Sunderland Echo features Spire Leeds Hospital
The north-east newspaper the Sunderland Echo recently featured an article on a patient who underwent gastric bypass surgery at Spire Leeds Hospital. The article, published on 26 February, reads as follows:
Heather's £13k transformation
A desperate 29-stone mum spent her life savings on weight-loss surgery after doctors told her she would die within a year.
Heather Straughan, 38, from Houghton, who suffered from a long-term eating disorder, was forced to fork out £13,000 on the life-saving gastric bypass op.
The mum of two was diagnosed with diabetes-related complications and forced to quit her job as a nursing home care assistant as she struggled with her size.
Heather had joined slimming classes, attempted dozens of diets and even had her jaw wired in a bid to slim down, but nothing worked.
In the end, doctors warned her she could die unless she lost a huge amount of weight.
I wouldn't be here today without the operation, it's as simple as that," she said. "It was either spend the money I'd saved all my life or die."
Today, just two years later, she has shrunk from 29st 10lbs to a slimline 16st 11lb - a loss of more than 13 stone - thanks to the surgery at the private Spire Leeds Hospital.
Heather, who lost her baby son to meningitis in 1999, said she decided to go ahead with the operation for the sake of her two sons - Bradley, 22, and Jabez, 11.
"We'd already been through so much," she said. "I'd had an eating disorder since I was young, but my marriage had ended recently and I was suffering from depression. I had tried pretty much everything to lose weight and it wasn't working.
"The doctors at Sunderland Royal had given me two years to live if I didn't lose weight, but the doctors at Leeds said it could be about a year.
"I felt truly desperate, abandoned. I couldn't understand why this operation wasn't available on the NHS. I was going to die without it. In the end, I had to do it for my family. What's £13,000 when your children are facing life without a mother?"
Although awaiting minor follow-up surgery, Heather, now 40, said her life has been transformed by Stephen Pollard, who carried out the operation. Today, her life expectancy is 25 to 30 years and she is preparing to return to work.
"I would be dead if it wasn't for him, he's my hero," she said.
"But all the staff at the hospital were amazing - I couldn't fault them. They were helpful, genuine and if you had any worries they were there.
"Within weeks of the operation I was starting to live again, walking my two dogs Ollie and Nell. My sons didn't recognise me. Even the simplest of things that most people take for granted, like doing the housework or climbing the stairs, I can now do. I even wore a pair of jeans for the first time in 20 years the other day."
Gastric bypass surgery involves the surgeon using the upper part of the stomach to create a pouch. A section of small intestine is bypassed and the remaining, shorter small intestine is re-connected to the pouch.
The result is that food bypasses part of the digestive system and is
less-easily absorbed into the body.
For further information on our weight loss surgery services, including price quotations
email us or call 0113 218 5977.
Visit our treatment summary pages on
gastric bypass and
gastric banding for more details on the weight-loss operations we perform at Spire Leeds Hospital.
