‘My organs turned to concrete after botched weight loss surgery’
A woman who suffered from a botched weight loss surgery saw her organs ‘turn to concrete’ which left her unable to eat for two years.
Pinky Jolley, 46, travelled to Turkey for gastric sleeve surgery in 2022 after feeling unhappy with her 17st 11lb weight and her diabetes diagnosis.
"They totally botched the operation and left my insides so infected they were all hard and like concrete the doctors said," Jolley explains.
"It's been a horrible ordeal. I just want to be well again. Looking back it was so cheap that I really should have thought twice but I just got so swept up."
Jolley had been told to lose weight after medical complications left her in a wheelchair. She raised £2,100 via GoFundMe for the accommodation, flights, and surgery.
The surgery saw 85% of her stomach removed – but she suffered from intense stomach pain, vomiting, and dehydration straight after the surgery.
Four days after the procedure, Jolley returned home to the Wirral in Merseyside where her GP recommended an immediate visit to the hospital.
A CT scan revealed that a serious leak in her stomach had led to an infection, which left a ball of ‘concretised pud’ inside of her.
She then underwent emergency life-saving surgery in January last year which involved three doctors ‘jet-washing’ the inside of her stomach.
Since the operation, Jolley has been using a feeding tube to eat and was told that she may never eat solid food again.
However, she received a pioneering operation this week to build her a new stomach. The surgeons also released her colon, liver and spleen which were stuck and out of position.
"I know that it won’t correct everything and it won’t be a cure, but I will be able to eat again," she says.
"I will be able to go out with friends, to have a life. I feel misled and upset that something that was meant to help has caused me so much suffering.
"I lost four stone in four weeks because my stomach was so tiny. I wanted to lose eight stone within two years. I've had to have a feeding tube to help but everything is so painful."
Jolley wants to celebrate her new stomach by eating her favourite dish of garlic mushrooms and cheese.
After not being able to eat solid foods for over two years, Jolley now weighs 11.5st and went from a size 24 to a size 18.
Professor Rishi Singhal, who performed the stomach restoring surgery, said that Jolley’s stomach was "like cutting through concrete".
"This is normally routine surgery but because of the state of her insides, on a scale of one to 10, this is an 11,” he added. "Surgeons elsewhere in the NHS have declined to do it.
"We have to try to avoid the septic mass – if we cut into it, then she could become septic very quickly and die."
According to the British Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Society (BOMSS), around 5,000 Brits travel abroad for weight loss surgery each year, while 4,500 have it on the NHS.
Additional reporting by SWNS.
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