Botched weight loss surgery in Turkey left me with "concrete" organs and unable to eat or drink anything

Pinky Jolley, 46, travelled to Turkey for gastric sleeve surgery in November 2022, after doctors told her to slim down. But the botched weight loss procedure left Pinky in severe pain, unable to eat or drink anything, and with life-threatening sepsis.

Stick to the NHS for surgery

In a powerful video (click to play above), Pinky warns others to think twice before going abroad for weight loss surgery, advising them to stick with the NHS instead. After arriving at the clinic in Istanbul, she became concerned medics “could barely speak English” - but went ahead with the surgery to have 85 per cent of her stomach removed. But, speaking from her hospital bed, she recalls how she instantly felt that something wasn’t right.

Ball of ‘concretised pus’ from infection

After suffering from intense stomach pain, vomiting and dehydration, doctors back home in Wirral, Merseyside, carried out a CT scan which revealed a serious leak had led to an infection which left a ball of "concretised pus" inside her.

Pinky was forced to under emergency life-saving surgery last January which involved three medics “jet-washing” the inside of her stomach. She recovered but was only able to feed via a tube down her nose and throat and was told by doctors she would almost certainly never eat solid food again.

Despite the setback, surgeons at Solihull Hospital this week performed a pioneering operation to effectively build her a new stomach - meaning Pinky can celebrate being able to eat and drink again.

Cheap surgery was ‘horrible ordeal’

Pinky, who runs an online dog adoption service and is married to Paul, 44, said: "They totally botched the operation and left my insides so infected they were all hard and like concrete the doctors said. It's been a horrible ordeal I just want to be well again. Looking back it was so cheap that I really should have thought twice but I just got so swept up.”

Surgeon: ‘It was like cutting through concrete’

Lead surgeon Professor Rishi Singhal released her colon, liver and spleen which were stuck and out of position. He and his team performed a by-pass operation by creating a small pouch from the top end of her stomach and attaching it to her small bowel. Prof Singhal said dissecting her stomach was "like cutting through concrete". He added: “This is normally routine surgery but because of the state of her insides, on a scale of one to 10, this is an 11.

"Surgeons elsewhere in the NHS have declined to do it. We have to try to avoid the septic mass - if we cut into it, then she could become septic very quickly and die."