weighed 353 pounds. When Daniel was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and his father left, Dottie’s eating spiraled out of control. Eleven years later when she had her second child Landon, she weighed over 500 lbs. It wasn’t easy for Dottie to lose the weight she needed to be eligible for the gastric bypass surgery, but she did it and after the surgery lost an additional 150 lbs.
Just three months after Dottie’s My 600-lb. Life episode aired, on April 10, 2016, Dottie’s son Daniel died at LeBonheur Children Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 13. In August, Dottie was interviewed by her local newspaper The Oxford Eagle but the subject of Daniel’s death was “too painful for her to talk at length about.” My 600-lb. Life airs Wednesdays at 8pm on TLC.
