Weight-loss surgery saw her go from 130kg to 76kg and beat Type 2 diabetes – she had 80 per cent of her stomach removed
- Worried she would not live long enough to see her two daughters grow up, Rahimah Asmawi underwent gastric sleeve surgery, a type of bariatric surgery, in 2018
- The Singaporean Malay, who lives in Australia, is now 54kg lighter, no longer diabetic, eats more healthily and is a regular gym-goer
Rahimah Asmawi realised that if she did not do something to tackle her obesity she might not live long enough to watch her two daughters grow up.
In May 2016, the then 33-year-old Singaporean Malay, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, topped the scales at 130kg (286lbs). That year, while pregnant with her second daughter, she developed Type 2 diabetes and required insulin injections. Six months later she developed hypertension.
“If I keep going, what else am I going to get?” she recalls asking herself, and thinking that she could not see herself living beyond 40 if something did not change.
A reality check in 2017 prompted her to make a huge decision. In her job as a medical scientist specialising in sleep disorders at the time, she saw two patients, both 40 years old. One looked healthy. The other, an overweight diabetic with hypertension taking the same medications as Asmawi was, looked unwell. “I got a glimpse of what my future would be like,” she says.
When her endocrinologist proposed gastric sleeve surgery – not for the first time – and suggested that the operation could also rid her of diabetes as her diagnosis was still in its early years, she answered: “Get the ball rolling.”
