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Settling
into the driver's seat of my silver Volkswagen Golf, I reached for my seat
belt. 'Clunk, click, every trip,' I said to myself, remembering Jimmy
Savile's '70s safety campaign. Trouble
was, it wouldn't clunk or click. For me it was more of a Stre-e-e-e-tch!
Yanking
at the black belt again and again, try as I might, it was no use.
I'd used up every last millimetre of slack. There was no more
belt available to tug on. I was finally too fat to wear the seatbelt in my own car! How humiliating. The shame! Other than move to America, where I reckoned they must have giant seatbelts for some of the super-sized people I'd seen on TV, I didn't know what
to do.
I was 39 and 23st. This was big by anyone's standards,
but massive for someone of 5ft 4in, And it meant my dress size was now a
whopping 28.
But it hadn't always been that way... Thirteen years earlier, aged 26, I'd walked up the aisle in a size-12 ivory-and-gold
silk dress.
During my marriage I tried to cook healthy meals.
But working full-time as a carer for vulnerable adults, somewhere along
the line, it all went horribly wrong. My job made it easy to slip
into bad ways. Tired from my shift, I'd often pick up ready meals
or a takeaway for me and my hubby.
But that didn't make me obese.
It was our divorce that set me on a super sized spiral. After years of draining rows, we split up for good in 2005. And, after 12 years of marriage, I found it hard adapting to life on my own again. I moved into a shared flat and' tried to get on with life.
It was hard, though, and food provided me with a welcome diversion from my loneliness.
Looking in my room, you'd never have known a single person lived there, what with the family-size packs of crisps, sweets and biscuits - and
my cupboards were stuffed full of high-calorie snacks. At the time of my divorce, I'd been 18st and a size 20.
So now, after two years
of non-stop troughing, I'd made it to 23st - too fat for my lovely car...
unless Volkswagen's accessories department sold plus-size seatbelts.
I was too ashamed to go to a local garage. Instead, I confided in
my friend, Ben Gashi, who I'd known for years and lived locally. He
was straight-talking and non-judgemental, and one of the few people I
felt comfortable enough with talking about my weight.
Ben, a
carpenter, was one of those blokes who was naturally handy. He could do anything. I can extend it using another seatbelt,'he said.
'
Will that be safe - or even legal? 'I asked. 'As long as the stitching is strong enough,' he said.
So, true to his word, he sorted it.
With
my car back on the road and my reinforced seatbelt, things didn't seem so
bad again.
That summer, my sister, Tricia, 41, asked me to join her
and her two children on holiday in Devon. She'd rented a lovely flat,
but the area was so hilly that I was constantly out of puff. 'Come
on, auntie Chris!' my nephew, Joe, six, called out as I struggled up an
incline one day. 'You go ahead!' I wheezed, wishing I'd brought my Golf.
Awful as it was to admit, my car was my lifeline. If
I could drive rather than walk, I would.
Weeks later, back home, I
was driving down the road quite happily when, suddenly, I had to brake at
a junction. But while the car stopped -1 didn't! The sheer weight of my bulk and the momentum of stopping quickly had wrenched the seat
off its fittings. 'Oh, my God!' I gasped. Would I fly through
the windscreen? But before I could go any further my stomach wedged
into the steering wheel - my own personal air bag.
Shaken, I pulled
over. The driver's seat had come loose. After years of supporting my massive backside it had finally buckled under the strain. Great -I was now so fat it wasn't just the seatbelt that was up the spout,
I'd managed to break my car! What would need fixing next time?
Would I break the suspension? Snap the chassis?
Driving home,
gingerly, I knew that I was the one who needed fixing. And I'd nee
d to take drastic action. While Ben fixed my car seat -I think he
had to weld it -I started looking into gastric band surgery. Over
the years, I'd tried and failed all the diets you could think of, even
the cabbage soup diet. As far as I was concerned, surgery was my
last chance. I was disgusted with myself... and so ashamed that I was so heavy I'd broken my car.
I contacted a plastic surgery
advisor, who suggested I have the surgery in Tunisia, where the price was
more reasonable. That didn't faze me. I liked the idea of going
far away.
'There
must be another way' Tricia said, concerned about an anaesthetic at my
weight. 'I've tried all the other methods I said. 'You know I
can never stick to a diet'
My mind was made up. And when I
told Ben, he volunteered to come with me. 'You can't go alone,' he said.
So, in August 2008, we flew to Carthage. Ben, who had a room next to mine, made sure that I had everything I needed. I couldn't have
done it without him - he was such a loyal friend.
A day later,
as I was wheeled down for the £4,000 surgery, I was terrified, but Ben was
there to reassure me. 'It's the start of your new life,' he said.
I felt tender when I woke after the operation, but I was so relieved it
was over. In the six days I spent at the clinic I lost a stone.
Back
home, my kitchen cupboards were transformed. Never mind family-size packs - with my reduced stomach size, I couldn't even eat a meal for one!
Over the next few months, I lived on smoothies
and soups, then gradually introduced small portions of solid food. As
the months passed, I knew it was the best thing I'd ever done. With
in a year I'd lost l0st -nearly half my body weight.
Although I
looked great in my new size-16 clothes, hidden beneath them I still had
the skin that had encased my 23st frame. It was like wearing a saggy
fat suit. Skin hung from my arms and thighs, draping over my stomach like a fleshy apron.
My breasts were misshapen and I couldn't even
see my pubic area. And the skin had no tone whatsoever - it looked
like my body was made of meringue.
I'd been warned that I'd be left
with excess skin, but I never imagined it would be this bad. Looking
the way I did, a new relationship wasn't an option. I went on dates
and even got to the stage with one bloke where we started to be
physically intimate, but sex was a no-no. I just couldn't go through
with it. So, last year, I started looking into surgery to get rid of my
excess skin.
When I went for a consultation in London, my friend,
Nina, came for support. shouldn't have been surprised when the surgeon asked me to undress, but suddenly I was cripplingly self-conscious
and burst into tears. 'Do you want me to leave?' Nina asked.
I thought for a minute. 'No,' I said, finally. 'Stay'
Tm sorry,' I
said, apologising to Nina and the surgeon for what they were about to see.
But if Nina was shocked, she didn't show it And the surgeon matter-of-factly
got on with examining me
In the end, I decided to have my operation
in the clinic in Tunisia where I'd had my gastric band fitted. A French surgeon known as 'the body tailor' for his skin-reduction expertise
would operate on me. Because there were initial plans to televise my surgery for a documentary, I was given a substantial discount, paying
£10,000 instead of £25,000.
I used my savings to pay for it, and,
thankfully, the filming didn't go ahead in the end. This
time, feeling more confident, I went to Tunisia alone. It was major surgery, so I was checked into the clinic for 10 days. During
the eight-hour op they removed nearly 10ft of skin, ' weighing 2st.
This
time, when I came to, I was in a lot of pain. I had a scar from my chest to my abdomen, as well as on my arms, back and bottom. But all I could think was, 'I'm free!' - free from that apron of fat. All
that was left now was me.
It's been nine months since my surgery
and I'm now 11 stone and a size 14. I love wearing jeans -something I couldn't do for years. I still have my trusty silver Golf - and a normal-sized seatbelt!
Someone bashed into my car the other
day, so it might need fixing again. I'm just glad that it wasn't me
who broke it for once! Better still, I've fixed myself. I'm fin
ally comfortable in my own skin.
And when I next meet a bloke I like, at last I'll feel confident to take the plunge and show off the body I've worked
so hard for.
Christine, age 43, Oxfordshire
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