Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502060068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BARBARA WALSH FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
DATELINE: FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. LENGTH: Long
After 59 years, Carol's heart stopped beating Thursday as she lay in two beds welded together to support her massive body in Memorial Hospital in Hollywood.
Carol knew she would die unless she lost weight.
``I need help,'' she said last week. ``I can't do it on my own. I've tried for 45 years. I keep going up and down. I lose 50 pounds and I gain it back.''
Carol's weight kept her a prisoner in bed the last five years of her life.
Doctors told Carol her vital organs were no longer able to support her bulk - and that a two-year program offered by the Jewish Memorial Hospital in Boston was her only hope.
``She wanted to start her life again,'' said Carol's longtime friend Aline Plante. ``She felt she was young enough to do it. Even the day before she died, she said, `I know I can do it. Please, please take me to Boston.'''
But the Boston hospital wouldn't admit Carol until she could prove that she could pay for at least one year of treatment - at a cost of $550 a day. Trouble was, Carol's Medicare would only cover 60 days of hospital care.
``It's very sad,'' said Hurma Talabi, Carol's social worker with the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.
``We tried very hard to get Carol some help,'' Talabi said. ``She knew that without it, she was going to die.''
It took a dozen emergency workers to move Carol from her trailer park home to Memorial Hospital a week ago Thursday.
``I don't want to die there,'' Carol said as the rescue workers started to move her. ``I want to go to Boston.''
Carol's skin had turned blue from a lack of oxygen, and Talabi feared for her client's life.
Talabi had come to Carol's trailer home while she was in the middle of an interview with the Sun-Sentinel. Carol hoped a story might produce a miracle that would get her admitted to the Boston hospital.
``Publicity is my only hope,'' Carol told the reporter.
The woman filled most of her king-sized bed.
A photograph of Richard Simmons, the TV weight loss king, hung above Carol's bed. ``Dear Carol, please, please don't give up. Hang in there. Love you, Richard,'' Simmons had written on the picture.
``I eat when I'm depressed. I eat when I'm happy. I eat all the time,'' Carol said.
An oxygen tank sat on the floor by her bed, a tube from the tank snaking its way across the bed to Carol's nose.
``My parents were heavy,'' Carol said. ``I started to gain in the seventh grade. I weighed 170 pounds. And by the time I got out of high school I weighed over 200 pounds.''
``In 1965 I was about 315 pounds. Then in 1970 I was 441. I lost weight in a North Carolina hospital. I was down to 300. Then I gained every bit of it back. And that's been the story of my life. I don't know.
``I'd like to weigh 140 or 145,'' she said. ``I have no idea what I weigh now. The last time I was weighed was six to seven years ago. Maybe I weigh 800.''
A registered nurse, Carol had to quit working after more than 20 years because of her weight.
At 10:17 Thursday morning, Carol died alone in her hospital room. A few minutes later, three nurses stood by the door, staring at the woman lying in the middle of two beds welded together.
``What did she die of?'' a visitor asked.
``Morbid obesity,'' a nurse said, drawing a curtain around the huge, still form on the bed.
``I was happy when I was married from 1965 to 1989,'' she said. ``Those were very happy years.''
Her husband Donald, whom she described as a slim man, suffered a heart attack and died in 1989. Several months later, Carol fell and broke her hip. Bedridden from her fall, she weighed more than 600 pounds at the time.
``I've been in bed five years now,'' she said during her interview last week.``A couple of those years, I could still sit at the side of the bed and dangle my legs. I was able to walk a bit but then it got too hard to pull myself up. I can't get my weight up on my legs. I'm completely immobile.''
Carol's dog, Missu, a small gray and black Chinese breed, slept at the bottom of her bed.
``I get up about 8:30 and brush my teeth. That takes me about a half hour.
``Then I eat cereal or a piece of toast. Then I watch television. The talk shows. `The Price is Right' till noon. Then I go to sleep. The afternoon is a bad time. I sleep all afternoon.''
Carol also said she spent time talking with friends on the phone.
``I have a lot of friends,'' Carol said.
Carol spent her last days fighting the pain that came each time 13 hospital workers entered the room to turn her body every two hours.
``She wasn't used to being moved and it hurt her a lot,'' Carol's friend Aline Plante said. ``Carol never cried, but she did a lot of crying her last few days.''
(EDITORS: STORY CAN TRIM HERE)
Carol's neighbor Toni Migliorisi was one of those friends. At 73, Toni did Carol's grocery shopping and visited several times each day. The two had known each other for 17 years.
``Look at this woman,'' Toni said as she patted Carol's arm last week. ``She's been lying on her right arm since Hurricane Andrew.''
It was about 3 in the afternoon when Carol's social worker Hurma Talabi dropped by to see how the newspaper interview was going.
``What she needs is long-term treatment for morbid obesity,'' Hurma told the reporter.``Since last September, we've been trying to figure out how we can get her to Boston.''
Then Hurma noticed Carol's cheeks, fingers and toes had turned blue.
Carol had fallen asleep.
``You feel OK?'' Hurma shouted. ``Do you want me to call 911 to check you out? You look different.''
Carol stirred.
``No. I'm fine,'' Carol murmured. ``I don't want to go to the hospital. They'll keep me in there.''
``Carol, please let me call 911 to see if everything is OK,'' Hurma said.
``OK. But don't let them take me to the hospital,'' Carol whispered from behind her oxygen tube.
Two Emergency Medical Service workers responded to Hurma's call.
``She should go to the hospital,'' one rescue worker told Hurma. ``She has a bluish tint to her lips, too.''
``She hasn't seen a doctor for over a year, but she doesn't want to go to the hospital,'' Hurma said.
The EMS workers called for more men to move Carol while Hurma tried to reassure the woman.
``What is it you're afraid of?'' Hurma asked. ``That if you go into the hospital, you won't get to go to Boston?''
``Yes,'' Carol said.
``You're not dying,'' Hurma told Carol. ``They'll take you there and check you out. We will continue to work on Boston.''
Moments later, 10 firefighters filled Carol's bedroom.
The only other time Carol had left her bed in five years was in August of 1992 when it took 16 firefighters to get her to the hospital as Hurricane Andrew bore down on South Florida.
``OK,'' Carol said. ``Let's get it over with.''
A firefighter brought a canvas tarpaulin into Carol's bedroom. Then the 10 gathered around her bed.
``You know the routine,'' a firefighter said.
They spread the tarpaulin on the bed beside Carol. Then, on the count of three, they tried to roll Carol onto it.
``Ow, ow, ow. Oh my God. I can't breathe,'' she screamed.
``OK,'' a rescue worker said. ``We're going to try one more time. On the count of three roll her and pull the tarp under. One-two-three go!''
They rolled Carol onto the tarpaulin.
``OK, that's it,'' a firefighter said.
Carol closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
Grabbing the edge of the material, the 10 firefighters lifted Carol off her bed.
They slid her along the floor toward the bedroom door and down a makeshift ramp and onto her lawn.
Then they stopped to rest.
Carol lay on the tarpaulin, staring up at the sun.
Looking at her friend, Toni Migliorisi began to cry.
``They're treating her like an animal,'' she said.
Dozens of neighbors in the trailer park had gathered to watch.
Rested, the firefighter picked up the tarpaulin and eased Carol up another ramp onto the floor of a rescue truck.
``It's not very pretty, but it's the only way we can do it,'' said Gary Peebles, one of the Hollywood firefighters.
Carol's friend Aline Plante rode with her to Memorial Hospital.
At the hospital, the rescue team dragged Carol across the parking lot into the emergency room.
``Is she dead?'' a hospital security guard asked.
The rescue workers rolled Carol onto three mattresses the hospital staff had spread on the floor of an emergency room. Then they left.
Hours passed.
The problem was finding a bed strong enough to hold Carol's weight.
Nurses, doctors and patients stared at Carol as she lay on the emergency room floor.
Carol told her friend Aline to go home. ``I know you're tired,'' Carol said. ``Go.''
``No, I'm staying here with you,'' Aline said.
``Good,'' Carol answered.
``Everybody came to look at her,'' Aline said. ``Everybody asked me, `How'd she get so big?'''
Carol lay on the emergency room floor for more than four hours - waiting until hospital workers brought in a special bed to support her huge body.
In the hospital, Carol was weighed for the first time in years.
Aline was there when a nurse told Carol she weighed 1,023 pounds.
Carol asked Aline to pull the curtain around her bed.
``I don't want anyone to see me,'' Carol said.
Aline stayed with her friend for a while and then cried all the way home.
Then next day she called the Sun-Sentinel to talk about her friend.
``I've tried to watch over her for years,'' Aline told a reporter. ``I'm tired. People looked at her like she's a freak, but Carol is sweet. She's a good person with a big, big heart. Bigger than her size.''
Carol spent her last days fighting the pain that came each time 13 hospital workers entered the room to turn her body every two hours.
``She wasn't used to being moved and it hurt her a lot,'' Carol's friend Aline said. ``Carol never cried, but she did a lot of crying her last few days.''
At 10:17 Thursday morning, Carol died alone in her hospital room. A few minutes later, three nurses stood by the door, staring at the woman lying in the middle of two beds welded together.
``What did she die of?'' a visitor asked.
``Morbid obesity,'' a nurse said, drawing a curtain around the huge, still form on the bed.
by CNB