A woman from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia decided that she could no longer wait for a weightloss operation in her home town. So she travelled to Mexico instead.

Lillian Coakley had been waiting for 10 years for surgery to help reduce her weight. However, frustration got the better of her, so she wrote her own obituary in the expectation that she wouldn’t be around much longer to see her children grow up.

Weighing 372 pounds and desperate to lose weight Lillian was at her wits end, not knowing what she could do.

Her story was reported in the local newspapers, and was picked up by Mexican surgeons who suggested she make the long journey to Mexico for treatment. What’s more, the doctors offered to do the work for free.

She added: “I was nervous. I had never been on a plane, I never left my country, didn’t know what to expect.”

A one and a half hour operation removed around a third of her stomach.

Lillian Coakley commented: “It was a great experience. I’d recommend it to anyone in a heart beat.”

Although the operation was successful, Lillian still has a lot of work to do. Her Canadian doctors advise that she still needs to lose weight, but they feel she can do this within 6 – 8 months. Her goal is 199 pounds.

“My goal was to be healthy, not skinny, if I lost the pounds, it’s a bonus. This was a life-changing surgery,” she adds.

The cost of fitting a vertical sleeve, the operation carried out in Mexico, would have cost around $44,000 in Canada, something that many surgeons are angry about. They blame the Canadian government for their lack of an affordable system for the Lillian Coakley’s that live there.