These days it is considered rude to not view obesity as a disease or an affliction that the person is a victim of. All I can say to that is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people and spoons don’t make you fat, you do.
While I can sympathise with how difficult being obese can make a person’s life and understand that they may need help to lose weight it is not generally a disease or an affliction out of a person’s control.
When I see a person so huge that they are bedridden I only ask myself one question. Who is the enabler who is feeding this bedridden person a diet that keeps them bedridden?
I have followed the story of one seriously obese woman called Marya Rosales who was enabled by her husband. He cared for her while continuing to feed her huge amounts of food as she lay bedridden. When she lost weight and had many operations in order to become a normal size again the marriage fell apart.
I thought about her story when I read the article on RNZ with the headline “Obese patients stuck in hospital because nowhere suitable for discharge”
I also thought about what my friend recently told me about her months-long stay in the hospital where beside her was a very lovely woman who was bedridden due to her size. My friend told me how the doctors and nurses attempted to help the patient but were undermined by both the patient and her family who every day turned up to the hospital bringing her massive bottles of coke and boxes of KFC.
In the end, the doctors had to discharge her knowing that she would be back soon as neither she nor her family was prepared to do anything to improve her health. I was gobsmacked that the hospital did not have the authority to tell the families to not bring unhealthy food or to control their patient’s diet.
I think that the enablers who feed seriously ill obese people unhealthy food should be prosecuted for endangering their health. I also think that just as anorexics have to be hospitalised in order to get their weight back up, seriously ill obese people should have their diet strictly controlled inside the hospital, otherwise what on earth is the point?
We wouldn’t let a drug addict shoot up inside his hospital ward so why on earth do we allow sick obese people to eat KFC?