Thursday's musings...

Sorry there was no post yesterday.

As usual, I find it very hard to dash off one of these things when I am home and doing stuff there. I realized that now that my little dude is in school, if I take a day off, I can actually get some stuff done between 8:30 and 1:30-ish.

I mean, I washed my car (which hadn’t been done in a dog’s age, honestly) and I did some throwing out of stuff from the garage, and generally enjoyed being able to move freely.

Speaking of which, sort of:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520946,00.html

Outrage After 750-Pound Deceased Woman Hauled to Coroner on Flatbed Truck

Family members and neighbors are outraged after seeing an obese woman who died Tuesday dragged from her home and hauled to the coroner’s office on the back of a flatbed truck, 6News' theindychannel.com reports.

The Marion County Coroner's Office in Indianapolis came under fire Wednesday after people learned of the way that Teresa Smith, 48, who weighed 750 pounds and died in her apartment, was transported to the office.

Officials said the deputy coroner made the decision to call a towing service to transport the body.

"We debated for quite a while about how we were going to get her out of there and so we finally decided, since we didn't have a van that was large enough to carry her, it was decided between (the police) department and the coroner's office to use (the truck)," Detective Marcus Kennedy told 6News.

Smith's body, while still on her mattress, was dragged across the courtyard of her apartment complex, strapped on the tow truck and covered with a piece of carpet. Her boyfriend, the couple's 13-year-old son, and some neighbors watched as the seen unfolded.

"I think they should have handled it differently, putting her on a flatbed like they did. That was like putting a cow up there," said Smith's boyfriend, David Johnson.

Neighbors said they were also disturbed by the ordeal.

"What really got me is when they took her off onto the flatbed, they threw this dirty, dirty carpet on top of her, and I just thought that was so disrespectful," said a neighbor, who did not want to be identified. "I would have never let them throw that on my loved one."

Once on the truck, Smith's body was escorted by police downtown to the coroner's office.

Former Chief Deputy Coroner John Linehan said he was shocked and dismayed that appropriate steps weren't taken to remove the woman from her home.

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.

"When they scoop up dead dogs off of the street they don't treat them that way," he said. "It's just not the way to treat a human being."

Chief Deputy Coroner Alfarena Ballew told Rinehart by phone Wednesday that a flatbed truck has been used in other occasions to move obese individuals. She said the office is now looking for a way to transport Smith's body from the morgue to the funeral home.

The Indiana State Coroner's Association said it has no specific recommendations to handle extremely obese people. The decision is left up to each county.

Now, excuse me if I am being insensitive, but how can you really move a person weighing 750 pounds with any sort of dignity? I mean, if you have to get craned out of your house, alive or not, dignity has pretty much shit the bed at that point, no? I'm not trying to be flippant here, honestly. I mean, at that weight, can you even wash yourself or take care of bathroom things? I can’t see any dignity at 750 pounds.

I’m not saying it’s not a tragedy that this 13 year old kid lost his mom, that’s fucking awful. I am questioning how this could have been handled better.* I wonder how people can let themselves get to the point of 750 pounds. How can you feasably support the caloric intake to maintain that weight even?




* Other than the obvious answer of “not throwing a Goddamn dirty carpet on her” I mean. That's inexcusable and I'd slap the crap out of whoever did that.