Fat, sick, nearly dead – what if you’ve gained 160 kg?
Dear Doctor! I read your articles. I turn to you as my last hope. My vertebrae are coming apart, I can hardly move and no one helps. The rheumatologist won’t even examine me anymore and didn’t give me any pain relief. My GP talks about surgery, which I’m terrified of on the one hand, and on the other hand I can’t afford. Please, if you could help me so I could walk down the street once more without a walker, I would be extremely grateful.
Why aren’t they examining you?
My back hurts a lot, but they just tell me to lose weight. I am 160 kg at 165 cm.
Oh…no wonder doctors run away. Your body was designed for roughly 55 kg. Instead you are carrying the weight of two adult women on your shoulders! One sits on one shoulder, the other on the other shoulder.
The strongest showmen, record-holding male weightlifters can lift at most about three times their own body weight…for a moment, and then they drop it…
And you have been carrying this burden for years. While sleeping, sitting, walking. And you cannot put it down for even a moment.
How did you get into this situation? How did you gain so much weight?
After a tragedy I ended up in a situation where food was the only happiness for me. And I just kept gaining and gaining. Now I’ve reached the point where I have no strength left. If I could regain some strength that would help a lot.
Unfortunately doctors do not possess miracle-working powers. You can free yourself from overweight only and exclusively by your own efforts. There is no doctor, miracle drug, magic gadget, or operation that can do it for you.
I can give a few pieces of advice about what to pay attention to and what to do. Be prepared that this will be very hard and lengthy. Strengthen your willpower. Because only that gives you a chance!
I am very despondent, I have often thought about suicide.
Lonely?
Very…
A little reasoning based on the above
What can a doctor do in such cases?
What advice can be given to a person left alone, crippled by their own body weight, unable to work and therefore catastrophically impoverished?
Can a doctor even notice a mentally rooted illness when a hundred people are sitting in the waiting room?
And if they notice it, what can they do? Loneliness, the lack of love, touch and embrace cannot be replaced by any pill or operation, and psychological help is not free either.
Shedding 100 kilos takes years even for someone who is able to exercise. But someone who has made themselves incapable of moving???
Gastric band surgery costs well over one million forints. There is no subsidy for it. But is it a solution if someone finds pleasure only in eating?
What should social solidarity cover? Should we rescue those who fell into such a situation through their own fault?
Should an alcoholic be given another liver instead of the one they "drank to ruin"?
Can we save everyone? Can we even save everyone?
Do we have to save everyone at all?
Is there a limit? Moral? Financial? Other?
I won’t deceive anyone. I don’t know the answers to my own questions…but perhaps they’re worth thinking about a little.
