Major Feat Of Logistics To Get A Fat Person To Hospital

[Deskdiary]

What are people's thoughts on this? Sympathy? Contempt? Outrage at the cost?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3061199/Woman-dubbed-Britain-s-fattest-teenager-lifted-home-crane-emergency-services-seven-hour-operation-taken-hospital.html

I'm swaying towards contempt because of the self-inflicted nature of her 'condition', and outrage because of the money her addiction is costing us (certainly if this amount of money was spent on a smoker there would be no sympathy, and I simply do not see a difference).

[naomi24]

//she attended a £3,600-a-month diet academy in the U.S - dubbed 'Fat Camp' - for nine months,//

I wonder who funded that?

//…her daughter had started comfort eating after her husband Geoff died when Miss Davis was five.//

The girl didn’t become overweight at five – she was fat as a toddler.

My sympathy is with the tax-payer. She’s a drain on society.

[Sycamore3House]

People like this are a drain on society as they have done this to themselves. Cut their benefits so that they cannot order 20 kebabs a week. I work and I could not afford 20 kebabs a week let alone eat them all. It makes a mockery of the NHS when this money could be spent on cancer patients, transplants and anything else that has not been self inflicted that people need treating.

[Sqad]

\\\\What are people's thoughts on this? \\\

Sympathy....total sympathy.......fat people don't like being fat.

The cause of obesity is simple.....eating too much.

The management and cause is far more complicated.

Medical conditions play a totally insignificant part in the causes of obesity, psychological and genetic aspects are by far the main causes.

How do you manage these cases....I have no idea, but i do know that diets don't work.

So..........I have sympathy for these people.

[Gromit]

A certain degree of sympathy. She must lead a very miserable life.

Her medical condition is self inflicted and a drain on resources, but the same can be said of the millions of smokers and drinkers who fill our hospitals.

[jackthehat]

Firstly, I think the family needs to be moved to a more easily accessible house so that any future 'extractions' do not cause as much disruption for her neighbours.

Secondly, there needs to be some sort of 'intervention' with this woman.....and her mother. I'm not generally in favour of a 'Nanny state' but saving her from herself (and her mother) should, surely, result in her improved health and less reliance on all the agencies who have precious time and resources diverted during crises like this.

[sp1814]

Deskdiary

I sway towards sympathy.

My reasoning?

A smoker can quote cigarettes.

A drug addict can quit coke/heroin/weed.

An alcoholic can quit booze.

These are all binary situations (either you do, or your don't).

Someone with a food addiction has to regulate that addiction...they cannot 'quit food'. It's like telling a heroin addict, "You can shoot up, but only once a month...".

However, another part of me agrees with your smoker analogy. If a long term smoker was diagnosed with cancer, I would feel sympathy.

But if he continued to smoke, that sympathy would evaporate.

[lindapalmara]

This is the second time the emergency services have done this at huge cost to the tax payer. Her Mother is just as much to blame. Somebody is providing this food and she hasn't been out of the house for 3 years. Cut the benefits so she can't spend it on food.

[woofgang]

lets also stop treating sports injuries and the problems of pregnancy, surely those are also self inflicted....accidents caused by DIY....road traffic accidents where the injured person is at fault......

[naomi24]

No one has suggested she shouldn’t be treated.

[youngmafbog]

There's always one.

Self inflicted - no sympathy.

[jourdain2]

I gathered that she fell and that was the reason for the whole operation. If that is the case, why could a team not get her upright again in her own home? They must have done so to lift her out. This is, after all, the second time.

I appreciate all the pressures on her, but if she is constrained to inhabit just her own 4 walls then it should be possible to restrict her food intake - just don't deliver any more than she actually needs.

All in all, I think she needs to be properly helped and this waste of money stopped.

[Jackdaw33]

//But she said she had later made a determined effort to change their diets – such as making her own chips instead of buying them from the takeaway.//

You can't say she hasn't tried!

[askyourgran]

Sounds like ignorance to me. "She made made an effort to change her diet, like making chips at home instead of buying them from a take-away"!

Something should be done about her condition now that it has reached this point. I haven't much sympathy for her, but like the smokers the drinkers and druggies, all human frailities are with us every day - these extreme examples need to be taken seriously - she needs putting into rehab. and made to diet.