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As Shelley Ashten-Fishwick walked down the hospital corridor toward the theatre to have a band fitted she felt as if she was on the Green Mile, walking to her death as a result of her actions.
At just 5ft 5”, Shelley weighed 19 stone, was a size 28 and knew she wanted to have the band fitted, but the realisation that she was putting her life in danger to help take the weight off was almost unbearable.
How had she got to this stage?, she wondered. Why hadn’t she been able to lose weight on a diet and exercise? Was she failing her children? Was she going to leave them motherless because she’d eaten too much?
Shelley, who is 39 and now weighs 10 stone 12 said: “People say that having a gastric band fitted is the easy way out, but it’s not true. You get to the stage of having one because you’ve come to the last option. You don’t want to have it done but you know you can’t lose the weight without it.”
From a family that has historically had problems with weight gain, Shelley, from Plymouth, was a slim teenager and had met her now ex-husband when she weighed about nine and a half stone.
In the following seven months she picked up her partner’s addiction to fizzy drinks and, without realising why put on two stone. She was this weight when she was married, which she says was big for her at the time.
The problem escalated when her husband was called away to war in the Gulf War in 1991 and she turned to food for solace, putting on another stone. Between the time she gave birth to her daughters she lost and gained weight, eventually ending up at 15 stone in 1994.
Shelley said: “The weight had started to come off after my first daughter’s birth. I was able to go into high street stores and buy normal clothes, but then I fell pregnant again and this time I ate through the whole thing.
“At 15 stone I still felt I could lose the weight but I’d picked up bad habits with comfort eating. My eldest daughter had been diagnosed with autism, which had been initially hard to deal with and then in 1995 my father died, which left me devastated.”
But life hadn’t finished with Shelley yet. In 1997 her husband left the family in an acrimonious split and in 2000 she had a hysterectomy because of health problems.
Then, in 2002 she quit smoking and her eldest daughter was taken out of school to be cared for full-time at home.
It meant that Shelley hardly ever left the house and became a practical recluse – leaving her with the emotional crutch of sweets, cakes and sugary drinks.
Shelley said: “Whenever I felt low I would just reach for a cake and the bigger I got – the less self esteem I had. I knew I had reached rock bottom.
“Although, I tried every diet going and would make endless plans to exercise with two young girls to look after and an already low self worth I never stuck to anything. It became a cycle I couldn’t break.”
The turning point came in 2004 when she was picking up her daughter from school. As she walked along the road, her body simply gave way under the pressure of her weight and she found herself unable to breathe or walk.
Shelley said: “I was horrified but a short time afterward I saw something in the media about obesity surgery. I did some research on the internet and I decided that the gastric band looked like the best option because it’s less invasive.
“I looked at lots of options and talked to quite a few people about the possibilities. In the end, I decided to go with a surgeon at the Nuffield Hospital in Taunton.”
Although she booked the operation, the fear that she would die during it was overwhelming. It was her kids that gave her the strength to follow it through.
She said: “They convinced me they wanted me to have it done and start living a normal life. It was hard to explain how I felt to them but they understood that I was terribly unhappy and that it was all starting to come to a head.
“So, we went for it and even right up until the point I was taken into the operating theatre I was going to back out. As I walked down the corridor, I felt like I was would never wake up and that I’d not see my kids again.
“When the doors opened and I walked in, I just couldn’t believe that I was standing there – that it was actually going to happen.”
The laparoscopic (keyhole) operation was done through a small incision between her breasts and she had a Swedish adjustable gastric band fitted, which means that it can be adjusted to fit her needs at a later date.
The band works by acting like a belt around the stomach limiting the amount of food a person can eat and making them feel full after relatively little.
Shelley said: “Nothing can prepare you for the pain afterwards. It’s like you’ve been kicked in the stomach even though the cut is very small. I also have large breasts, so they were pulling on the scar, which was hard to cope with.”
Following a strict diet that starts off as all liquidised, she began her recovery, but even now she has problems with being sick after eating certain foods.
She said: “I’m only 2 lbs away from my target having lost 7 stone 12 pounds, but I have to say it’s not ‘the easy answer’ that everyone thinks it is.
“I still see myself at 19 stone when I look in the mirror. I still want to eat when I get low, but it does mean that I can’t, otherwise I’m ill. I feel now that the process has just started because I have to deal with the reasons I overate instead of covering them up.
“Also, my breasts are now a strange shape and they have lost all their volume with the weight, which is hard to cope with.
“I am starting to believe that when people look at me they’re not repulsed and when I’m out I’m not so self-conscious, which helps you feel better about things.
“It’s also given me a focus. I never want to go through all that again. It was too painful emotionally and physically – and financially! – to even consider.
“I’m also thrilled that my daughters are so happy with their new-look mum. And even though they’ve started borrowing all my clothes I can’t complain because it’s something I had feared would never happen in a million years.”
For Shelley the band was a success, it was a difficult journey.
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