A Ewell man whose weight soared after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder is now launching a daring expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for life-changing surgery.
Franco Gasparotti, 50, from Ewell, shed 17 stone in just 18 months and will climb the Tanzanian volcano with 18 supportive friends and ex-army colleagues on September 30, to fund the removal of leftover skin folds.
After saving the lives of two colleagues during service in the Coldstream Guards in Northern Ireland in 1988, Mr Gasparotti suffered serious spinal injuries, confining him to a wheelchair.
Despite recovering from his injuries and being medically discharged from the army in 1990, his battles were far from over.
He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 2007 and subsequently developed a serious eating disorder, leaving him morbidly obese and severely depressed.
A suicide attempt and collapsed marriage finally gave him the push to make the decision to turn his life around.
Mr Gasparotti said: “It was a case of do or die. I realised that if I didn’t change my life, I wouldn’t be around for much longer and I was a father to two amazing children.”
Now a qualified fitness instructor, Mr Gasparotti designed his own weight loss recovery programme, losing 17 stone in just 18 months and repairing the damage done to both body and mind.
But his amazing feat of reducing his body fat from 68 per cent to 19 per cent, has left its mark – Mr Gasparotti’s body has large areas of leftover skin folds that require specialist skin surgery removal.
He has already undergone five operations – costing him £50,000 personally – after two surgery rejections from the NHS.
Now he is about to embark on the final stage of his recovery process and get back to being “the real me again”.
Mr Gasparotti needs one last 10-hour operation to complete his PTSD recovery – a back, bottom, and inner thigh lift that will cost £25,000.
In order to raise these funds, he and his friends are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and each member of the team is doing independent fundraising and sponsorship.
He said: “It’s a pretty major 10-hour operation but, hopefully, it will remove all the remaining areas of leftover skinfolds from my body and allow me to finally feel like the real me again after all this time.”
Any extra money raised will be donated equally between charities, Combat Stress and the Soldiering on Through Life Trust (SOTLT) – both of whom helped with Franco’s recovery so far.
To help Mr Gasparotti complete his lengthy transformation, visit his GoFundMe page at www.gofundme.com/francoappeal
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