Obese Woman Dragged From Home, Hauled Away After Death

[Kookaburra]

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/19517549/detail.html

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Marion County Coroner's Office has come under fire after it was revealed that an obese woman was dragged from her home and hauled away on a trailer in front of family members following her death.

My question is- in the article, a person from the coroner's office says, "He said that fire and medical personnel have equipment available for handling patients up to 1,000 pounds and that moving obese individuals is not all that rare of an occurrence."

Your thoughts? Do your departments move bodies when requested? Local departments will not transport DOA's at all.

My thoughts: This is going to be a more and more common occurrence, why doesn't the coroner's office have the equipment to do this? Why should the fire department have to come out and get the body?

Also, there are people in the comments saying you don't get that obese just from overeating - what medical conditions would cause that sort of weight gain?

 

[Crimson Ghost]

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/19517549/detail.html



My question is- in the article, a person from the coroner's office says, "He said that fire and medical personnel have equipment available for handling patients up to 1,000 pounds and that moving obese individuals is not all that rare of an occurrence."

Your thoughts? Do your departments move bodies when requested? Local departments will not transport DOA's at all.

My thoughts: This is going to be a more and more common occurrence, why doesn't the coroner's office have the equipment to do this? Why should the fire department have to come out and get the body?

Also, there are people in the comments saying you don't get that obese just from overeating - what medical conditions would cause that sort of weight gain?

did they say a cause of death?

 

[Kookaburra]

Nope. No info on any medical conditions.

 

[Aidey]

We don't touch DOAs after they've been declared, I'm not sure what the FDs policy is.

 

[VentMedic]

My thoughts: This is going to be a more and more common occurrence, why doesn't the coroner's office have the equipment to do this? Why should the fire department have to come out and get the body?

FDs are often involved in body recovery for various situations such as fires, entrapment or community hazard such as an obese person in a building or many dead people washing up on a beach (common to South Florida). A dead rotting body is not a good public health situation.

Here is a recent story from California:
Firefighters remove 800-pound body from hotel

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/articles/2009/05/20/20090520poundbody.html

From Florida,
At least 11 dead after boat capsizes off Boynton Beach in Florida

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sfl-boynton-boat-p051309,0,7080428.story

Also, there are people in the comments saying you don't get that obese just from overeating - what medical conditions would cause that sort of weight gain?

Many things from metabolic to psychological or a combination of both. Some young children are found to have eating disorders so severe the refrigerator and cabinets must be locked at all times.

Often the psychological factors also have much to do with the person's enablers. A person may be constantly fed by someone who believes that is the way of showing love. Also, how many times have you heard parents tell their young kids to eat everything on their plates if they love their mommy and daddy? Children can become conditioned to eating for what they believe is love. Also, as adults, enablers may over feed their spouses for their own security issues or the need to be needed.

 

[Sasha]

One thing to remember is that not everyone carries weight the same. Equipment capable of carrying up to 1,000 pounds do not take into account things like where the body mass is accumulated.

Have you worked with an LBS stretcher before? It's capable of carrying massive weight, but it's only two inches wider and some people still do not fit. The stretcher is capable of supporting their weight, but they just don't fit.

Also, could they fit their equipment into the house? Was this low income housing that often has narrow doors, tight corners and not a lot of room? Or was it an affluent neighborhood with lots of steps and stairs and knicknacks cluttering up the hallway? It's better to drag someone out on a mattress than to start destroying the home by cutting walls and doorways.

Here's it's acceptable to use a tarp to drag an obese patient out of their house, I've seen it once.

It's not kind nor respectful, but sometimes kindness must give way to necessity, especially with someone who is obese and completely dead weight.

 

[DrankTheKoolaid]

re

Typically we normally wait on scene, or have VFD remain on scene to assist funeral home if needed. Especially with the larger bodies.

As to the question on weight gain, thats a qood question. i know thyroid and a few other conditions will causes weight gain, but not to this extreme. Plain and simple it's hand to mouth disease, worsened when the start wearing the knees out and are no longer mobille. If they ant get up to feed themselves beause of weight, simply stop feeding them and they WILL get up to feed themselves and burn calories

 

[Sasha]

Typically we normally wait on scene, or have VFD remain on scene to assist funeral home if needed. Especially with the larger bodies.

As to the question on weight gain, thats a qood question. i know thyroid and a few other conditions will causes weight gain, but not to this extreme. Plain and simple it's hand to mouth disease, worsened when the start wearing the knees out and are no longer mobille. If they ant get up to feed themselves beause of weight, simply stop feeding them and they WILL get up to feed themselves and burn calories

It's a shame people are so ignorant minded on other people's weight gain. Did you ever consider perhaps that in your vast medical knowledge perhaps you have just not come across the disease or disorder that would cause such drastic weight gain, and that it's not just simply a "hand to mouth" disease?

 

[VentMedic]

If they ant get up to feed themselves beause of weight, simply stop feeding them and they WILL get up to feed themselves and burn calories

That is where the enablers come in. There are many reasons to cause a patient to over eat which are medical. Once the brain is receiving abnormal signals from tumors or injuries, overeating can occur. Those TBIs you treat in EMS may one day be that size.

Medical Causes

Pituitary gland disease
Pituitary gland tumor
Pituitary gland cancer
Underactive thyroid
Prader-Willi syndome
Syndrome X
Stein-leventhal syndrome
Laurence-Moo-Biedle syndrome
Frohlich syndrome
Edema
Some brain tumors
Familial history
Craniopharyngioma (type of Brain Cancer)
Pseudohypoparathyroidism
Chromophobe adenoma
Encephalitis
Comfort eating (and Overeating)
Reactive hypoglycemia (type of Hypoglycemia) - overeating occurs to avoid going "down" into a hypoglycemic attack.
Hypothalamus tumor
Brain injuy
Third ventricle tumor
hypothyroidism
Cushing's disease
diabetes
steroids
anti-psychotics
anti-depressants
seizure medications
some diabetes medications.

 

[Epi-do]

I am not saying that the way this situation was handled was appropriate, because it is not. However, I do want to comment about why the FD did not assist with the body.

While IFD does remove bodies from vehicles involved in MVCs or house fires, they do not assist in the transport of bodies for the coroner in Indianapolis. It just isn't department policy. The FD has just recently acquired a small number of ambulances as different townships have merged with IFD, so depending upon where in the city this run took place, IFD may not have even had an ambulance. For Center Township, the majority of IFDs coverage area, 911 EMS transporting units are provided by the county hospital. I spent just over 3 years working for that ambulance service and can say that they do not transport bodies for the coroner either.

However, there are private service ambulances in the city that do have bariatric trucks. Why the coroner's office did not contact one of them and request they do the transport is beyond me. It seems that would have been the most appropriate/dignified way to move the body to the morgue.

 

[VentMedic]

None of our FD or private ambulances will be used in the transport of the dead body(s) but the FFs will assist in the recovery of that body. There have been a couple of occasions where the ME has used a van or truck with a life get the body moved. It also depends on the condition of the body when found as to the best method for transporting or the circumstances of the death. You want to do as little damage to the body as possible. Sometimes when a body had been lying in a hot trailer for several days, extricating/transporting an intact body can be challenging.

This is the downside to being a FF in Florida.

 

[Aidey]

Here's it's acceptable to use a tarp to drag an obese patient out of their house, I've seen it once.

It's not kind nor respectful, but sometimes kindness must give way to necessity, especially with someone who is obese and completely dead weight.

Here that is an option to. The FDs all carry the large orange tarps with handles around the edges. If there is a large person that can not get up, but you can't get the gurney to them, they are rolled on the tarp and dragged to the gurney.

Like you said, it's not kind or respectful, but there aren't always any other options besides destroying the house.

 

[Kookaburra]

Would the private ambulances even be able to take the person? They would have to charge her family, and have no way of getting reimbursed. I doubt insurance or Medicare would pay for the removal of a body.

 

[CAOX3]

Here that is an option to. The FDs all carry the large orange tarps with handles around the edges. If there is a large person that can not get up, but you can't get the gurney to them, they are rolled on the tarp and dragged to the gurney.

Like you said, it's not kind or respectful, but there aren't always any other options besides destroying the house.

Is rolling and dragging somebody really ever an option?

Especially a sick or injured person.

 

[Aidey]

If someone is somewhere you can't get your gurney/cot/stairchair, and they are too large to pick up without that mechanical assistance what are your other options?

And I can't foresee ever rolling a patient (unless they were on fire! j/k j/k....), but dragging I've had to do before, and I'm sure I'll have to do again.

 

[Sasha]

Is rolling and dragging somebody really ever an option?

Especially a sick or injured person.

How would you propose getting a very obese person out of a small house with narrow hallways and tight corners that you can not manuever a stretcher into?

 

[karaya]

Here that is an option to. The FDs all carry the large orange tarps with handles around the edges. If there is a large person that can not get up, but you can't get the gurney to them, they are rolled on the tarp and dragged to the gurney.

Like you said, it's not kind or respectful, but there aren't always any other options besides destroying the house.

I've experienced this myself several years ago. Consider this to get a better understanding what the FD is dealing with. Take a full size double-door refrigerator and lay it down on the floor on its back. Now try to maneuver the refrigerator out a door, around corners, down halls, etc. and you will quickly see why the FD was forced to remove walls. By the way, the average weight of a refrigerator is half that of the man the FD needed to remove.

 

[Aidey]

Oh! I see where you got rolling CAOx3, and by that I meant rolling onto the tarp the same way we roll someone onto a backboard.

 

[Hockey]

did they say a cause of death?

Her heart stopped





Sorry, had to say it

 

[Jon]

How would you propose getting a very obese person out of a small house with narrow hallways and tight corners that you can not manuever a stretcher into?

Take a window. Enlarge a door. Make a hole in a wall.

I've heard of using rental trucks with lifts in the back for moving patients interfacility. That could have worked this time, too. Using a flatbed truck is in poor taste.

Also... Although the County Coroner does all transports, we've had occasions where we've done the transport because we already had the body in the ambulance when we ceased resuscitation efforts.

The M.E. should have gotten additional assistance.