Exclusive:
Grandmother of five Michelle Hayward was shocked when she was told she had irreversible liver damage from years of overeating. But within months of going on injections, her health took a sudden turn
A woman who says she managed to reverse her severe cirrhosis by shedding five stone with weight-loss injections has warned others not to ignore their liver health.
Michelle Hayward, 62, was shocked when she was diagnosed with cirrhosis on her 58th birthday. She had been living with type 2 diabetes for 15 years, but never thought her creeping weight and love of takeaways would cause such lasting damage to her liver. Now she’s urging other diabetics to heed her warning and get their own liver checked before it’s too late.
After a Fibroscan – in which sound waves are bounced off the liver to check its density – Michelle, from Uttoxeter, Staffs, was told by her consultant that she had significant scarring caused by a long-term build-up of fat inside the organ. The prognosis was bleak. “She said bluntly I had 12 years at the outset,” says Michelle now. “I couldn’t believe it. I rarely drank, never smoked. She said I had no chance of getting rid of the cirrhosis, but I could stabilise it with lifestyle changes so it didn’t get any worse.”
Worryingly, Michelle had had no warning signs that her liver was becoming so damaged. It was only after a routine blood test that her medical team noticed her liver enzymes were raised, which led to the scan. Her Fibroscan score was 24 – anything over 13 indicates cirrhosis, “so there was no doubt I had it,” says Michelle. She was told she needed a drastic overhaul of her lifestyle – diet, exercise and looking after herself – in order to preserve her liver function for as long as possible. With three adult children, five grandchildren and elderly parents to care for, Michelle was determined to beat the odds.
Her diagnosis came shortly after she was made redundant, giving her the time she needed to focus on her health. Having worked a stressful job as a development manager had meant long hours out of the house. “I’d put myself at the back of the health queue for years,” says Michelle. “I wouldn’t give myself a second thought as I ate a Mars Bar in the afternoon or chucked something quick in the oven after getting home late.”
She threw herself into eating more healthily, replacing stodgy white buttered toast with Greek yogurt and fruit for breakfast and cutting out the greasy McDonald’s or Subway takeaways she’d usually turn to for lunch. Dinner, previously fish and chips from the shop, a curry or yet another takeaway, became healthy air-fried salmon with vegetables or homemade lamb kebabs with rice.
Soon, the number on the scales started falling from 18 stone downwards and Michelle was out of her size 24 clothes. The £150 she and husband David had been spending each week on takeouts went towards an air fryer and a wardrobe of size 14 clothes to fit her new figure. She took up fast-paced walking, marching on the spot at home to 30-minute YouTube videos and wore an Apple Watch to monitor her step count.
When she became eligible for injectable diabetes medications, Michelle took them up, first trying the daily Victoza jab then Mounjaro in May 2024, and quickly saw the weight melt away. “The Mounjaro helps with hunger and food cravings, and it’s put my sugars under control as well. But I made a real, concerted effort to eat what I should eat – throw out the chip pan, cut out the fat and carbs – because I wanted to be around for my grandchildren,” says Michelle. “When I first went on it, I couldn’t have eaten a cake or piece of chocolate to save my life. It changes your mindset around food completely.”
Just six months after starting the injections, in November 2024, Michelle had another Fibroscan to check her liver function and was astounded to be told there was no sign of the cirrhosis. “The sonographer said, ‘you’ve got no liver damage whatsoever’, and I said ‘no, I’ve got cirrhosis.’ She said, ‘not any more you don’t’, and I burst into tears! My husband came running into the room thinking I’d been given bad news, and I said, ‘no, these are happy tears!’”
While very rare, cirrhosis reversal can happen, says Philip Newsome, professor of hepatology at King’s College London in King’s College Hospital, and clinical adviser to the British Liver Trust. “We used to think cirrhosis was irreversible, but now we realise that if you treat the underlying cause of liver damage, you can get remarkable remodelling of scarring. You might not get it back to normal, but you can go back to a less harmful position.”
Since getting the all-clear, Michelle has been discharged from her consultants and no longer needs bi-annual scans to check for signs of cancer – yet another danger caused by cirrhosis. But she warns others with diabetes to be aware of the dangers of their condition. “There is a direct link between diabetes, obesity, a fatty liver, and then cirrhosis, but there’s very little awareness of this,” she says. “I had no idea that my weight and my high sugars could cause this. But as a diabetic your excess sugar gets stored in your liver, which creates fatty liver, and over time your liver can’t repair the damage and it causes cirrhosis. But if people knew this from the beginning they’d be so much more careful about what they eat.”
Three months on from her incredible recovery, Michelle is making plans for the future – as well as happy memories with her grandchildren. “It’s like being given a new life,” she says. “Hearing I had cirrhosis was like being given a terminal diagnosis. Now I can buy clothes I like, I want to go on holiday, I want to go out. I’ve got such a positive outlook now, I want to live again.”
*Discover your risk of developing liver disease, and the steps you can take to help protect your liver with the British Liver Trust’s risk checker: https://britishlivertrust.org.uk/at-risk-screener
