The 3st woman who is starving to DEATH: Doctors wrongly branded 36-year-old anorexic…
The 3st woman who is starving to DEATH: Doctors wrongly branded 36-year-old anorexic… only to discover rare stomach condition was to blame for her ‘lifetime of sickness’ (and now her only hope of surviving is a last-ditch £50,000 operation in Germany)
WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Nicolette Baker is fundraising for surgery36-year-old from Truro, Cornwall, suffers from a very rare conditionIt causes pain when she eats, and led to her diagnosis as an anorexic patientBut in 2015 she was re-diagnosed with Superior Mesenteric Arterial syndromesMs Baker was aiming to raise £80,000 to get surgery at a clinic in Germany
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A woman who weighs just 3st (42lbs/20kg) is starving to death because of a rare stomach condition.
Nicolette Baker, from Cornwall, started complaining about stomach pain after eating when she was just four and began to skip meals.
Doctors diagnosed the now 36-year-old as anorexic, leading to her to undergo more than two decades of ‘traumatic’ treatments. It included force-feeding and being sent away to specialist clinics for months at a time.
But in 2015, Ms Baker was then told she had superior mesenteric arterial syndrome (SMAS).
The condition is rare — affecting as few as one in 10,000 people — and leads to pain and nausea shortly after eating. It is caused by part of the small intestine being compressed by two arteries, blocking digestion.
The NHS is thought to have ruled out surgery for Ms Baker, from Truro, because she is already so under-weight. She says she is currently receiving palliative care.
But Ms Baker says a clinic in Germany has agreed to carry out a procedure that may potentially save her life, if she can raise £50,000 to cover the costs.
Since setting up a GoFundMe page at the start of the year, she has received £95,000 in donations. However, in an update today, Ms Baker claimed she was too sick to tell donors whether she had managed to secure the treatment.
Ms Baker said: ‘I am so deeply sorry for days of absence… feeling ever so weak and the fight is hard. I’d like to share with you where I am when I have not the energy to articulate it.’
Nicolette Baker, 36, now weighs just three stone due to a condition that gives her pain shortly after she consumes food
From Truro, Cornwall, Ms Baker (pictured with her whippet Eden) has been misdiagnosed since an early age with anorexia
But doctors have now diagnosed her with Superior Mesenteric Arterial syndromes (SMAS), a very rare condition. The NHS recently placed her on palliative care
Ms Baker had set a target of raising £80,000 so that she could get surgery for her condition in Germany. She has now raised £95,000, but says she is too ill to update donors on her treatment
SMAS occurs when the duodenum — or the first part of the small intestine — gets compressed by its two nearest arteries.
US health authorities say it can be triggered when the mesenteric fat pad — which normally separates the two blood chambers — is lost.
This can occur due to significant weight loss or after corrective spinal surgery for scoliosis, when the spine is curved instead of being straight. Doctors believe it may also partly be genetic.
Treatments include switching someone’s diet to help them gain weight or surgery — although doctors warn symptoms may not completely disappear afterwards.
Ms Baker, one of three children, said she was initially treated as a mental health patient.
Describing her experience, she told CornwallLive: ‘[I was] forced to gain weight with punitive feeding regimes which my digestive system simply couldn’t cope with.
‘I felt completely humiliated and my identity stripped away during these decades of treatment not least because I simply couldn’t get it through to professionals that I could not stomach the food in me.
‘I didn’t have anorexia because I wanted to be thin. I simply didn’t want to eat because of the pain it caused me.’
In 2015, Ms Baker switched consultants and was sent for a CT scan. When the results came back, it showed she had SMAS.
It is not clear why the NHS won’t operate on her but she said there are ‘few experts that can offer some improvement to what is a grave prognosis’.
She has, however, found a clinic in Germany that has offered to carry out the surgery for £50,000.
But more than £80,000 was needed for the trip, she claimed, because of the cost of flights, accommodation and the need to have someone to accompany her.
Appealing for donations, Ms Baker said on her fundraiser page: ‘I am trying to keep the dream alive.
‘The result of the surgery is not guaranteed but this is my last chance to reclaim my quality of life.
‘I will need to spend six weeks in Germany and due to my severely emaciated state of health I will need to take taxis and rely on extra support for luggage and transportation.
‘But from the bottom of my heart I want to thank you for reading this. Anything you can donate to this cause would be so gratefully received.’
She added: ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it until the surgery date but I’m living for each day and the hope that I can get better is giving me something to look forward to.
‘I am absolutely indebted to you, every one of you. Everyone who has donated in any way — monetarily, by sharing, by trusting or by connecting. I thank you all.’
The German clinic specialises in severe vascular compressions and agreed to perform the surgery this month if she could find the cost, Ms Baker said
Ms Baker said she had been treated as an anorexic patient for 25 years, before finally being diagnosed with the condition in 2015
Ms Baker says she has no ill thoughts towards NHS staff who initially diagnosed her as suffering from anorexia.
She said: ‘I am still deeply grateful for all the NHS treatment I received throughout the decades of my dismissed symptoms and it is merely due to its rarity that the medics gave me the diagnosis they thought fitted with my presenting symptoms.
‘I truly believe that they did what they believed was right and I have only respect and gratitude for that despite it leading me to where I am now.
‘I do believe they were motivated wholeheartedly to do the best for me and I have no regrets for my past medical experiences and traumas.
‘I didn’t have anorexia because I wanted to be thin. I simply didn’t want to eat because of the pain it caused me.’
A friend and advocate of Ms Baker, who helped set up the fundraiser, said: ‘When we go to the doctors, we assume that they will know what to do. It’s uncharted territory when they don’t.
‘I think if medics can’t find something wrong, they can sometimes be quick to label someone or say it’s psychosomatic but that can be very damaging to the patient. It can really knock their confidence.
‘Nicolette is very exhausted but she is tenacious, determined and strong. It’s outstanding considering her circumstances.
‘This really is her last chance.’
