During childhood Mandy’s feet continued growing at an alarming rate and in November 2009 she weighed in at 21 stone, 6 stone of that was her upper body weight, the remainder were her feet.
In tonight’s Channel 5 documentary, ‘Losing One of My Giant Legs’ we follow the 36-year old after she underwent an operation to have her left leg removed after she contracted a potentially fatal infection.
Despite the doctors being unable to classify which disability Mandy actually had for many years. Medical experts’ finally decided the cause is likely to be Proteus syndrome, the same symptoms which Joseph Merrick suffered from who is more commonly known as the Elephant Man.
At the age of 19 Mandy gained her independence, moved out of her family’s house and without any assisted care has her own place in Lancashire.
When Mary was 28 she suffered another setback by contracting a deep vein thrombosis, paralysing her for two months from the waist down, but worse was yet to come.
After learning to walk again she found herself with kidney failure and picked up MRSA leading her to have the amputation.
Mandy managed to raise enough funds to fly to the United States to have the operation; the money came from the 2008 documentary ‘The Woman with Giant Legs’.
Losing One of My Giant Legs: Extraordinary People is on Channel 5 tonight (24 August, 2011) at 9pm.
