"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.....