Posted on 12/31/2007 3:55:17 PM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
Renee Williams became the largest person ever to have gastric bypass surgery earlier this year after ballooning to nearly seventy stone but died 12 days later.
The bedridden 29-year-old begged doctors to perform the operation when she became so large that she couldn't hug her two children.
Her astonishing size meant that the operating table had to be specially widened for the procedure.
The operation was successful and Renee lost four stone due to her reduced stomach capacity before dying of a sudden heart attack less than two weeks later. Her story is told in a Channel 4 programme next week.
Renee, from Austin, Texas, had battled with her weight since childhood and was classified as super-morbidly obese at the age of 12.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The surgery in the OP's article is also provided for by our tax dollars here in the states if the recipient is a deadbeat or a dreg.
Unbelievable.
You can tell she had the proverbial pretty face, as they often say about large women - but it’s true from what I see in the photo. What a shame.
That’s what I wondered - if she was bedridden, then SHE wasn’t the one bringing the food to the bed. It would have been the perfect time for someone to intervene with a strict, healthy diet. It’s tough to regulate the diet of a person who won’t eat properly, but it would have been cheaper and probably more effective than the operation that eventually killed her...
I'm actually the heaviest person in my family, at 182 pounds. A year and a half ago, I was only 145 pounds.
(no, it wasn't the cheeseburgers)
Puberty?
No, it’s what the Army has done to me!! :-) I gained 30 pounds in Basic Training, 5 pounds in AIT, and 5 pounds here in Germany. Aside from the gain in Germany, it’s all muscle.
Note to self: must stick to New Year's diet resolution.
Sure beats being a 97 pound weakling...
“Somehow I don’t think she was going to live very long either way. I guess I can understand people gradually ballooning up to 250, 300 pounds over the course of their lives. 980 pounds - and only 25 years old? I don’t think so. I don’t know if she had some underlying cause for her weight gain, but I will take a guess and say that she was eating more than necessary. Surely by time she reached 400 pounds someone should have come in and stopped her weight gain. There is something mentally and/or physically wrong with you if you gain that much weight.
I’m actually the heaviest person in my family, at 182 pounds. A year and a half ago, I was only 145 pounds.”
I think there’s a tipping point, where your blood chemistry and metabolism is just completely out of control, and your body just gets over efficient at storing fat. Also, those morbidly obsese can have a significant amount of weight added from fluid buildup in their bodies, a lot of times they experience massive weight loss when the fluids drain. These people are in conditions that have nothing similar to someone who’s 20,40 even 100 lbs overweight, this is massive abuse of the body and the effects are widespread, it takes more than just cutting a few meals to tackle their situations.
Having said that, she probably did have enablers. Any documentaries I’ve seen about the morbidly obsese generally hints heavily at a spouse or family enabling them. Not all, but many of them. She had kids, who were probably the ones who later on fed her. Most of them lose weight when put in calorie controlled environments, so it’s a behavioral problem most of the time, IMHO. I suspect they have emotional damages similar to anorexics and cutters, it just maniftests itself through insatiable appetites and a refusal to care for themselves, an almost psychotic inability to control their eating or weight gain.
Shame she had to die, so young, sad for her kids. I hope they don’t have similar issues later on, eating disorders can be learned at the feet of mom and dad very easily. I sometimes wonder if it’s suicide by the fork, as opposed to the knife.
Because, I suppose, "morbidly obese" wasn't descriptive enough...
REading the story, turns out it was a mixture of things:
She had a car wreck that destroyed her leg, and she could’nt walk. Add in a healthy diet of medications, and depression, and you get lots of extra weight.
She was said to eat 8 hamburgers at a sitting. Enablers.
She said she’d eat until it hurt. There’s a disease, where you never feel full.
Married at 15, first kid by 16. Emotional trainwreck.
On a side note, I had someone tell me their theory. She said she thought a lot of women from unhappy childhoods and dysfunctional backgrounds will get pregnant and gain massive amounts of weight to drive the father and other people away - they only want the unconditional love of the kids, and shut everyone else out. They become housebound, because they want to be.
Dunno. Could be.
Whenver I see these kinds of stories, I think...
WHO BROUGHT HER ALL THE FOOD?????
Man. Cause and effect. Pretty damn simple.
According to the charts I'm "morbidly obese". Too much weight lifting and wrestling as a kid...
Did this lady have parents? Doesn't seem like anyone was looking out for her at any point in her life. Sad.
I have met women that get depressed and then pound down the ice cream as if to say "since I'm undesireable, I'm going to make myself fat to advertise how undesireable I am."
I have done a lot of reading about parrots and there are birds that pluck themselves nude when they deem themselves unworthy for mating. Same principle, I suppose.
I used to have a neighbor who suffered from lymphedema, was not an overeater, and she was gigantic. Her calves had begun to touch the ground. She got a scratch on her leg that became infected and would not heal. She had also had a virus at the time of this infection. By the time she decided to go to the ER it was too late. She was dehydrated from the virus and went into cardiac arrest at the hospital. The day after she went in they took 25lbs of flesh off her thigh to try and halt the infection but as I said it was too late. She died a few days later.
Why does the image of B. Spears and a shaved head come to mind?
Sometimes being literate has its disadvantages
Poor thing, what a tragic ending.
A prayer for her
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