real life
Emma Clark, 45, and her husband Dale 46, were desperate to have children. But for that to happen, they had a very big decision to make first…
Leaning in for a kiss, I closed my eyes… Unfortunately it didn’t go quite to plan. I was on a first date with a man named Dale and we were both a bit tipsy. I took him by surprise going in for a kiss and we clashed teeth but luckily we had a giggle about it. Both of us were divorcees looking for a second chance at love.
We were both bigger people. At 6ft, Dale weighed 28st and at 5ft 7lbs, I was 20st and a size 20. I’d struggled with my weight ever since I was a teenager and I’d tried every diet going, as had Dale, which bonded us. By the end of our date I was smitten but feared I’d ruined everything with a terrible first kiss. But I had little to worry about as Dale was already messaging his mates, telling them he thought he’d found The One.
Dale and I quickly became inseparable, and six months later he moved in with me. We loved eating out and so we started piling on even more weight. Dale worked as a taxi driver, so he spent his days sat at the wheel. He had a McDonald’s breakfast, chip shop lunch and pork pies with the other lads at the taxi service.
Meanwhile, I worked in an office for an online pharmacy company and spent my days grazing on biscuits, cakes, crisps and pastries. For dinner, we’d order pizzas or kebabs, and then settle down in front of the TV with cheese and crackers or bags of crisps. By 2019, Dale was so big that he struggled to buy clothes that fit other than a super-size 8XL shirts. Dale had always been a sociable, larger-than-life character, but he started making excuses to avoid seeing friends. “I’m scared I’ll sit down and break their furniture,” he confessed. I loved him no matter his size, but I hated to see him so down.
We were also unable to start a family. We’d both experienced fertility problems in our previous marriages, so we decided to become foster parents instead. But our local authority took one look at our obese BMIs and said “no way”. It was difficult to hear. We simply weren’t healthy or mobile enough to look after kids. I also worried about Dale’s health. He had such severe sleep apnoea that he would stop breathing in the middle of the night.
In February 2020, Dale underwent a procedure to fit a gastric balloon. He felt it was the only way he could ever lose weight. But it wasn’t successful and he ended up in hospital with sepsis. His parents were so worried that they generously offered to lend him £11,000 to cover gastric sleeve surgery at a clinic not far from where we lived in Leeds, in October 2020. By this time Dale was 41st 4lbs. Even going under anaesthetic was risky but we knew if we didn’t do so
