A Scottish mother, Rosie Ritchie, has issued a cautionary tale about weight loss surgery after a disconcerting experience in Turkey.
Rosie, 24, underwent a £3k gastric sleeve operation with a cosmetic surgery provider, detailing unsanitary conditions with blood-covered walls and being restrained on an operating table.
Post-surgery, Rosie woke up to find her stomach in a bag beside her, left unrefrigerated for three days in a hot room until it grew moldy, prompting her to dispose of it herself.
”I looked in one of the rooms downstairs and there was a huge jar filled with the fat they remove from liposuctions. The room was covered with blood, all over the walls and the floor. It looked like a massacre.
“That’s when I fully started to panic. I wanted to go home. They put me in the theatre, and the surgical team were speaking Turkish, so I couldn’t understand a word of it. They didn’t say anything to me.
“They asked me to lie down, and they strapped my ankles and wrists down to the bed while one of the women just stroked my face. I was asking for someone to please tell me what was happening – but they couldn’t understand me, and I couldn’t understand them. I thought I was going to die.”
Weighing 26 stone and prompted by her GP’s warning about potential health risks, Rosie sought the surgery as a last resort after extensive research on the company’s positive reviews.
She added: ”I woke up and looked to my side – and there was a bag next to me that looked like it was filled with chicken breast on top of mince. They said it was my stomach, and they had to keep it for 72 hours in case something went wrong, and they had to put it back in.
“It wasn’t refrigerated – it was in a bag, in a roasting hot room. The thing was growing mould by day three.”
She said: ”I’d gone to my GP, and they had said that if I didn’t lose weight, I wouldn’t make it to the age of 30. I looked online and did research on a lot of different companies, and the different kinds of weight loss surgeries available.
Despite complications and the discovery of a hernia during surgery, she flew back to the UK but encountered severe issues six weeks later, leading to multiple A&E visits and ongoing complications.
Rosie, having lost 13.5 stone, advises against medical procedures abroad, emphasizing the risks and urging people to opt for surgeries in the UK.
“I decided to get a gastric sleeve, where they cut out most of your stomach to reduce the size, as I needed something to stop me from binge eating. But I would’ve died of sepsis if they’d tried to put that thing back in my body.
“I had to move it to the corner of the room, so I didn’t have to look at it, and I eventually put it in the bin – it was traumatising. They were supposed to give me antibiotics after surgery, but because I’m allergic to penicillin, they didn’t give me anything.
“They didn’t even give me any painkillers after the surgery. I asked for all of their certificates and saw a lot of good reviews. I did really look into them.”