At 300 kg, Vasai resident Amita Rajani never thought she would be able to get back to normal life. But four years and two bariatric surgeries later, the 42-year-old now weighs just 86 kg. Bariatric surgeon Dr. Shashank Shah, who operated on Ms. Rajani, claims that she was Asia’s heaviest woman before undergoing weight loss surgeries. Dr. Shah said that Ms. Rajani’s obesity was result of genetic, metabolic and hormonal factors.
At an interaction with the press on Wednesday, Ms. Rajani said, “I was bedridden for nearly eight years. At that time, the simple task of taking a bath would involve two caretakers helping me to get to the bathroom. The entire process of just getting to the bathroom and back would take nearly 50 minutes.” When Ms. Rajani was born in 1973, she weighed 3.5 kg. She said she began gaining weight after she turned six. By the time she was in college pursuing her Bachelor’s degree, she weighed 160 kg. After college, she started working with her mother in their soft toys manufacturing factory. “It was after I turned 27 that it became extremely challenging for me to go about my daily chores.” Ms. Rajani said she became completely bedridden at the age of 32. In the following years, she spent nearly ₹20 lakh on weight loss programmes, gymnasiums, consultations with dieticians, slimming pills and liquid diets. However, nothing worked.
It was in 2015 that she finally underwent her first weight loss procedure at Dr. Shah’s hospital in Pune. The laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy involved surgical removal of two-thirds of the left side of her stomach. Dr. Shah said, “We got a special six-foot-long sofa made for her. Eighteen people helped her sit on the sofa and then they lifted it. The sofa was placed in a tempo which was also equipped with medical emergency equipment.”
Two years after the first surgery, Ms. Rajani lost 130 kg. Dr. Shah said, “Her breathing had improved and she no longer required oxygen support. Her kidney function also improved and her sugar levels had become normal.” Dr. Shah then scheduled her second surgery in 2017. The second procedure was a gastric bypass to further reduce the size of her stomach and connect it to the intestine so that food directly got mixed with the digestive juices. During the second surgery, Dr. Shah also carried out an abdominoplasty to remove excess, bulging skin from the abdomen.
‘I don’t get tempted’
Dr. Shah said that both procedures involved high risks such as suffering severe bleeding and contracting infections. “I prepared myself for the surgery because nothing else had worked for me,” said Ms. Rajani, adding that her diet now comprises just 15% of what she consumed earlier. “I would eat one whole bar of chocolate earlier. Now, even if you keep sweets in front of me, I don’t get tempted,” said Ms. Rajani, who now goes for walks and works out regularly. Dr. Shah aims to enter the case in the Limca Book of Records.
