Tasteless…yes…
but the image made me laugh.
Usually not, but a small number of women do end up with a little pouch that will not go away. It’s not fatty, it’s just excess skin. This is more common among women who have had several pregnancies close together, or who have had twins or higher. The reason you haven’t heard of it is because most of them are embarrassed as hell about it and get surgery as soon as they can.
Skin is better at stretching out than it is at snapping back - another indication that Mother Nature is a nasty bitch who refuses to let us adapt to modern society. But I digress.
Little Bird these people in your care, people you had to look after - they were ILL. It was your responsibilty to to take care of them, not pass judgement.
Fuck you. Were you in their heads? Do you think they were happy like this? And even if they were, so freakin’ what? They weren’t there to entertain you, they were there because they needed help, and you’ve just ridiculed them openly because they were ill. Nice.
Fran
And I don’t play one on TV, but, Little Bird,what if, instead of being morbidly obese overeaters, these two women were obsessive-compulsive handwashers? Would it make you sick to your stomach to watch them wash their hands till they bled? Even if it did, would you be repulsed, or piteous? If someone has an emotional issue which makes them constantly cut themselves with razor blades or broken glass, we give the issue a lot of study, give the phenomena a latin name, and create a support group. If someone has an emotional issue and they deal with it via lots of comfort food, we say “Hey, look at the fat guy! hahaha!!!”
And Scylla, whatever your sis-in-law’s problems are, I commend you for being supportive though it disturbs you. Instead of sitting there in your fit body and mind thinking to yourself "This woman was overweight because she ate junk, and ate a lot of it, and never exercised. " think of the other thread you started- about whether clinically depressed people are that way because they don’t excercise- and open your mind to the possibility that you have the causality way, way wrong- that it isn’t that depressed people are that way because they don’t excercise, but that they don’t or can’t excercise, or “eat right”, because they are depressed. Maybe sis-in-law was molested as a child. maybe she’s just never been given any self-worth by those around her. Maybe she’s been told all her life that she’s fat, lazy, and has no value. I’m here to tell you from personal experience, that nobody but nobody overindulges in “comfort foods” without a damned good reason.
b.
The necessity for extra skin after extreme weight loss is probably pretty common. I know I’ve heard on the news of at least 3 people who have “donated” the excess skin that was removed to burn centers, who used it for skin grafts for burn victims.
You know, until you’ve had to deal with people with certain problems you just don’t know. Know what? YES, I AM REPULSED MY MENTAL DISORDERS. OC’s who wash their hands until they bleed - yes, that’s disgusting. People who slice themselves - yes, that makes my stomach churn. People who can’t stop fucking eating until they drown in their own fat - yes, that is repulsive. Depressed people piss me off, too. Schizophrenics totally creep me out. Fuck it if you can’t deal with my confession, but at least give me points for honesty.
On the other hand - I can be repulsed and still have sympathy and try to help people. Just as I find pus oozing out of a wound or 3rd degree burns repulsive (and yes, I have seen both first hand), digusting or nauseating but I would NEVER hold this against the person suffering, I do not mistake the mental disorder for the person. But even the most sympathetic person, if he or she has to work with such people every day, will eventually run low on compassion and have to VENT their disgust in some forum AWAY FROM the ill person in order to preserve their own sanity. Which is, to my mind, what Little Bird was doing - expressing frustration at having to cope with someone else’s illness. Little Bird was NOT laughing at these women, she was pissed off at them because no matter what was done to help them it didn’t work. That is completely different than mocking someone for being ill.
Sometimes, the last thing people like this need is pity.
It’s sad, and more than that, it’s scary. To have to be constantly hooked up to oxygen and be in danger of suffocating in your own body fat-that is damn fucking scary.
And it’s NOT FUCKING HEALTHY. It’s one thing to be understanding of mental disorders-it’s quite another to simply stand back and watch, or to actually HELP these poor women into an early grave.
what about watching someone drink or smoke (legal stimulants, the both) themselves into the grave? theres no difference as far as i can see.
sounds like your basic advanced/end-stage addiction. The leaving las vegas of overeating.
This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. How nice to know that someone can put their obesity behind them and help others in the process.
My Mother had such a surgery. Her stomach was reduced to a 4 oz pouch. Even after 3 years or so, if she consumes more than 4 ounces of food in one sitting, she vomits. A hard row to hoe for someone who likes food a whole lot.
She still has quite a bit of excess skin - but it does seem to have shrunken up since I first met her, about 7 months after her surgery. I think the HUGE SCAR up the middle of her abdomen, which neatly parts it into 2 flaps, exagerates it.
I don’t know if she’s planning on having it removed or not. She seems more concerned about staying active and keeping the weight off. She does watch her diet and has hugely increased her activity level - playing sports, riding her bike, hiking, swimming - doing things she wasn’t able to do for a very long time.
My boss had gastric bypass about 3 years ago. She went from just over 300 lbs. down to somewhere around 140-150 lbs. for a “maintenance” weight. She looks pretty unhealthy too. Her eyes always look sunken. Every day at some point, she’ll say something about regretting what she’s just eaten because it hurts her stomach. IANAD, and I’m unsure if it’s related, but her lupus seemed to kick into high gear after the surgery as well. Health implications aside, her arms, legs, and stomach look hideous - way worse than they did when she was extremely overweight. They’re all wrinkly and baggy (imagine elephant skin). She seems happier, though, and more self-confident than before, but she’s pretty self-conscious about the way she looks now too. I’ve heard her talk about having surgery to remove the excess around her abdomen.
I’ve always thought that people who choose to do something so radical for weight control would have to feel really desperate. It’s very risky from what I’ve heard from my boss, and pretty tough to recuperate afterward.
It is, in effect, the same operation you would have if you had stomach cancer.
A friend of mine DID have stomach cancer, and by what turned out to be a happy coincidence, he was north of 350 at the time. Between the surgery and the cancer, he’s lost about 140 pounds. (The coincidence was happy because had he been a slim person, he very well might have died).
The operation is brutal. Absolutely brutal, whether done for weight or cancer. You have no stomach to speak of, you can barely eat anything, you become ill exptremely easily, your body is not getting adequate nutrition so you have to supplement, and you’re stuck with the situation for your entire life. Some people don’t suffer as badly and normalize after a few years, but often such people tend to get fat again.
I am morbidly obese and I have never even been tempted. It’s too high a price to pay. But then, I’m active, I swim, I do yoga and pilates, lift wieghts, I walk, I have a great sex life, so even though it sucks a great deal, it’s not degrading my quality of life to the point where I’m willing to suffer like that. If I weighed 450 pounds and was barely able to move, it might be a different story.
I’d much rather take 3 years to lose 150 pounds slowly, taking care of my body and becoming fit, and hopefully preventing * some * of the skin sag, than go through this hell to end up a year from now looking like a Shar-pei with AIDS. At my age (43), while I am certainly not without vanity, my concerns about my weight are primarily about my health and fitness, and the people who take this agonizing and radical shortcut have rarely struck me as being either healthy or fit.
And Scylla, I sort of understand your annoyance. When people go on and on about how Carnie Wilson has finally “done something” about her obesity, I get irritated. Yeah, she had * radical fucking surgury to rewire her guts. * I don’ think it appropriate for her to feel pride or for others to feel admiration. Compassion, sympathy with her desperation, but that’s about it.
stoid
(Possible TMI) A retired surgeon who’s a family friend used the following rule of thumb:
:eek::eek::eek:
Thank you Broomstick. 
It’s nice to see someone who understands that I was just blowing off steam. This is the pit, is it not?
And Fran? I was not there to take care of them, I was there to cook for them. Nice, healthy, home-cooked Iowa meals. It was a retirement home, not assisted living. No hard feelings? Please?
Sorry, Broom, sorry bird, I guess my post could easily be misconstrued, I in no way intended to make it seem that you were laughing at these people, I was making a generalization (a relatively true one) and should have made that clearer.
Sorry also for the late reply, I’ve been in a hole in the ground for a week…
As for “Fuck it if you can’t deal with my confession, but at least give me points for honesty.”, OK, you get ten points for honesty. Believe me, nobody understands venting like I do. Just cut us loonies some slack, OK? we can’t be held wholly responsible for what the imbalanced chemicals in our heads often makes us do…
b.
Reading over all this again has made me think of when I was pregnant with flod2k. I had hyperemesis, which is medspeak for a tendency to toss my cookies several times a day. I spent most of my time in bed; with the help of some medicine I was able to keep enough fluids in me to prevent dehydration, thus keeping me out of the hospital, but eating was difficult since the constant nausea had also completely killed my appetite. I felt like hell and I’m sure I looked it, too; fella bilong missus flodnak very kindly made sure nobody took any photos of me during that period of time.
But damned if people didn’t feel compelled to point out a silver lining. No, not the silver lining that I would after all have a lovely baby at the end of all this (which was what kept me going). The silver lining was this: “Well, at least it’s one way to slim down, right?”
And there I was too weak to strangle them :mad:
People are so obsessed with thinness that some of them don’t seem to realize that weight loss and goodness are not synonyms.