A mother has warned about the dangers of “quick fix” weight loss injections after being hospitalized with possible organ damage.
In an attempt to shed a few pounds to impress business clients, Kerry Boland purchased a month-long treatment of a slimming drug from a beauty specialist who is also a registered nurse.
The 34-year-old woman began suffering agonizing headaches hours after injecting the first dose into her abdomen and was found collapsed in the bathroom two days later by her eight-year-old daughter.
The family of medications known as semaglutides, or GLP-1 RA, were originally developed to treat diabetes, but are now often used for weight loss as they have been found to suppress a patient’s appetite.
Ms Boland, from Denton in Greater Manchester, who was only a size 12-14, paid £150 for the beatings.
In a bid to shed a few pounds to impress business clients, Kerry Boland purchased a month-long treatment of a slimming drug from a beauty specialist who is also a registered nurse.
Kerry was left with excruciating headaches and unable to eat or sleep after taking her first dose of the weight-loss jab.
Kerry was found collapsed in the bathroom by her daughter Isobel, who was eight years old at the time.
Recalling his ordeal, he said: “I wasn’t big, but my brain was telling me I was like Bruce Bogtrotter.”
‘I just wasn’t feeling very well and wanted a quick fix. Since I’m a busy mom, I couldn’t be bothered to go to the gym.
“I had seen other people get good results with (weight-loss injections) and I just thought, ‘Well, if it works for them, why not for me?’
‘I was about to have a photo shoot for my business. I was pretty new to business at the time and had the image that you had to be a “powerful and thin” woman to be taken seriously.
“When I think about it, it’s absolutely crazy, but that was the chapter of my life I was in.
‘Two hours after taking it, I fell unconscious. I drove to my sister’s house to visit her, but I couldn’t get off the couch. I couldn’t lift my head, I felt like I had a stone on my shoulder and I had very bad headaches.’
For the next two days, the 5ft 3in Mrs Boland remained bedridden in “absolute agony”, with extreme stomach cramps.
She felt bad but nothing came out and she couldn’t eat more than a bite of banana, leaving her very weak.
Kerry was rushed to hospital by her gas engineer partner Matt Myerscough, 35.
Mother-of-three Kerry warns others about the possible dangers of weight loss shocks after suffering agonizing pain and possible damage to her organs.
Injections designed to treat type 2 diabetes have become popular weight-loss medications after they were found to suppress a patient’s appetite.
She said: “I can’t even describe the pain, I was just tossing and turning in bed.” It was absolutely horrible.
“I was doubled over, it was like someone was kicking me in the stomach and I had constant diarrhea.
‘I walked like the hunchback of Notre Dame because I couldn’t stand upright.
‘My friend told me, “You have to keep eating,” but that made me feel worse. He would eat one bite of banana at a time and it would take me hours. I was up all night every hour in the bathroom.
Two days after injecting the drug, the mother of three collapsed in the bathroom and was shaken awake by her frightened daughter Isobel, then just eight years old.
Boland, founder and chief executive of business advice firm Growth Coaching Collective, had to be lifted off the ground by her gas engineer partner Matt Myerscough, 35.
She was rushed to Wythenshawe Hospital in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, where doctors hooked her up to an intravenous drip to give her painkillers and fluids.
She said: “I remember leaning over the toilet trying to make myself sick because the pain was so bad and then collapsing on the bathroom floor.
“I was outside for a few minutes and then I remember my daughter Isobel touched me and said, ‘Mom, are you okay?’
‘I don’t think I was unconscious for long, I was just very weak. I screamed for my partner and he took me to the hospital. They put me on a drip for 15 hours.’
Now Ms Boland fears she may have caused permanent damage to her organs and is sharing her terrifying experience from June 2022 to warn others against using “quick fix” products.
She said: ‘The doctors couldn’t take blood from me, I was so dehydrated. They put me on a drip and then gave me painkillers through the drip because she was in a lot of pain.
Semaglutide injections work by causing the body to produce a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 that is released naturally from the intestines after meals.
“It was really scary, I just thought, ‘What have I done?’
‘I was worried about damaging my organs, especially after reading horror stories online. I worried: ‘My God, how long will I be in this state?’ because I couldn’t stand the pain.’
A shaken Mrs Boland was discharged the following night and slowly began to reintroduce small portions of food.
She said: ‘It was a couple of days before I felt like myself again. Little by little I began to introduce small portions of food, it was nothing like what I normally ate.
‘I felt so much better after being rehydrated, but I was still taking painkillers. My partner came home and threw everything in the trash.
Ms Boland now works with a nutritionist and hormone trainer and weight trains five times a week at the gym to achieve her fitness goals.
She said: “I don’t recommend bumps at all, my advice would be to stay away from them.”
‘There is no quick fix for putting on a dress because you always end up wearing it again. I don’t think it’s about the number on the scale, it’s about how I feel.
“Success is not achieved overnight, but the Internet wants us to believe otherwise and I think that is the problem.”
NHS data shows that 26 per cent of adults in England are obese and a further 38 per cent are overweight.
Obesity also takes a huge financial toll on the UK, with years of lost work, NHS care and treatment costs costing the economy approximately £100 billion a year.
Experts have pointed to a lack of exercise and poor diets high in ultra-processed foods as key factors in the UK’s obesity epidemic.
Semaglutide injections Ozempic and Rybelsus are currently only available on the NHS as a treatment to control blood glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetes.
Ozempic’s spectacular slimming effects led doctors and pharmacists to distribute it “off-label” to people who wanted to lose weight.
However, officials urged against it due to supply issues.