10:48am Tuesday 7th July 2009
After losing almost half her body weight following gastric bypass surgery, Lynsey Kelly has found a new lease of life. She talks to Sarah Foster.
THE smiling woman who answers the door looks trim in a strappy top and jeans and, to all intents and purposes, seems just like any other wife and mum. She ushers two excitable dogs into the house and starts chatting easily, without a suggestion of discomfort.
Yet just a year ago, a knock at the door would have made Lynsey Kelly panic. At 22-and-a-half stone, and a dress size 30, her self-confidence had reached an all-time low, so that even a stranger coming to call could really floor her.
But that was before the gastric bypass that changed her life.
The Lynsey of today is a size 14 – a typical dress size for a British woman – and looks the picture of health. Her skin is clear; her hair a glossy dark brown, and she seems entirely happy in her slimmed-down body. About a year ago, she took the decision to have a gastric bypass – similar to the gastric band which TV presenter Fern Britton had fitted, but a more drastic procedure – and has never looked back. Lynsey, 34, who has struggled with her weight throughout her adult life, explains that matters had come to a head.
“I was struggling more and more and every time I tried to lose weight, I would put it back on, and more. I was in a size 30 clothes and I thought ‘God, I’m going to have to go to work in those strange housecoats that you see in magazines’. With my GP I’d tried tablets and I saw the dietician as well.
Then I had a conversation with my doctor, who said I was going to die – of a stroke or diabetes – if I carried on like this.”
As a mum to son Patrick, seven, and wife to Jon, she was determined that this would not happen. On top of risking her health, her size was spoiling family life. “I’m passionate about horses and I had a horse that I hadn’t ridden for years because of the weight,” says Lynsey, who lives in Seaham, east Durham. “Patrick was having riding lessons and wanted me to ride with him. I couldn’t go on his trampoline with him either, or even run up the stairs.
“I felt like an old woman. I’d walk round the MetroCentre and have to sit down every ten minutes because my back was in so much pain, my legs were in pain, it was really quite horrific.
I also had the guilt that I’d caused it. My marriage was on a downward spiral because I was awful to everybody at home – I guess I just felt so down about myself. After work I felt that I needed just to sit. I wouldn’t even put Patrick to bed.”
When Lynsey applied for the procedure, she was asked first to lose some weight to prove that she was serious.
She duly lost just over two stone, and a date for surgery was scheduled. Such was the degree of Lynsey’s problem – she was classed as super obese, a level above the category of morbidly obese – that doctors were surprised she was in such good health. Despite the risks of the operation, the decision to proceed was fairly easy.
“I know that my mum was very worried but I thought ‘I’m going to die anyway. If I’m going to die I want to die making this better for my husband and my son and my mum’,” says Lynsey.
THE bypass was performed at Sunderland Royal Hospital, where Lynsey had keyhole surgery to reduce her stomach to the size of a golf ball and remove a huge section of her colon. Unlike a gastric band, the procedure is irreversible, and means that for the rest of her life she will be on supplements and can no longer eat full-sized meals.
“When you first start eating again it’s all pureed stuff and you get quite a strict diet plan. I couldn’t digest bread or pasta or rice to start with, and you start with very basic vegetable purees and horrible meat purees, like baby food really. Now I can pretty much eat whatever I want – just very small portions. When I initially had it done I could only eat a couple of bites of Weetabix, for example, but now I can eat a whole one.”
Lynsey admits that, in the early days, it was hard and that going out for meals was a bit of an ordeal, but now she eats at normal family mealtimes and even feels confident of eating out. The weight has simply fallen off her – she lost eight stones in the post-operative period and dropping a dress size every month became the norm. Now she has stabilised at just under 12-and-a-half stone, which puts her Body Mass Index (BMI) at 28, where once it was 53. Of course, this has meant a whole new wardrobe.
“I went shopping with my mam the other week and we ended up in Evans and I found myself looking at size 30 things – I just forgot totally,” Lynsey laughs. “To be able to think I can shop anywhere is just odd. I went into Van Mildert the other week and I tried stuff on and they actually had stuff that fitted me.”
Now Lynsey gets compliments all the time and no longer feels wary of meeting strangers. She can play with her son, does not have to ask for an extension for her seatbelt on a plane, and has recently left her job – something she would never have had the confidence to do before her weight loss. Her transformation is so extreme that even her own mother has failed to recognise her. “She walked past me in the town. She didn’t know it was me,” says Lynsey.
Most dramatic of all has been her change of attitude, which has radically altered her whole life.
“I look at some of the hideous photos and I look at me now and I feel very different,” says Lynsey. “I’ve started karate, I’ve joined the gym and I’ve been riding, and that’s just been amazing. Because of my mood, Jon and I weren’t necessarily happy in our marriage and now we really are, and I feel like a proper mum now.
“I’m not saying this is a magical cure because it is still hard but it feels like magic because of what’s happened with my mind and the way I am with my family. I feel as though I can do anything.”
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