700 Pound Woman Struggles For Life

This is a story about what happens when you don't take care of yourself. A lesson in the unfortunate consequences of eating poorly, not exercising, and not keeping yourself mentally fit. A growing problem that gets worse everyday in America - that of obesity. And if there was ever an example of what could become, is contained here within.

It goes something like this.

You are born and reared with fat genes, eating unhealthy when you are young.

At age 8, you weigh in at over 100 pounds. The kids at school pick on you calling your "fatso". Your self esteem plunges and the care for yourself goes with it. You eat yourself away and gain more weight.

At age 20, you weigh in at 250 pounds. You continue to go on through life feeling this way, never doing anything about it, thinking your problems will just go away. You work as a mental health care worker caring for people helping them dress and wash themselves. You would think that you would be educated enough to learn something from this experience and take care of yourself too.

At age 32, you develop arthritis in your knees and find that you can no longer walk. You are now bound to a wheel chair. You eat your way to even more weight. You see your doctor who changes your diet medication and you immediately put on nearly 100 pounds in just 30 days.

You now wake up everyday but find you you are stuck. You cannot even roll over for fear you'll turnover and suffocate. You sit in your room, bed bound, closing off the wonders of the world in self pity and self inflicted pain. Your family loves you dearly. They care for you and feed you. They have to push your massive overweight body in bed to change the linens you soil daily. They move you around in physical exhaustion bathing you with a wet cloth.

You've developed massive headaches. The doctor believes you have a brain tumor. But medical staff cannot get you to a hospital for an MRI scan because you cannot fit through your bedroom door. You are too heavy to be placed on the flat bed imaging scanner at the hospital. You might have to be taken to the MRI machine at the Cleveland zoo. Yes zoo.

It's three years now since you been stuck in bed. You are Terri Smith, 49 years old out of Cleveland, Ohio. Married and a mother.

You are believed to be the heaviest woman in the world at 700 pounds. You have a choice - to diet or die. You need help and may God give you the power to heal and get better.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.