Lorna Taggart has spent years living with a condition that feel like she’s dragging “concrete blocks” around.
The 42-year-old teacher from Skye has always been slim on top, but couldn’t understand why the lower half of her body wouldn’t follow suit.
When she was younger, it led her to trying drastic measures.
“This has been a lifelong problem, when I hit puberty, I pretty much stopped eating,” she recalled.
“When you starve yourself and your body shape isn’t changing, you think you must be doing something wrong.
“But I was walking at least five miles a day, I was very fit but on the face of it I was overweight.
“I thought, if I didn’t eat, I’d be like everyone else.”
A 22-inch difference between hips and waist
While Lorna had a slender face and upper body, her legs remained much larger than her top half.
This worsened when Lorna started eating safely again and during her pregnancies.
She explained: “As soon as I started eating again, it caused massive growth in my legs and looking back, there was a definite growth in each pregnancy I had as well.
“I just thought some people put on a lot of weight when they’re pregnant.”
In hindsight, Lorna was shocked that, despite the “disproportion” in size from her top half and bottom half, she was simply told she was obese.
“I find it really difficult to understand why I hadn’t been diagnosed,” she said.
“There’s a 22-inch difference between my waist and my hips.
“Still, I would be told any medical issue I had was because I’m obese – or whatever term they chose to use at the time.
“They don’t look at people and say ‘this number on the scale doesn’t match what I’m seeing here.’
“It was very much a blame culture where they thought I was lying and I must be eating more than I say I am and my body shape was my own fault,” she recalled.
‘They didn’t bother to examine me’
On one occasion, Lorna went to the doctor while suffering excruciating pain in her back from the slightest touch.
But after having her mobility checked, she was told to lose weight and sent on her way.
By this stage, Lorna was become increasingly more immobile and asked her friend, an advanced lipoedema nurse, for advice.
“I was really upset and said ‘I’m just not being taken seriously’,” she said.
“I was becoming increasingly more crippled, I was really struggling to walk, the pain was off the scale most of the time.
“She was the one who said ‘I think you’ve probably got lipoedema‘.
“From there the ball got rolling. If I hadn’t had that conversation, I could still be in this position.”
‘Feels like I’m dragging concrete blocks’
Eventually, in her 30s and after having two children, Lorna got the diagnosis she was after for decades.
The exact cause of lipoedema is not known, but it leaves an “abnormal” build-up of fat in people’s arms and legs.
After visiting a specialist doctor in Dundee, Lorna was told she’d need 36 litres of fat removed via liposuction from her legs.
She said: “I don’t know if I was surprised, sometimes it feels like I’m dragging concrete blocks around with me.
“You know what it’s like if you have to carry even a couple of bottles in a carrier bag, it gets really heavy.
“Thinking about bottles being strapped onto my legs, 36 litre bottles is a huge amount.
“I’d struggle to lift that, but that’s what I’m carrying on a daily basis.”
Lorna added: “With every growth of lipodema tissue, there’s no going back, you could have someone at stage 1 and it doesn’t impact their life at all.
“I think there’s a lack of knowledge in the medical community and that needs to change, we should get to a point where there aren’t folk with legs like mine.”
For more information, the Talk Lipoedema charity can be found at talklipoedema.org
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