Like many women, Kerri Fitzgerald, 55, gained weight after her children were born. “I just took care of my family. I was too tired to take care of me,” she tells TODAY.com.
Over the years, she tried dieting, but the weight wasn’t coming off and her blood pressure and cholesterol levels were climbing. So, she decided to give walking a chance in 2011.
“I tried walking in the mall, and my arms would start to tingle and go numb. And when it was cold outside, I had a lot of chest pain. It felt like someone was squeezing my chest. That was a red flag for me — I knew something wasn’t right. It was not normal for the cold to hurt like it did,” she says.
She took a treadmill stress test to check her heart. When her doctor increased the incline and the speed, she got so tired that the doctor stopped the test. They discovered she had an enlarged heart, probably due to an infection, and she needed a defibrillator. Without it, she could die suddenly.
“I was not prepared for this. I had no idea it would be so severe. I always had problems using my arms over my head, but I figured it was just weight related. I had hardly ever been sick,” she says.
The threat of a heart transplant changed her life
A heart specialist told Fitzgerald that she might need a heart transplant, and if she did, she would have to weigh 195 pounds or less to qualify. She weighed 257 pounds, and the doctor told her it would be impossible for her to lose the weight without weight-loss surgery.
That was the point where she decided she had to make a change.
She thought about having the surgery, but she realized it would be almost impossible to make and keep the appointments in Kansas City, MO, more than a two-hour drive from her home in Carthage. So, she decided to buckle down and try to lose the weight without surgery.
“I told myself that anything is possible with God. I knew it would be harder for me than the average person because I had my age, menopause and heart failure going against me, but…
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