A mum has warned of the dangers of ‘quick fix’ weight-loss jabs after she was hospitalised with possible organ damage.
In a bid to shed a few pounds to impress business clients, Kerry Boland bought a month-long course of a slimming drug from a beauty specialist who is also a registered nurse.
The 34-year-old started suffering agonising 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 drugs known as semaglutides, or GLP-1 RAs, were originally developed to treat diabetes but are now often used for weight loss as they were found to suppress a patient’s appetite.
Ms Boland, from Denton in Greater Manchester, who was only a dress size 12-14, paid £150 for the jabs.
In a bid to shed a few pounds to impress business clients, Kerry Boland bought a month-long course of a slimming drug from a beauty specialist who is also a registered nurse
Kerry was left with unbearable headaches and unable to eat or sleep after taking her first dose of the weight-loss jab
Kerry was discovered collapsed in the bathroom by her daughter Isobel, who was eight at the time
Recalling her ordeal, she said: ‘I wasn’t big but my brain was telling me I was like Bruce Bogtrotter.
‘I just didn’t feel great and I wanted a quick fix. Being a busy mum, I couldn’t be bothered with going to the gym.
‘I’d seen other people getting good results from [weight-loss jabs] and I just thought, ‘Well if it works for them, why not for me?’
‘I was about to have a photoshoot for my business. I was quite new to business at the time and I had this image of how you had to be this ‘powerhouse slim’ woman in order to be taken seriously.
‘When I think back to it, it’s absolutely barmy, but that was the chapter of my life I was in.
‘Within two hours of taking it, I was zonked out. I drove to my sister’s to visit, but I couldn’t get off the sofa. I couldn’t lift my head up, it felt like a boulder on my shoulder, and I had really bad headaches.’
For the next two days, 5ft 3in Ms Boland was left bedbound in ‘absolute agony’, with extreme stomach cramps.
She felt sick but nothing would come up and she couldn’t eat more than one bite of banana, leaving her very weak.
Kerry was rushed to hospital by her gas engineer partner Matt Myerscough, 35
Mum-of-three Kerry is warning others about the possible dangers of weight-loss jabs after she suffered agonising pain and possible organ damage
Jabs designed to treat type-2 diabetes have become popular weight-loss drugs after they were found to suppress a patient’s appetite
She said: ‘I can’t even describe the pain, I was just rolling around on the bed. It was absolutely horrendous.
‘I was doubled over, it was like someone was kicking me in the stomach, and I had constant diarrhoea.
‘I was walking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame because I couldn’t stand up straight.
‘My friend said, “You need to keep eating”, but it just made me feel worse. I’d eat one bite of a banana at a time and it would take me hours. I was up all night every hour on the toilet.’
Two days after injecting the drug, the mum-of-three collapsed in the bathroom and was shaken awake by her scared daughter Isobel, who was then just eight years old.
Ms Boland, the founder and CEO of business coaching firm the Growth Coaching Collective, had to be scooped off the floor by her gas engineer partner Matt Myerscough, 35.
He raced her to Wythenshawe Hospital in Wythenshawe, Greater Manchester, where doctors hooked her up to an IV drip to administer painkillers and fluids.
She said: ‘I remember being bent over the toilet trying to make myself sick because the pain was that bad and then I collapsed on the bathroom floor.
‘I was gone for a few minutes and then I remember my daughter Isobel touching me and saying, “Mum, are you ok?”
‘I don’t think I was out cold for a long time, I was just so weak. She shouted for my partner and he took me to hospital. They put me on a drip for 15 hours.’
Now Ms Boland fears she could have caused permanent damage to her organs and is sharing her terrifying experience from June 2022 to warn others against using the ‘quick-fix’ products.
She said: ‘The doctors couldn’t get any blood out, I was that dehydrated. They put me on a drip and then put me on painkillers through the drip because I was in that much pain.
Semaglutide injections work by triggering the body to produce a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 that is released naturally from the intestines after meals
‘It was really frightening, I just thought, ‘What have I done?’
‘I was worried about damaging my organs, especially after reading horror stories online. I did worry, ‘Oh my God how long am I going to be in this state?’ because I couldn’t take the pain.’
A shaken Ms Boland was discharged the following evening and slowly started reintroducing small portions of food.
She said: ‘It was a couple of days before I felt myself again. I slowly started introducing small portions of food, it was nothing like what I would normally shovel in.
‘I felt tons better after being rehydrated but I was still on painkillers. My partner came home and binned the lot.’
Now, Ms Boland is working with a nutritionist and hormone coach and is weight training five times a week in the gym to achieve her fitness goals.
She said: ‘I don’t recommend the jabs at all, my advice would be don’t go near them.
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‘The quick fix to get into a dress doesn’t exist because you always end up putting it back on. I don’t think it is about the number on the scale, it’s how I feel.
‘Success doesn’t happen overnight but the internet would have us believe otherwise and I think that’s the problem.’
NHS data shows 26 per cent of adults in England are obese and a further 38 per cent are overweight.
Obesity also takes a massive financial toll in the UK, with lost working years, care costs and NHS treatment costing the economy an estimated £100billion per year.
Experts have pointed to a lack of exercise, and poor diets high in ultra-processed food, as being key drivers in the UK’s obesity epidemic.
Semaglutide jabs Ozempic and Rybelsus are currently only available on the NHS as a treatment for managing blood glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetes.
Ozempic’s dramatic slimming effects saw doctors and pharmacists dish it out ‘off-label’ for people wanting to lose weight.
However, officials urged against doing so because of supply issues.