A man who dropped 21 stone after weight loss surgery now feels like he’s trapped in an “80-year-old’s body” as it left him with 3st of excess skin that the hospital refused to remove.
Wayne Shepherd, 40, previously weighed 35st 7lb (226.8kg), but “wishes” he never went under the knife to drop those excess pounds.
Now, he lugs around 3st of extra skin and says he will need to fork out a whopping £30,000 for private treatment to get rid of it.
It comes after local health chiefs ruled that his case was not “exceptional” enough to fund the operation.
The comfort eater said he struggled with his weight “since birth” and had spent the majority of his 20s and 30s “yo-yo dieting” amid a “toxic relationship” with food.
He said: “I went through a toxic relationship, that didn’t help, and I just had a very unhealthy relationship with food. It was my comfort, it was my go-to, it was my guilt.”
“I never had massive meals. But I would constantly eat throughout the day. I would be eating and eating. It was an ongoing battle. It lasted for years.”
The Cambridge man is classed as disabled and said he even spent a year out of school after being bullied about his size.
He later became so heavy that he was forced to use a mobility scooter to get from place to place.
That was until he finally went under the knife and had 80 percent of his stomach removed to reduce overall consumption in a procedure known as gastrectomy surgery.
The operation at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth, last June shrank him down to 14.3st (91.2kg) in a staggering transformation.
He was first given the advice to seek out the surgery four years ago and eventually passed through a three-tier process.
But he claims he was promised by his consultant that the excess skin left behind would be removed later.
Shepherd said: “It was something that I knew was going to affect me big time. So before I said: ‘I really want this operation, but I need the skin removal.
“The consultant said: ‘Yes, I am also a plastic surgeon. I will deal with that for you.’”
But the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough integrated care system has now said they would not fund the operation to remove it as he had not demonstrated any “evidence of exceptionality”, it wrote in a letter to his doctor.
Shepherd said: “I’m a 40-year-old in an 80-year-old’s body because of the way I’m so wrinkly.
“I wish I hadn’t gone through the procedure. It may be wrong to say as my health is amazing compared to what it was – I was in a mobility scooter, now I can walk fine.
“But I’ve gone from one problem to another. It’s mentality debilitating. I can feel the skin creasing up. It’s a horrible feeling.”
Shepherd was still grateful to the NHS for providing the treatment, but urged them to offer a“full package” and more information ahead of similar surgeries.
He said: “I’m massively grateful to the NHS. They have changed my life.
“It’s great that they do this type of thing, but as for the full package, they need to look at that a lot more. There are a lot of people that have the same problem.”
“If I was told that from the start, I would have had better knowledge and understanding.”
A spokesperson for NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough said: “Whilst it would not be right to comment on individual cases, body contouring procedures are not routinely funded by the NHS in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.
“Exceptional funding may be considered in some circumstances where specific conditions are met, in line with our Exceptional and Individual Funding Request policy.”
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