‘Weight loss op nearly killed me’
6-STONE JULIE LEFT DISABLED
A GASTRIC bypass operation led to a woman weighing six stone and on the brink of death.
Julie Dunbar’s malnou nourishment was so seve severe that she is still suffer suffering years on – and is now disabled. dis Openin Opening up about her torment, s she tells how she thought th the procedure would change her life for the better.
Julie went in for the surgery when her weight hit 20st.
The 58-year-old said: “I had mental health problems and was put on medications that make you bigger. They made you ravenous, so a diet wasn’t quite as easy for me.
“I used to go and do aqua aerobics and I was always on some silly diet, but I was getting fatter and fatter.”
The surgery involved 70% of Julie’s stomach and two-thirds of her intestine being cut away so she could only digest small amounts of food.
But within hours of having the £11,000 procedure she started to suffer side effects.
Chatting in a new documentary for 5STAR, Julie said: “I immediately started being sick.
“I went home and it carried on and I had severe abdominal pains.
“The fact that I was being sick every day after everything I ate should have been a red flag.”
Within a year, malnourishment and a lack of vitamins meant Julie’s weight had dropped by around two-thirds.
She said: “It wasn’t me looking in the mirror. I’d never looked like that, this skeletal thing. You could see my bones sticking out. I felt so horrible I wouldn’t go anywhere.”
Eventually Julie was hospitalised and doctors had to feed her through a tube in her neck amid fears she would die.
But even six weeks of treatment did not solve her problems.
Julie, from Leeds, said: “I went to see the nutritionist. She marched me into the consultant’s room and said, ‘She’s going to die if you don’t do something’.”
Julie had surgery to add a metre to her intestine, which did help her regain some weight.
She now has to eat
5,000 calories a day, more than twice the usual amount for woman.
Julie is also dependent on
40 types of medication and battles osteoporosis, as well as issues with her balance, vision and mobility.
Looking back at her gastric bypass, she said: “You don’t realise the dire effect it’s going to have on you.
“If I could time-travel back I would say to the psychiatrist, ‘There must be an alternative’.
“It’s just accepting this is the way it’s going to be. I’m going to be on these tablets for life. It’s not something that’s going to get better. I’m disabled and unlikely to work ever again.”
Plastic Surgery Knifemares is on 5STAR on Thursday at 9pm. a