Here's the deal: Women can decide to do whatever they want with their bodies, whether that's losing weight, gaining weight or becoming a mutant lizard monster. Well, that last one might be illegal, actually.
Point is, Mary Maxwell, a 24-year-old woman from Portland, Maine, decided to go the route of gastric bypass surgery, an operation used to treat obesity. She lost 165 pounds after surgery.
Now, she's running a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for another operation -- one to remove all the excess skin the first surgery left behind.
On her campaign page, Mary explained she was driven to the surgery in 2011 after she fell into a depression and food addiction over the death of her father. She described most of her family as "morbidly obese," and she feared she was headed down a similar path.
She wrote,
I had decided at this point that it was time for me to stop the silly diets and binge eating and take control of my health and most importantly my life.
However, the surgery was no easy fix. Mary faced several complications following her original surgery and is now left with folds of skin she described as "not only a continuing and painful reminder of who I [used] to be, [but] actually physically painful."
Mary's not sure if she will ever be able to afford the second surgery for her skin removal, but she is fundraising to try. Until then, she wrote,
I wear my extra skin as a scar on my heart because I will NEVER be the woman I want to be with this lingering on my body.
Citations: Woman shed 11st 7lbs to save her life after losing several family members to obesity (Metro)
