I was so fat I didn't realize my body was hiding a deadly growth the size of TWINS until I underwent a drastic weight-loss procedure

When I came round after my surgery, I was in a fog. I could focus just enough to see someone pacing up and down in front of my hospital bed. It was my father – and there was a terrified look plastered on his face. 'Your gastric bypass operation didn’t happen,' he blurted out. 'The doctors found something inside your body.'.

I couldn’t really process what he was saying, but a sense of deep disappointment and dread washed over me. I had so many hopes pinned on this weight-loss surgery. It was 2006 and I was 24 years old, 5ft 10ins tall and weighed in at 400 pounds. According to my doctors and my BMI, that made me morbidly obese.

I was told my life was in danger unless I underwent a gastric bypass, an operation to restrict the amount of food my stomach could hold, limit the calories and nutrients my body absorbed and modify how my gut hormones worked to reduce my appetite. The actual surgery sounded alarming. Surgeons would create a small ‘pouch’ – just the size of an egg - by dividing the top of my stomach from the rest. This would be my ‘new’ stomach.

My small intestine would then be divided and the bottom end repositioned to connect with the pouch. Food would still mix with stomach acids and enzymes but the overall effect was to make me feel full on less food and so eat less. I was prepared to try anything. I assumed much of my weight gain was due to a side effect of the medication I was on - I was diagnosed in my teens with bipolar disorder in 1997 - as well as my unhealthy eating habits. I’d eat junk like chips and dips, but sugar was my biggest weakness. I could get through a quart of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in one sitting.

Believe me, I tried dieting. I tried them all, from WeightWatchers to strict calorie counting and every fad diet that came along. I’d lose about ten to 15 pounds and then gain it again, nothing seemed to work. At 24, Emma underwent a gastric bypass to reduce the amount of food her stomach could hold.

At age 16, I was a dress size 12. By 20, I was wearing a tent-like size 24. I had high blood pressure and was suffering sleep apnea, a dangerous disorder in which you stop breathing for ten seconds or more while sleeping. But what was worse was the public humiliation. One of the worst embarrassments was the regular flights I made from my home city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to visit relatives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I hated having to ask for an extension seatbelt so much that I’d try to hide the fact I hadn’t buckled up the regular seatbelt with my arms or a blanket. I wanted a long-term solution and the gastric bypass procedure seemed to offer it. What I never expected – nor did my doctors – was a life-threatening discovery that my excess pounds had been masking all along.

I had assumed that I’d always had an extra squishy belly, but an enormous ovarian cyst – which I later jokingly called 'my twins' because, at 15 pounds, it weighed as much as two babies – had effectively been buried by fat. Even if benign, I was told that it could have burst at any time with potentially disastrous consequences.

Surgeons spotted the cyst on my right ovary soon after making the first incision between my breasts to begin bypass surgery. They removed the ovary too, but managed to avoid a hysterectomy. Surgeons were performing a gastric bypass - creating a small ‘pouch’ the size of an egg by dividing the top of Emma's stomach from the rest - when they found the soccer-ball-sized cyst.

I was shocked when my surgeon told me he had to lift out the cyst with both hands. It was bigger than a soccer ball. There was only half an inch from the inside of my stomach to the edge of the cyst. He said it did not have any more room to grow. He then looked me straight in the eye and told me I was lucky. If the cyst had burst at some point – as it surely would have done - it would have been fatal. 'You'd have been dead within minutes,' he said. 'Going for gastric bypass surgery saved your life.’.

He said it was the first time he’d come across something like this in his 30-year career - and asked if I wanted to see my cyst. I declined with a shudder. But my mother saw a photo and was horrified. She’d always sympathized with my situation because she’d struggled with her weight when she was younger and had been bullied at high school. However, by the time of her school reunion ten years later, she’d lost weight through healthy eating. And she kept it off.

After surgery, there were three nervous days when the specter of cancer hung over me before the pathology report came back confirming the cyst was benign. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was left with a 14-inch scar from my naval to my breasts but it seemed a small price to pay.

Echoing the surgeon’s words, my Dad told me: 'Thank God you went into have the surgery. Otherwise, it would have gone undetected.'. Thank God indeed. The first thing people wanted to know when they heard about the op is how could I possibly NOT know that this enormous cyst was there?.