Last night I watched a documentary on TV about a woman who was 29 years old and weighed nearly 900 pounds. I honestly don't know why I watched it, I think I wanted a little reality check-up to make sure I was not slipping into that mediocracy in diet-land that always leads to failure. The truth is, I have the tendency to rationalize too much and think that failure really and truly is no longer lurking and let up just a tad. However, if I let up just a tad, I always stop loosing weight. If I stop loosing weight, I give up. Rationalizing has enormous consequences. Loosing weight is mathematical and scientific--it just FEELS emotional.
Watching the story of this woman was painful to me, but the message I took from this story was not the intended message. I usually avoid these documentaries because they feel sensationalistic to me, and also because my deepest fear has always been that there, for the grace of God go I! So as the moth was drawn to the flame, I tuned in. The woman, Renee Williams, was a young Hispanic woman with three young daughters. She had beautiful long, jet-black, shiny hair, and a lovely face and loving personality. Her daughters were precious, and obviously adored their mom.
I was shocked at her sheer mass. Her enormous arms dwarfed her head, her body seemed to cover what appeared to be a king-sized bed. She was immobile, confined to lay semi-paralyzed in a world where she could not lift her legs, sit up, or walk. All she seemed to be able to do is to talk to her daughters (not hug them), use a laptop rested on her chest, and.... eat enormous amounts of food.
She had a caretaker who lovingly prepared meals for her, and emphatically admitted that she had a "very healthy appetite". He remarked that she loved old fashioned comfort foods, loved snack foods and cookies which had to be brought to her bed since she was immobile. Her pre-teen daughter was obviously worried about her, and said that her mother would send her to a local fast food restaurant to buy 8 hamburgers for her, in addition to the meals and snacks that the home-health caretaker was preparing and bringing her.
The documentary contained self-videos with Renee's desperate appeals for help to acquire weight-loss surgery, and centered on the tragedy surrounding how the "super obese" were turned away because of their high surgical risk. Finally, Renaissance Hospital in Houston was introduced as the saviors that agreed to do the risky gastric bypass surgery on her. Renaissance specializes in obesity surgery, and is one of the only hospitals that will do surgery on patients in excess of 400 pounds. The surgeon commented that when he informed a super-obese patient that it was very possible that they would not survive the surgery, that 100% of them replied "they didn't care." An official of the hospital, herself a success story of gastric by-pass surgery, passionately explained that the obese have less than a 95% chance of loosing weight on their own, and that the super-obese have virtually no chance. The official's life had truly been changed by the surgery, and this lovely, compassionate woman was emotional and passionate about weight-loss surgery. Her opinions were deeply colored with the emotions of her experience, and the solution that weight loss surgery afforded her. Because of this, I would not call her objective. Her comments rang very familiar to me as I remembered hearing from the surgeon in Houston a few months ago that , even though I am a fraction of Renee's size, loosing weight on my own was nearly hopeless and that dangerous surgery was my only hope. He emphasized that I was a ticking time bomb, adding another level to my desperation. Hearing the same comments on the documentary infuriated me because I knew from experience that hopeless desperation is not a state of mind in which to make an informed decision.
Transporting Renee to the hospital was an event that left me speechless. A fire truck and ambulance was called to the house, and a dozen firemen filed into her bedroom, along with an EMT crew. As the camera rolled, the men rolled the 900 pound, semi-clad body to her side as a tarp was pushed under her, then rolled to the other side and pulled through. After she was on the tarp, 10 men pulled and heaved and inched her toward the stretcher. It took all of the firemen to move the stretcher through the house, barely able to get her through the doors and down the stoop. Truck ramps were installed on the ambulance to load her, and neighbors stood and watched as the dozen firemen grunted and heaved the stretcher up the ramp into the ambulance. I observed Renee silently and courageously endure this humiliation, and wondered if she was happy to see the sky again as she was wheeled through the yard.
The surgery was filmed, her body across two operating tables; the only way the surgeons could access the middle of her body was by standing on step stools and leaning across her body. The doctors were concerned that her blood gasses were problematic because the weight of her body mass was restricting her breathing. A mechanism was used to mechanically crank up and lift the fat on her abdomen so that they could access the organs beneath it. Miraculously, Renee survived the surgery and joyously began her recovery.
She was hospitalized for two weeks as she recovered and gained hope. In the two weeks following the surgery, she lost 60 pounds. Then suddenly, she went into cardiac arrest as a result of the surgery and died.
The funeral was attended by the woman administrator at the hospital, who wiped sincere tears from her eyes. The young daughters were inconsolable, and dropped rose petals on the enormous casket that was lowered into the ground by a hoist. Since Renee's surgery, a man who weighed in excess of 1000 pounds was literally cut from his home and had surgery at Renaissance. I could not bear to watch any more, so I turned off the TV before I learned the outcome of his surgery.
I need to say that Renee's death pisses me off! Instead of doing the surgery that killed her, why didn't the hospital facilitate an intervention with the family and caregiver that were bringing her every life-taking bite of junk food she ate? If she had been a drug addict, she would have been placed in a treatment facility where she would be detoxed, and learn why she needed to medicate herself with drugs. Why didn't the hospital put her on a controlled diet in the hospital while they had her in there, and give her treatment, therapy and education to empower her to lose at least some of the weight on her own? If it had merely given her a better chance at surviving the surgery, it was worth it. I know from experience that this option wasn't even discussed with Renee. She was told she had to have the surgery or die, and she made the best decision she could based on this information.
I don't know why Renee had to die. It was ultimately her fault, because no one forced her to eat that amount of food over the years. However, Renee had no confidence that she was capable of loosing the weight because she had been told it was impossible by experts. I know because I have been there. Imagine just telling an alcoholic that it was impossible to recover.
I just don't understand why the only help most doctors can offer the obese is surgery. I hate to suggest that it is about money, but no doubt the profit margin figures in to their decision. If we have accessible treatment facilities to rehabilitate alcoholics and drug addicts, why are facilities not readily accessible for people like Renee? I guess one of the things that concerns me the most is that one of her daughters is already obese.
We are ultimately the captains of our own ships. I am just so grateful that I stopped believing the doctors when they said I couldn't do it. Stand back and watch me!!!
RIP Renee, you made a difference.
