The ordeal of obesity: 'I spent two years shut away at home, smoking, eating... waiting to die'

It was 2017 and Rosa Gómez Osorio, from Madrid and now 62, had already "thrown in the towel". Trapped inside her home, her 140-kilo body had made her so ill that she had reached the point where she wanted to die. Around 17 per cent of the population suffers from obesity, a chronic disease associated with around 200 health conditions.

Rosa says she was a slim child whose mother had to tell her off to make her eat. At 22, she became pregnant and gained 20 kilos, which she never managed to lose. Her weight rose from 60 to 80 kilos.

She no longer looked the same in the mirror, "but at least I didn't have any health problems". Those problems emerged when she passed the 90-kilo mark, around the same time that she and her husband moved from Madrid to a tiny village in Guadalajara with just 30 inhabitants.

"The first thing I noticed was that I was finding it hard to breathe and that my knees were hurting terribly, even when I was sitting down. It was as if they were coming out of joint."

Rosa was already in the middle of a rapid increase in weight, with the numbers on the scales rising week by week.

"I had to stop driving because my tummy was pressing against the steering wheel, and I developed cataracts that left me blind in one eye and with 30 per cent vision in the other. I suffered from asthma and chronic bronchitis, and my blood pressure was through the roof. The doctor had to put a tablet under my tongue to control it.

"At the hospital, they told me that all these conditions, which I'd never had before, were a result of obesity, including the ovarian cyst I had surgery for. They would give me a leaflet with a 1,200-kilocalorie-a-day diet. I stuck to it on the first day. The next day, I broke it."

She couldn't stick to a diet because her hunger was emotional.

"I'd buy two loaves of bread and eat them whole. I didn't even bother putting anything inside them. And if I cooked lentils, I'd add loads of fat. The more I ate, the hungrier I felt." And the more weight she put on.

Rosa says there came a point when she stopped leaving the house.

"I couldn't even go out to put the rubbish out because just trying to put on my coat left me gasping for breath."

She has lost count of how many times her husband urged her to go to A&E: "I always told him to get lost."

Her depression was so severe that she had no hope of getting better.

"I took all the mirrors out of the house, stopped seeing people..."

At Christmas 2017, she again avoided family celebrations, which she had not attended for some time.

"I wrote a message to my family and they said it sounded like a farewell. Maybe it was, maybe I was saying goodbye because I thought I was going to die."

Alarmed by the message, one of her sisters video-called her.

"When she saw how I looked, she was alarmed. She said to me, 'I'm coming to get you tomorrow.'"

Reluctantly, Rosa went to hospital with her.

"I went round, one by one, to see all the specialists: the respiratory specialist, the nephrologist, the gynaecologist..."

Rosa's body was sending out SOS signals. She was then put on the waiting list for bariatric surgery.

"I had the operation in 2019 and had to get down to 120 kilos for the procedure."

She lost another 20 kilos after the operation. Finally, she reached the 100-kilo mark she had become so obsessed with.

"I dreamed of weighing 99."

But events unfolded in the opposite way.

"The pandemic hit and my check-ups were cancelled. I put on ten kilos in no time."

She lost the weight again after being prescribed Ozempic.

"I had the injections for three months, but there was a shortage and without the treatment, it didn't take long for me to put the weight back on."

Once again, she suffered a severe bout of depression.

Then came an invitation.

"The photographer Gisela Pretel had taken some photographs of me for an exhibition and I was invited to the obesity conference being held in Malaga."

That May, a doctor named Cristina Pettrati approached her at the conference after being struck by the photographs.

"But what's the matter?" she asked me.

"They won't prescribe me Ozempic because it's not available in pharmacies."

"Well, you need it."

Rosa didn't know it yet, but that was the moment she began to get better.

"Cristina sent me to therapy, gave me an exercise programme with weights, squats and climbing stairs, and prescribed the famous GLP-1 drugs."

Rosa calls the cost of the treatment "the Ozempic bill" because it represents a monthly expense.

"I started with Ozempic because it was cheaper, at 120 euros. But now I'm on Wegovy. It's been as much as 270 euros a month, but then they brought it down to 224.

"I inject myself in the stomach and thighs once a week, and I make the amount for one month last a month and a half so I can afford it."

That is why she is losing weight slowly.

"I've been doing it for a year and I weigh 98 kilos. The doctor has set a target of 90, although I'd like to get down to 80."

Beyond the numbers, Rosa has already noticed the effects of her slow but steady weight loss.

"I'm breathing easily and my knees don't hurt any more. My blood pressure is better, although I'm still on medication. I'm only taking half the medication for depression and soon they'll take me off the cholesterol medication."

The psychologist has discharged her after Rosa realised that the hunger she felt "was, in fact, anxiety", meaning she no longer needs anyone to keep an eye on her while she eats.

"I put two chicken thighs in the air fryer and they taste absolutely divine. I used to eat eight and still wouldn't feel full, even if I spread a whole loaf of bread."

She knows things are going well because the scales tell her so... and so does her mind.

"I'm happy," she says.