So not the way i want to go
 

at first i wanted to chuckle but then i just felt really sad for a person that lived this way - if you can really call it living. i would hope that if they couldn't help me, that my family would at least euthanize me.

click here

I can see the FARK headline now:

<b>Rescue workers dig up 600 pound couch potato</b>

OK I laughed...but now I feel guilty.

So who was bringing food to this woman? She obviously wasn't getting up to go to the fridge herself. That is seriously messed up.

If she was grafted to the couch, she obviously wasn't making to the loo on her own, either. Egad.

As far as being ultra-obese, I would have thought 600 lbs would still afford some basic mobility...

My first thought. :vomit:

I submitted this earlier with a funnier headline

Did you ever see the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape? The mom in that movie was huge and recently I saw a 20/20 special on her (or maybe it was dateline). It said she was somewhere around 624 lbs (she was about 500 lbs when she made the Gilbert Grape movie). She couldn't walk, so had to ride around in a specially designed wheel chair. They showed her standing on a scale to get weighted and she was almost in tears because it hurt so bad to stand. I think once you pass a certain threshold that your legs just cant support the weight anymore.

What I want to know is how a person can let themselves get that bad. I mean once you cross the 300 lbs. milestone you think these people would get help somehow. Get their stomach stapled or something.

My first thought also when I read that article is where was her bathroom duties going. Thats just nasty, I cant fathom how someone could live like that.

I've dealt with quite a few people that for one reason or another live in their own waste. This is extreme, even for my experience, though. I have one friend who is not quite that obese, but is heading in that direction. She has already had double knee replacements, and faced consequences of that surgery (and some incorrect treatment with blood thinners that caused further damage leading to nerve damage in one leg). She's getting around a bit, but has difficulty walking, needing either a cane or a walker. She's talking about doing things like getting one of those "power chairs" and a car/van that has a specially designed seat to make it easier for her to get in and out ... she's already overstressing an ordinary automoblie bucket seat ... she is literally wedged in behind the steering wheel. When she makes a turn she has to return the wheel to "straight ahead" by hand because it won't spin back on it's own. There are bits of herself that she can't get to easily to wash, and, while she does bathe with ordinary frequency, she doesn't smell particularly fresh. She overuses Jean Nate to compensate. It's not pretty. For as long as I've known her she claims to be "on a diet" or "losing weight" but I've never seen physical evidence of it. It's quite sad.

Let everyone eat what they will, I just can't imagine being <i>grown into</i> a couch. That's just fucking sick.

Oh, this is truly sad. The article says a man lived with her--in that stench?? Oh my. I used to go into private homes to do nursing (home health care--I don't recommend it) and it is truly shocking sometimes to see how other people live. And I'm trying not to be too middle class here, either. Some things just shocked me. I wonder if this woman (only 40!) had had any health care at ALL in her two years on the couch?

This guy is seeking help

Big Nebraskan

"Deuel, who is just under 6 feet tall, is on a 1,200 calorie-a-day diet."

Wow. I don't weigh 1000 lbs (yet) and a 1200 calorie a day diet would be tough.

He's got a tough road ahead of him. Hope he makes it, he'll make major coin from some mainstream weightloss system if he does.

Lose 800 lbs and get good paying gig for just showing up and talking for a half hour....that would be a real turnaround.

This whole thing is really sad. When I was a sullen teenager my dad used to tell me the telephone receiver would grow into my face but I never believed him! It's hard for me to imagine the couch not breaking under all that weight for so long.
I really can't imagine why she would have lost mobility that early, too, unless she just sat down one day and refused to get up. I worked for a bail bondsman for years who fluctuates between about 500-650 pounds, and he's in his mid-fifties. He drives, goes on vacation, works daily, etc. My husband's aunt, whom I loved dearly, is well over 400 pounds. She is a social worker who investigates elderly abuse and neglect. She lives alone and takes care of a three-bedroom home, drives herself everywhere, goes out with friends, and two or three times a year flies up to see us. I guess everyone's body deals with extreme stress differently, though, and would likely account for the differences in people's living conditions.

Wow just reading the responses made me not want to see the article.

As someone who has been overweight since age 8 or so, I would see extremely obese people and think, "God I do NOT want to be like them ever". I can't imagine. However, after gaining 40 pounds in the last years from the dialysis (and reaching my highest weight ever), I started to become concerned. I can relate somewhat to the woman who was having pains due to the heavy weight putting a strain on her legs. It is somewhat hard getting around sometimes (it's also due to other health issues).

It ain't easy folks. :(

"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."

Well that doesn't seem right...

People much smaller than him have had to do that, too. Normal doctor's office scales only go up to 350-400 pounds. My mom is a former Weight Watchers counselor, and I remember her riding to Winn Dixie (a grocery store, I think they're a local chain) with a woman who was over 450 pounds to be weighed every week on their meat scales until she lost enough weight to be weighed on the regular scale. I thought it was extremely courageous of the woman to go through all that humiliation. IIRC she did get down to and maintain a healthy weight.

The article said she was 4'10" tall, I think that probably played the biggest part in her not being able to get around. She was a rather short woman with a large amount of weight and her legs probably couldn't handle the weight. Being obese and mobile probably has to do with how active you were while you were gaining the weight. In the case of the people you know, if they were active while they were gaining that weight the legs being used all the time could help them adapt to the weight. I don't know this womans full story but if her only exercise consisted of walking to the kitchen 3 times a day for several years of her life then her legs wont have built up enough muscle to handle the weight, and so would have started to hurt whenever she stood up and walked.

I just cant imagine living in those conditions. Its very sad.

I hadn't thought of that, but you are right. I know someone who has been doing Atkins for almost a year. He and is brother are both very overweight (460 and 420 respectively, at the start). The guy is only 5'9" and the goal weight set for him by his doctor is 260, due in large part to the lower half of his body being so muscular from carrying around all that weight for years. When they did his body fat test, his doctor told him that at a "desirable" weight for his height, age and bone structure, he's have less than 3% body fat.

Kind of off the subject but a friend who lives within 10 minutes or so from the hospital where this woman died says that locals are claiming this woman was mentally disabled. I have no references to back it up, and neither does she so far. but that's the local gossip/speculation.

she would almost have to be, wouldn't she? (no sarcasm intended) i mean that if she sat in a chair long enough for her skin to grow into it then something upstairs isn't working. that isn't really a case of "i just don't feel like standing this month". those folks usually get beds and folks come in to take care of them for a few years before they end up on the springer show or something similar. IMO

They are saying she's mentally disabled ("retarded"), not mentally ill, which I think is what you mean. The rumor is that she was being kept there solely for a disability check.

IF that is true--wow. I'd rather be killed outright for my life insurance than be kept barely alive, skin mutating into couch material, left in my own waste for a lousy few bucks a month. And the smell! The human body can brew up some extremely funky smells--the guy who lived there must have some problems, too.

Why didn't the neighbors notice the smell? The article said they lived in a Duplex and the people next door didn't even know a woman lived there. If your house shares a wall with someone else's house you would think they would have noticed the smell and reported it or something.

Mentally ill folks are also referred to as "mentally disabled".

If these folks were in a particularly poor neighborhood, the smell might have gone unnoticed amongst the general effluvia of the area. Sometimes even eau d'dead guy goes unnoticed for a while.

I really hope Deuel manages to walk out of the hospital. Losing weight isn't easy, I don't care what you perpetually skinny people say! *waves fist around*

I can imagine he'll need some therapy to let his legs get used to walking again, especially if he's been bedridden for the better part of a year. Though, I wonder... the article says he's been bedridden since last fall and that he was a restaurant manager. How much did he weigh when he became bedridden? How much weight was he walking around with while managing his restaurant? I've got a friend who's around 430 but you'd never guess. For someone that's beween a quarter and fifth of a ton, he's pretty darn spry.

I can't imagine how bad it would hurt trying to walk after all that time. I was in a coma for eight days once. The first thing I wanted when I woke up was a shower, and it hurt so much just putting my feet on the floor without even putting any weight on them. I actually cried walking about ten feet to the bathroom with a nurse on each side to lean on. It doesn't take very long at all for those muscles to atrophy. I can only imagine what kind of therapy he'll have to go through and how painful those first steps will be. I'd say considerably less painful than staying bedridden for the rest of an unnaturally short life, though.

Sorry, hit reply before seeing
I have worked in mental health in VA for some time. We must call our clients MD (mentally disabled), DD (developmentally delayed), or MR (mentally retarded). In the same agency, we also have MI (mentally ill). It was force of habit, sorry. Should have been clearer.

We just call them "nuts" or "crazy people."

i just call them "family"

How do people get to that point, though? I think that's what everyone's really wondering.

First, you think, "damn, that's unbelievable!"
Then, you think, "Poor woman..."
Then, it's, "how did she get that big?????"

I had an aunt, died waaaaaaaay before I was even a twinkle, and my grandmother said that she was so big that when she got pregnant they had to weigh her on a MILL scale....

I can understand glandular problems--I have a friend that eats very rarely, and is big; I can understand illness causing weight gain....but how can a healthy person, or a previously healthy person, let themselves get to that point? I mean, she had to have been able to walk at some point, to get to the couch. Did she just sit down and say screw it, I'm not ever moving again, bring me a pot pie, a double fudgecicle and a diet coke?? No one ever tried to get her to a doctor? No one ever called social services? Did it ever occur to her that her weight could kill her?

I just don't understand healthy people letting themselves get like that. I even saw, on a talk show about five years ago, children between the ages of one-five years, who were morbidly obese, and it was because of their parents. These people fed these kids massive amounts of food at a sitting because they didn't like hearing their kids cry for food--it made them feel bad. I wonder how bad they're going to feel knowing that they're condemning their children to teasing, health problems, and possible early death....
(/ramble)

Sidhe

edit: Yeah, I'm one of those perpetually skinny people--but my problem is that I can't gain weight. I'm underweight for my height, which is just as unhealthy as obesity can be. No matter what I eat, and I'm the thick-crust, double cheese pizza kind of eater, I don't gain more than a couple of pounds. My highest prepregnancy weight was 120, in high school, for about a week. When I was pregnant, I topped out at 140, and that almost did me in.


But, just like I don't understand stick-thin anorexics, I don't understand the reasoning behind allowing oneself to get so big that one can't move.....

i don't usually make weight jokes because it is ok that we come in all different shapes and sizes, but i have to admit that my first thought when i read your statement was - "if she was thaaat big, who was willing to help her get pregnant?"

[quote=Lady Sidhe],I just don't understand healthy people letting themselves get like that.

They are not "healthy"--not in body nor in mind. And probably not in the glands.

She was obviously ill waaaay before she let the couch grow onto her. Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't stumbled on this particular tragedy yet. I've seen a lot of weird stuff going into the home's of those Medicaid deemed worthy to get home health care. I've never seen a couch and woman mesh. I HAVE seen other stuff, though.

Just strange that those stories always happen on the other side of the ocean...
I saw Super Size Me 2 weeks ago and IMO America has a big big problem...

Cheetos are not a lifestyle choice in other parts of the world.

I blame high fructose corn syrup -- at least partially. It's in everything these days in place of sugar. There are a number of studies that show that hfcs acts more like a fat than a sugar. I also saw reports of another study that shows that the rise of obesity in the US exactly mirrors the rise of hfcs as a replacement for sugar.

Update on the deceased
 

This is really sad, but it does explain a lot more than the original stories did.Full Story

I see no mention of mental disability.

It sounds like she did it to herself mostly.

That IS really sad. I can't believe the siblings didn't do more. Sure, they can't force her to get off the couch, but if she is living in her own shit, and trash and rotting food are scattered throughout the house, there is an obvious need there. Her sister saw her two weeks before she died. Why didn't she do something?

What a family.

She was probably "always like that."

They didn't notice any difference, so they didn't do anything about it.

Here is something Alan just sent me. Kinda along the same lines as the woman who was stuck to her couch.

Warning: The photos on the page are kinda gross.
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/...t10045_fm.html