When Eunik March moved to Indianapolis more than seven years ago, she weighed almost 600 pounds. “I’ve pretty much been big all my life,” she says. “My mom was a big woman; my mama’s mom was a big woman. On my daddy’s side, she was a big woman . . . . ”

March knew she wanted to reduce her weight and stop smoking, but she’d had little luck with either goal at her previous home in Evansville, Indiana, and thyroid issues made dieting a struggle.

Priyanthie Ganenthiran, M.D., staff physician at Eskenazi Health Center Grassy Creek — whom March calls Dr. G. — was about to change that.

“When I came here, it seemed like this doctor really cared, you know?” March says. The healthier habits Ganenthiran helped instill in March didn’t come easily. The fifty-year-old struggles to limit her consumption of fried food and bread. But her doctor always says, “I’m so proud of you. Keep up the good work,” March explains.

The far-eastside resident says she now weighs 402 pounds. She credits Ozempic and Ganenthiran’s encouragement for aiding her. While hesitant to follow her doctor’s advice at first, March now says, “I’m listening. I’m doing what I agreed to do.”

March recalls a recent walk with her boyfriend in a neighborhood park, where she succeeded in pushing herself. While she still finds strenuous exercise painful, she is proud of her progress.

In fact, March didn’t even realize how much weight she had lost. She continued to buy the same clothes she always had and only knew what she’d accomplished when a friend made a comment. March says she and her friend “call ourselves SSBBW . . . . Super-Size Big Beautiful Woman . . . . ” One day, the friend joked, “Well sister, I’ll just call you a BBW ’cause you gone.”

March was stunned when she saw the proof of her weight loss. “One day I looked at my pictures from when I was in Evansville to now, and I was like, ‘Oh wow, I did lose a lot of weight.’”

She also quit smoking more than a year ago because she was “tired of getting out of breath so quick.” “It was hard,” she says of quitting, “and it’s still hard.”

Her doctor said, “Eunik, I just want you to try” and helped her transition from smoking to Nicorette to Trident gum. March has signed up for blood pressure and diabetes classes through Ganenthiran as well.

March wants to remain a patient of Ganenthiran’s for a long time. “I ain’t going nowhere . . . . ” she says, laughing, and “And she better not leave either.” Describing her experience at Eskenazi Health Center Grassy Creek, March says, “Everybody there is friendly. Everybody speaks to you.”

These days it takes March longer to run out of breath. Her lungs seem so open. “I feel so darn good,” she adds. “I do. I really do.”

March wants to stay healthy so that she can “be here a little longer for my grandbabies.” She began raising three of her sister’s kids in her twenties, at first with her mother’s help. Those kids now have kids of their own, grandchildren who call March “Neak.” Friends are puzzled by the word, a phonetic abbreviation of her first name. “It’s fine,” March says. “They know who I am.”

She took care of three of her four grandkids for a week during their spring break this year. “I was on my toes!” she laughs.

Next, March hopes to lose another 100 pounds. She’s planning to walk twice a week, try water aerobics and start going to the gym. “I came this far,” she says. “I’m not ready to go back.” Maybe she’ll also go dancing, something she used to do multiple nights a week before raising her kids. March remembers a neighborhood dance competition when she was ten or eleven. Although she was “real shy” at that age, she competed against a room full of older, bigger kids — and won.

With her improving health, March plans to keep on dancing. “My oldest [grandkid], we dance all the time. He loves to dance. Oh, he loves to dance! Forget about it . . . . He comes and gets my hand, and oh, we dance.”