Tracey Garner was scared when she underwent surgery on her bowel. They had found a lump near her bowel, and wanted to make sure it wasn’t a tumor.
But upon going in to check out what it was, they found that what they had thought was a lump of cancerous tissue was actually just excess fat.
When she underwent this surgery, she was around 250 pounds.
“I felt embarrassed that my lifestyle had wasted a surgeons and hospital staff time and that I had to take eight weeks off work for recovery. I felt like a total fraud.”
Tracey had been struggling with her weight since childhood, when she had her tonsils removed. Before, with her tonsillitis, she hadn’t been abl to eat much. Afterwords, she ate everything she could.
Tracey was teased growing up, but said her family was supportive.
She tried dieting over the years, but says they never worked, and that she always ended up putting on weight instead.
When she married and had children, her husband looked after her kids because she was always tired.
In 2009, she began to experience problems. First, she began experiencing stomach pain whenever she pushed on it, and it started making her sick. She went in for an appendectomy, where they discovered that her appendix had attached itself to her bowel.
Once that was removed, doctors discovered the lump.
After she was told that it was just fat, she went to get a gastric sleeve. However, the band quickly slipped, rendering it useless.
It left her “depressed and sore” and heavier than ever.
After being informed by her doctors that she would need more bowel surgery, she decided to turn things around.
She was given a medically prescribed weight loss plan, and she quit her job as a manager at a pub and became a civil servant, in order to encourage her healthier lifestyle.
Now, she’s lost over 50 pounds, and has dropped from a size 22 to a size 12. She joined a roller derby team, spends more time with her children, and loves eating healthy.
“I’m wearing clothes I had only dreamed about wearing before!” she says. “I still struggle sometimes, because in my head I’m still a size 20-22, that has been strange to deal with at times.”
