Man Who Weighed 1,000 Pounds Down to 400
Neighbors Say He Must Have 'Lost Some Weight'.
Patrick Deuel, who once weighed more than 1,000 pounds, has lost
another 81 pounds in a surgery that removed a mass of fat and skin
hanging from his midsection.
"He's doing well," said Dr. Fred Harris, who performed the surgery
Tuesday.
The mass, called a pannus, made it difficult for Deuel, 43, of
Valentine, Neb., to walk.
Surgery to remove it had been scheduled for January, but the procedure
was postponed when Deuel got the flu.
With the surgery, Deuel now weighs about 400 pounds.
He could lose even more through exercise, said Harris.
"But if Patrick never lost another pound, I'd be a happy camper," Harris
said.
When Deuel came to Sioux Falls for gastric bypass surgery in 2004, he
weighed 1,072 pounds. An emergency required that medical EMT workers or
'first responders' try to assist him at his home.
He was so large his bedroom wall had to be cut out to extract him from
his home. He was rushed to the hospital in an 'ambulance' with
extra-wide doors and a ramp-and-winch system that had to be dispatched
from Denver. The 'ambulance' which conveyed him from his home to the
hospital gave more the appearance of being a semi-trailer truck; when
the medic-responders got him out of his house, the ramp-and-winch was
used to hoist him up and into the semi-trailer truck. It then followed
the 'ambulance' and the procedure went in reverse when they got to the
hospital, where the winch lowered him, a loading dock and freight
elevator took him to a room.
Gastric bypass surgery, a stomach stapling procedure, was thought to be his
best chance for permanent weight loss.
Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just imagine having that much fat on
yourself! Do any older readers here recall a fellow who was known
on television in the late 1940's and early 1950's as "Two-Ton Baker".
He sold automobiles for some car dealer on the north side of Chicago,
played the piano as part of his routine, and I do not know which was
more obvious: his Obnoxiousness or his Fatness. Two-Ton would sit at
the keyboard to play and sing about the cars for sale at the used car
dealer where he worked; his stomach would quiver like a bowl full of
jelly, he would laugh and from time to time would say 'come on up
to your screen and give old Two-Ton a great big kiss.' Then the
camera would close in on him puckering his lips and slobbering at
the viewers. I think his name was a misnomer; he did not weight 4800
pounds (two tons) but he did weigh about five or six hundred pounds.
It was a disgusting performance, but I guess it sold used cars back in
the 1950's; he was on television several years until he died, probably
from all that fat. PAT]
Associated Press News Wire (ap@telecom-digest.org)