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**My husband had booked a helicopter ride as an anniversary surprise – but there was one big problem…By Nicola Mercer, 48**

As the packet of crisps dangled inches from my face, I struggled to bite back the tears.

‘Do you want these?’ my classmate sneered, swinging the bag to and fro. ‘I bet you do!’

_‘Don’t show them it bothers you, love.’_

I’d always been big. As an only child, Mum and Dad spoiled me, and never refused when I asked for cake or sweets.

Now, aged 11, I’d started secondary school, and wore a size 18-20.

It made me a target for bullies, and Mum didn’t know the best way to support me.

‘You’ve been good all week,’ she’d say when I’d made an effort to eat less junk food. ‘Why don’t we go to the chippy tonight?’

By the time I turned 16, I wore a dress size 26, and I felt devastated when my first boyfriend told me he was only going out with ‘for a dare’.

But, a couple of years later, I was on a girls’ night out, when our taxi driver, Dave, gave me his card.

‘In case you need a taxi again,’ he said.

A few weeks later, I called the number to make a booking.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to phone,’ Dave said. ‘Can I take you out?’

Dave was eight years my senior, and wasn’t bothered about my size.

But his friends didn’t want to be seen with me, and asked Dave why he wanted to go out with a fat girl.

‘If you want to go out with them without me, it’s fine,’ I said.

‘I love you, and that’s not changing,’ he said.

Still, I wanted Dave’s friends to accept me.

So, I joined Slimming World and lost a couple of stone.

But, as soon as I stopped going to the sessions, I piled the weight back on.

Then, on holiday in Jamaica, Dave proposed.

He was keen to set a date, but I kept putting it off.

‘I don’t want the hassle of a “big day”’, I said.

But in truth, I was worried about how I’d look waddling down the aisle.

When we finally married, I weighed 28 stone, and had to source my size-32 wedding dress from a specialist shop in America.

I’d eat bacon, sausage or egg on toast for breakfast, before picking up a grab bag of cheese and onion crisps, or a family-sized bar of Dairy Milk, for the train journey to work.

In the office, I’d eat a ham salad for lunch. But I’d snack on biscuits, and instead of water, I drank coke.

For tea, I ate pizza and chips, or something else fatty.

Dave loved rollercoasters. But we had to stop going to theme parks, because the bars on rides wouldn’t fit over my tummy.

When our fifth wedding anniversary rolled around, we celebrated with a holiday in the Dominican Republic.

One afternoon, Dave told me he’d booked a helicopter ride as a surprise.

Later, as we waited next to the helipad, I felt excited.

But when the pilot landed, he took one look at me and frowned.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s too big to get on.’

‘OK then,’ I said, trying to sound chirpy. ‘Thank you.’

I left Dave to sort the cancellation, while I scurried back to the hotel and burst into tears.

When we returned home to the UK, I told Dave: ‘I’m not doing this any more.’

‘I need weight-loss surgery,’ I said.

When I stepped on the scales, I was stunned to see that I’d hit 33 stone.

There was a waiting list for surgery on the NHS, and I had to undergo several interviews before I finally had gastric bypass surgery.

It created a small upper pouch in my stomach, so I could only eat tiny amounts before feeling full.

In the months that followed, the weight dropped off, and I was delighted to get down to 13st 6lb and a size 14.

But I still hadn’t tackled my bad relationship with food.

The reduced size of my stomach meant I couldn’t eat large meals.

But I could graze, and I found myself constantly eating small meals and snacks.

I panicked and told Dave: ‘I can’t go back to the size I was.’

So, I joined a slimming group called Beeweighed, and the regular weigh-ins and talks helped me to stay on track.

At my home in Cheshire, I cooked healthy meals from scratch, and stopped buying sharing bags of treats.

I downloaded the ‘nutricheck’ app to keep an eye on what — and how much — I’d eaten each day.

In time, I started my own Beeweighed slimming group.

Now, I weigh 15 stone and my aim is to get to 13st 6lb.

I’ve accepted that there are no quick fixes, and it’s about lifestyle changes.

I never want to feel anything like my ‘helicopter shame’ again!  
  
\*For more information, visit beeweighed.co.uk

My Helicopter Shame… I wanted to take to the sky, but there was one big problem

### One jump on a trampoline at 30 cost me my leg, but I would eventually bounce back… By Nancy Harris, 57

I stood in the sports hall and listened to the instructor.

‘Right, Nancy,’ he said to me. ‘You’re next.’

I worked as a secondary-school PE teacher, and I was on a course to renew my qualification to teach trampolining.

It was something I’d done loads of times before, so I wasn’t worried as I climbed up on to the trampoline and began to go through a practice routine, which included lots of difficult moves.

But as I performed one move, something went wrong, and as I accidentally landed straight down on my right leg, pain shot through my knee.

There were gasps as I crumpled face-first on to the trampoline.

'Nancy, are you OK?' the instructor asked. ‘Can you sit up?’  
  
But I was in such agony, I could barely speak, let alone move.

An ambulance was called and I was rushed to the nearest hospital for an X-ray.

'You've broken your tibial plateau, which is your knee joint,’ the doctor told me.

'I don't understand. How could I have broken it?' I asked. 'I didn't fall off the trampoline or hit my leg.’

'We suspect the impact of landing straight down on your leg caused the bones to compress and break,’ he explained.

He told me I’d need an operation the following day, so I called my husband who was expecting me home for dinner.

After the operation to realign the joint, I was discharged with my leg in plaster. We lived in a second-floor flat, so the next weeks were challenging.

It was frustrating to go from being a fit and active 30-year-old, to needing help getting showered and dressed.

My husband and I had only married 10 weeks earlier, so it wasn’t the start to married life I was after either.

But while I knew it was going to take time for my knee to heal, months passed with no improvement and I knew something wasn’t right.

I developed drop foot, which meant I had difficulty lifting the front of my foot, and then osteomyelitis — a swelling of the bones caused by an infection.

As a result, I had 14 operations over 18 months, but none of them worked.

My leg just got weaker and weaker, until eventually I went for a second opinion at another hospital.

‘Your lower leg has died,’ the consultant there told me. ‘You've got two choices. Either we can break all the bones in your leg, try a brace and see if that stretches them out. Or we can amputate from above the knee.’

I was speechless. How had landing awkwardly on a trampoline led to this?

After discussing it with my family, I decided to go for the amputation.

It sounded drastic, but I was fed up of being in pain and I missed doing sport and teaching PE.

After the operation, I learnt to use a prosthetic.

Six months later, I went back to work, but it wasn’t the same.

The pupils were rehearsing for a summer term dance show and I was struggling to demonstrate the choreography.

'I can't do it,' I told my husband, in tears one night.

After struggling through to the end of term, I left and focused on starting a family with my husband instead.

It was something I’d always wanted and my accident had put it on hold.

But while being a mum gave me back my purpose, I was still struggling.

While I could play with him on the floor, I couldn't carry him or chase after him.

When we were out, I’d hide my prosthetic under long skirts, and use the pram as a shield to stop people staring at me.

The pregnancy and being less active meant I’d also put on three stone, which made me even more self-conscious.

And I continued to pile on the pounds after falling pregnant again.

After my daughter arrived, I was talking to a friend about my weight and she said: ‘How about swimming? There are some postnatal classes at the leisure centre. We could go together.’

'I’ve got to do something,’ I said. ‘Let’s give it a go.’

My heart was pounding as we arrived for our first class. I couldn’t use my crutches poolside, so I had to shuffle from the changing room and through the footbath on my bum.

'I'll just climb over you then,’ another swimmer huffed, pushing past me.

In that moment, I felt at the bottom of the heap and I wanted to go home.

The class itself was no less daunting. I was the only disabled mum and I could sense the others looking at me in my swimming costume.

After that, I forced myself to go every now and then, but gave up when it didn’t help with either my confidence or my weight.

As my kids grew into teenagers, I made sure to constantly tell them: ‘You are beautiful. You are not scared. You can do anything.’

But I knew I wasn’t living by those mantras myself.

Finally, as I approached 50 and split from my husband, I finally sought help.

I had some therapy and, from there, I began making some radical lifestyle changes.

Firstly, I joined a gym and successfully managed to lose three stone.

I swapped my long, floaty dresses for short, tight-fitting clothes that showed my leg, and I quit dying my hair and embraced being grey.

By then, I’d also had to start wearing hearing aids, but instead of hiding them, I got one that was bright red and another that was bright silver.

'You look amazing, Nancy!' my friend said, when she saw my transformation.

And finally, I’d started to feel it too.

When I found a wheelchair tennis group near to where I lived in Bedfordshire, I joined it.

And while I wasn't great at it, they were a lovely organisation, and they’d send a newsletter with opportunities for disabled people.

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