A British Teen’s Cry for Help

Georgia Davis is only seventeen but she is forty stone, 566lbs, the equivalent of four super-lightweight boxers.  This British teenager first came into the news about two and half years ago when The Sun featured an article on her condition. At that time she was 33 stone and was warned by her doctors of impending death if she did not lose weight.

She, then, had the opportunity to work on her problem at a £3,600 US weight loss camp, Wellspring in North Carolina. A healthy diet of low-fat foods like salads, bagels, yoghurt and buffalo meat and an exercise regimen that included sports like tennis and basketball and workouts in the gym caused a dramatic loss in her weight and she returned home after nine months at sixteen years, a mere 18 stone.

This was an achievement indeed, but unfortunately everything began to be undone right on her first day back. Her mother, a heart patient whom Georgia had taken care of from an early age,   refused to cook healthy food. Soon, it was fish and chips again, and along with it loaves of bread, crisps, cakes, chocolates and biscuits washed down by innumerable bottles of Coke with absolutely no exercise as visits to the gym were expensive in her home town Aberdare, South Wales. With no long-term follow up plan from Wellspring or the NHS Georgia was left on her own.

And now, at size 36, she knows her weight only by standing on a weighbridge designed for industrial materials, as she has out-weighed every NHS scale at her local hospital.

Georgia’s tragedy is she took on the responsibility as a registered carer in looking after her mother, a heart patient, at the age of ten. This kept her confined to her home with no opportunity of pursuing activities that young people of her age would be interested in.  

The only future that Georgia faces at this stage is death by the time she becomes twenty. Before that happens, her weight along with her smoking habit will systematically break down her health as each organ starts to fail.

Advertisement

Emma Morton, the editor of Health and Science says, “In the eyes of the law, Georgia is still a child. If her parents cannot help her, she must be taken out of her family home by Social Services or the NHS. It will save her life.”

Sharon Hendry, the reporter from The Sun who had interviewed her, remarked, “From what I can see, she's receiving a lot less than she deserves.”

Advertisement

With the great sadness that has so become an inherent part of her, Georgia says, "This is my problem and I know I have to solve it again just like I have in the past. But I'm only human and I'd be lying if I said I didn't need support."



Source-Medindia