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My Sympathy Runs Thin...
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| NeoPhono |
I'm sorry, but I feel bad this person put themselves into this position, but I have very little pity for them. I work with cancer patients, and they will have my empathy all day, but it is hard for me to feel sorry for someone who just about ate themselves to death. Rack up another hospital bill that will fall on the shoulders of the hospital and ultimately those of us that do pay for health insurance.
| quote: | Nebraskan trying to lose 770 pounds to stay alive
Associated Press
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - A Nebraska man who once weighed more than half a ton has lost 321 pounds in a Sioux Falls hospital, with a goal of losing another 450 pounds.
Patrick Deuel, 42, of Valentine, weighed 1,072 pounds when he was admitted to Avera McKennan Hospital eight weeks ago. Deuel, who is just under 6 feet tall, is on a 1,200 calorie-a-day diet.
He wants to lose at least another 450 pounds or more in the next year and a half to two years. He is being supervised by a team of eight doctors.
"If we hadn't gotten him here, he'd be dead now," said Fred Harris, Deuel's lead doctor.
Deuel said he knew he had to act. The former restaurant manager has been bedridden since last fall and hadn't been out of his Nebraska home for social reasons in seven years.
Heart failure, thyroid problems, diabetes, pulmonary hypertension and arthritis - the physical effects of obesity - were robbing him of life. Deuel needed an oxygen machine to breathe and help just to roll over in bed.
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.
According to the Guinness World Records Web site, the record for heaviest man in the world is 1,397 pounds, held by Jon Brower Minnoch of Bainbridge, Wash., who died in 1983.
Twenty-one percent of U.S. adults are obese, defined as at least 30 pounds overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's almost twice as many as in 1990.
Deuel said the emotional toll of his obesity has been overwhelming. "Until recently, I wasn't able to see any light at the end of the tunnel," he said Monday from his hospital bed.
Deuel and his wife, Edith, said they knew he was dying early this year but that it took months to find a hospital and get him to it.
"I got scared because I couldn't help him anymore, and I didn't know who would help him," Edith Deuel said. "His body was just so sick, he was just hanging on by his fingernails."
Deuel lived closer to hospitals in Nebraska and Colorado. But he relies on Medicare, which aids the disabled, and he said Medicare wasn't willing to cover all the treatment he needed. And hospitals closer to his home balked at admitting him.
Avera McKennan was the first to accept him. Harris said Deuel's care could cost millions of dollars, much of which the hospital may have to cover.
Deuel couldn't fit into a standard ambulance, so medical officials found one in Denver that has a special gurney and ramps. At Avera McKennan, workers joined two beds for Deuel.
Deuel and his wife said they decided to tell their story to show that hope and perseverance can pay off. They also said they want people to know that obesity is a health problem that's getting worse - and that every state should have a hospital and ambulance service equipped and willing to handle obese people.
High-fat, high-calorie foods and sedentary lifestyles play a big role in obesity. But for Deuel, who has battled his weight all his life, genetics is partly to blame. He weighed about 90 pounds in kindergarten and more than 250 pounds in middle school.
"Even though he's faced negativity all these years, he's not a negative person," Edith Deuel said. "He's almost always been able to stay bubbly and make jokes and be happy."
Deuel tried many diets. Even now, he sometimes longs for his favorites: pizza and burritos.
He said he wants to lose enough weight so that he will have a better chance with gastric bypass surgery. Deuel said he thinks he'll need to lose another 250 pounds for that.
The increasingly popular surgery reduces the size of the stomach, which limits the food someone can hold without getting sick.
One goal is to walk out of Avera McKennan Hospital. He also wants to go to a Nebraska Cornhuskers home football game.
But more than anything else, he just wants to enjoy spending evenings walking with his wife, free of the weight that has denied him simple pleasures.
"I'd like that," he said, smiling at his wife. "I'd really like that."
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And please don't give me the "genetics" arguement. I'm not tall and I'm not a rocket-scientist, but I deal with it. If you're born with a propencity to gain weight, deal with it as well. I'm tired of trying to blame our self-inflicted dispositions on "genetics." I can see genetics leading to a person being a couple hundred pounds overweight...maybe, but a half a ton? That is a self-control problem. |
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| Izzy |
i will personally go out and kill the person who says "pics or stfu" on this one
:eek: :tongue2 |
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| [PCO]sigmanova |
i agree. i find it hard to believe that someone could just eat their way to 1,000 pounds or even 1300... *shudder*
likewise, i feel nothing but empathy, because this is something that is totally preventable, yet people do it regardless and try to place the blame on things out of their control. (aka genetics or fast-food) |
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| Shakka |
| quote: | Originally posted by [PCO]sigmanova
likewise, i feel nothing but empathy, because this is something that is totally preventable, yet people do it regardless and try to place the blame on things out of their control. (aka genetics or fast-food) |
Do you mean empathy or apathy? I'm guessing you meant the latter!;) |
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| FuzzyGreen |
Just imagine the amount of food that would be required on a daily basis to support that weight. Also, imagine how expensive that would be.
He probably spent at least $2000 a month on food. |
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| BadBadNeil |
While genetics often has a role to play, often I see personally families where the parents cook only high fat foods, constantly go to take out, never eat fruit or vegetables, drink excesses of soda and high sugar foods, and don't excercise. Their kids follow in their footsteps because this is what they know and they pass it on to their kids and so forth.
It's sad but personally if I ever got to 250lbs(im about 180lbs now) I'd seek some help. Its strange that this man seeks help now, now at 500, 600, 800, 1000lbs which are all immense weights. Really good family too for helping him before this point :rolleyes:
As far as how much these people eat check out a few quotes I found regarding some of the heaviest people ever.
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After contracting septicemia in the early 1980s, she spent most of the next decade in bed, eating - as much as 15,000 calories per day. It wasn't unusual for her to put away three large pizzas in 40 minutes (washing them down with diet soda), then ask for dessert. At her peak, she measured eight feet wide, and took up two reinforced king-size beds.
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| quote: |
He had already reached 154 lbs at age seven, and left school at ten because he could no longer fit into the desks. After that he spent most of his time in bed, or sharing massive meals with his 700-pound mom. Michael liked to start the day with four bowls of cereal, toast, waffles, cake, and a quart of soda, and end it with a whole pizza with the works for a bedtime snack. Mother and son tried every new diet that came along, "but after a few days, we'd reward ourselves with a chocolate cake. Then we'd call for a pizza and that would be it."
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here is the page of the 900lb club
http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/d...le/heaviest.htm |
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| Shakka |
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| Seventil |
| quote: |
He had already reached 154 lbs at age seven, and left school at ten because he could no longer fit into the desks. After that he spent most of his time in bed, or sharing massive meals with his 700-pound mom. Michael liked to start the day with four bowls of cereal, toast, waffles, cake, and a quart of soda, and end it with a whole pizza with the works for a bedtime snack. Mother and son tried every new diet that came along, "but after a few days, we'd reward ourselves with a chocolate cake. Then we'd call for a pizza and that would be it." |
One word comes to mind here, and it's gluttony.
I try to tell myself eating this much could be an actual medical problem, but I don't believe it very strongly... |
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| Izzy |
| quote: | Originally posted by Shakka
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i guess you missed my post! you better run now mister, and run fast!
:whip: |
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| tathi |
| what s me is i eat soo much and i never weigh more than 40kgs :whip: |
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| Izzy |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
what s me is i eat soo much and i never weigh more than 40kgs :whip: |
there's your problem mate, your ting too often. hold it in a bit :toothless |
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| tathi |
| hey, only ossies can use the word 'mate' :whip: |
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