David Montgomery, a staff writer for the Washington Post, has written a moving and intimate article (registration required) about John Keitz, who weighs 625 pounds (down from his maximum weight of 781 pounds). The article is accompanied by a remarkable set of photographs, which you should be able to link to at the article. Keitz is so heavy his legs will not support his weight. The last time he stood on his feet was Aug. 1, 1998. That night he was making macaroni and cheese for his wife, Gina. He boiled and drained the noodles. Right after he cut in the Velveeta (nutritionists take note), he went down — and he has been bedridden ever since. Keitz is 39 years old. This article presents Keitz as a man of Falstaffian dimensions, who regales the reporter with his exploits as a youth and dreams of the day when he can sit up and even stand up on his own.
Morbid Obesity Personified
Keitz has to lie on his front, because if he were to lie on his back, rolls of flesh would press on his windpipe and suffocate him. His head never touches sheet or pillow. At night, his left cheek nestles upon a soft white pile of shoulder and breast meat.
Every time Keitz must be moved — usually to the hospital to treat his asthma — a major public drama ensues. One time, firefighters removed two windows from his second-story apartment and extracted him with a lift truck. More recently, firefighters used a whale sling from the National Aquarium in Baltimore to haul him out of his house in Dundalk. They put him on a flatbed truck. His ordeal was rehashed on late-night television and morning radio.
Obesity as Illness
At 26, Keitz got the first dramatic warning that his weight was barreling out of control. On the job at a bowling alley, his knees gave out. Doctors diagnosed severe arthritis. He stopped working regularly and began receiving disability checks. I think we can assume that the disability payments were under SSDI and not workers comp.
Montgomery writes that many scientists, doctors and health insurance executives are coming around to the conviction that obesity is a disease. But it is a disease with personal responsibility attached. Advocates for obese people say health care is full of conditions that involve personal choice: smoking; alcoholism; gum disease brought on by poor dental hygiene; skin cancer following too much tanning. Yet obesity is unique in how much blame is placed on the victims themselves. “Once you take off this moral interpretation, it is a dysfunction of the body and an abnormal physiological state,” says Morgan Downey, executive director of the American Obesity Association in Washington.
Workers Comp Risks
I would direct you to the 6th image in the gallery of photos that accompanies the article. (It is sometimes difficult to access Washington Post articles, so I will describe the scene in detail.) Six men from East Coast Ambulance surround Keitz. They have placed a yellow rubber tarp under him. On the count of three, they all lift. You can see the strain on the face of one of the men near to the camera — the faces of the others are obscured in the dim light of the dingy apartment. The men have only the yellow tarp to hold — there are no handles, so the lift places tremendous pressure on their forearms, fingers and wrists. Four of the men are clustered around Keitz’s formidable upper body, so only two are available to lift his lower body. Theoretically, it’s a 105 pound lift for each man. However, Keitz’s great bulk is prone to shifting, so the weight itself may change as they head for the ambulance. Indeed, you can tell from the photo that some of the men bear more weight than others (at least one appears to be “dogging” it). Ergonomically, the lift is far from ideal. Beyond that, there is clutter on the floor — tripping hazards for the men as they begin to move Keitz toward the door. There is no stretcher or gurney in the photo — it appears that they are going to carry him out of the house to the waiting ambulance.
The doorway is of average width. How will the men get through it, when Keitz’s bulk alone will barely fit through? The men at his head will have to squeeze ahead, while trying to keep Keitz from slipping out of the sling. We are left with no answers, as this is the only photo of this particular move. Given the absence of additional details in what is a very comprehensive article, perhaps we can assume that the lift was performed without any problems. No workers comp claims this time. (One hospital client of ours had two serious back injuries in the single lift from an ambulance of a similarly sized person.)
Heavy Issues
Obesity is surely a personal crisis for those who suffer from it, as well as for those who love them. It presents challenges to employers. It is also a crisis for the insurance industry — to pay or not to pay for stomach stapling, that is the question — see this Los Angeles Times article. On the front lines, it’s a huge challenge for health care workers who are called upon to move morbidly obese individuals under very difficult conditions. In the working world, it’s not always possible to perform the work as outlined in the ergonomic textbooks. All too often the workers — and their employers — are left to bear the consequences.
Tags: healthcare workers, illness, lifting, obesity
