‘I almost lost my life. My kids nearly lost their mother’
Woman tells of trauma after botched weight loss operation abroad
A CLARE mother has begged others to refrain from having gastric surgery abroad after a complicated operation sent her into septic shock and has left her facing a lifetime on antibiotics.
Leanne O’Driscoll, 43, was 16st 10lbs when she decided she wanted a gastric sleeve.
But after discovering it would set her back €14,000 in Ireland, she and her three friends hopped on a plane to Turkey, all for the same procedure.
Ms O’Driscoll, a mother of three, says she regrets the surgery despite losing 6st 3lbs and is speaking out to warn others against it.
She told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘If I can save just one life, then I would be very happy.’
Gastric sleeve surgery involves the removal of 80% of the stomach.
Ms O’Driscoll, who has two daughters, aged 22 and 11, and a 15-year-old son, initially spoke about her near-death experience on RTÉ’s Liveline yesterday.
She said: ‘I nearly lost my life, my kids nearly lost their mum because I wanted to have weight loss. Do your research, I’m begging you.’
She explained that on the flight back to Ireland from Turkey she felt very cold. But things got much worse after she got home.
‘I was just happy that I woke up’
Following a normal morning with her partner Patrick, 60, she got up to go to the bathroom and collapsed. She felt dizzy and was forced to crawl around and later collapsed again when showering.
She was rushed to University Hospital Limerick where doctors revealed her spleen had been nicked during her procedure in Turkey. This led to sepsis and sent her into septic shock. She had her spleen removed and received 11 pints of blood.
‘I didn’t know I was dying,’ she said, while explaining she now lives a restricted lifestyle.
‘I’m on antibiotics for the rest of my life, I’m on penicillin twice a day. One day I’m fine, another I’m not fine. I can’t stand for long because I get weak. I get tired very easily.’
She is restricted to eating a starter when going out because her stomach is so small and suffers from ‘head hunger’ where her stomach can’t physically fit the food but her mind tells her she is hungry.
Ms O’Driscoll claims there is a ten-year waiting list to get the procedure through the HSE and she just wanted it done.
‘I was very overweight. Months and months I was thinking about it. I tried every diet, I was losing weight and I was putting weight back on and I thought it was my only option,’ she said.
Adverts for the hospital in Turkey, which she does not wish to identify, kept popping up on social media and she found herself looking at before and after photos.
‘I got depression about my weight. I didn’t feel good in myself and I was saying, “Look this is it, I’m going,”’ she said.
The four friends, who named themselves The Bikini Bodies, arrived in Turkey at the end of October last.
Ms O’Driscoll said: ‘I was nervous and excited, nervous because it’s a different country.’
They haggled with the hospital down to €2,400 per person, but they soon encountered language barriers and struggled to understand the forms they were signing.
The three others all had successful procedures on the same day but Ms O’Driscoll told the Mail: ‘There are some days they wish they had never got it done.’
Ms O’Driscoll herself had to wait until the following day for the procedure although she revealed on Liveline that she had doubts that morning.
She revealed: ‘I woke up and I had this gut feeling and I thought I don’t want this done.
‘The nurse left the room, came back and gave me a sedative basically to relax me and they just wheeled me down to theatre.’
She explained her relief when the surgery was done, admitting: ‘I was just happy that I woke up.’
But she could feel something wasn’t right despite doctors telling her everything would be fine.
She was vomiting blood in the following days and when a drain was removed, blood started to pour out and she was bandaged up before flying back to Ireland.
Turkey has become increasingly popular for Irish people seeking to have dental treatment, hair transplants, breast augmentation and weight loss procedures.
Individuals are able to book medical appointments with little notice and are attracted to the cost being significantly cheaper than in Ireland.
Irish surgeons are also reporting an increase in patients seeking treatment for complications from botched weight-loss operations abroad. In April, a mother of two from Co. Waterford died after travelling to Turkey for a medical procedure, the second such incident in less than a month.