480-Pound Woman Dies After Six Years On Couch

[PurdueWx80]

Eww.

Hey Shawn - do you guys have special beds for morbidly obese people like that in the ER? My mom is an OR nurse in Southern Indiana (w/ it's fair share of huge people) and they had to get a half-ton capacity bed because regular beds couldn't hold people any longer.

[JQ Public]

yeh i heard people are so fat that they have to get giant coffins for them to lay in when they die. weird stuff.

but yeh galveston...i meant before she died.

[Hurricaneman]

That is one of the grossest stories ive ever heard

[GalvestonDuck]

Eww.

Hey Shawn - do you guys have special beds for morbidly obese people like that in the ER? My mom is an OR nurse in Southern Indiana (w/ it's fair share of huge people) and they had to get a half-ton capacity bed because regular beds couldn't hold people any longer.

Yes, there are special beds and special wheelchairs. However, for the patient we had, they didn't bring in the bed (it wasn't always kept in the ER). We used a standard stretcher.

The wheelchairs are just wider and a bit sturdier than regular ones. The beds, however, were butt-ugly monstrosities.

[PurdueWx80]

The beds, however, were butt-ugly monstrosities.

HAHAHAHAHA....

[george_r_1961]

Wonder why some peeps let themselves get that extremely obese? ...

Eric

The problem with many obese people is for some reason their brain tells them they are hungry when they do not need food. I dont think anyone is morbidly obese by choice. This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the medical profession since obesity kills untold numbers of people worldwide.

[gtalum]

The problem with many obese people is for some reason their brain tells them they are hungry when they do not need food. I dont think anyone is morbidly obese by choice. This is an issue that needs to be addressed by the medical profession since obesity kills untold numbers of people worldwide.

High Fructose Corn Syrup. That stuff is evil. It messes with the part of your brain that tells you when you're full, meaning that it takes more calories before you feel like you've had enough. It's in almost eveyr low-cost sweetened item we ingest. It's just one of the many reasons to stop federal corn subsidies now.

If nothing else, switch it to soy subsidies to incent the manufacturing of biodiesel.

[bevgo]

I worked with morbidly obese patients for about 5 years. They dont feel full like normal people do. I had many patients tell me about the amounts of food they would consume--one man could eat 6 big mac combos--supersized--and still not feel full. It is really sad. My largest patient was 775 lbs. He was still able to walk but I don't know how. He had gastric bypass surgery and lost 100 lbs in 30 days. The last time I saw him he was a tiny 400 lbs and could even climb stairs.

It is heartbreaking to hear something like this when ther are treatments out there. These people are not like this by choice and have a very hard life. Did you know that hospital bed hydralics will not work correctly after a patient exceeds 350 lbs.
Special surgical tables are needed and you cannot have a MRI ot CT scan after 360 lbs cause the table will not hold the weight and the hole--even in an open MRI is just not big enough. A chest x-ray is almost impossible because the beam will not penetrate.

This is just so sad.