My 600 pound life-Thoughts on Penny

A couple of months ago I started watching the show on TLC called My 600 pound life, and for months I had been afraid to watch it. Wasn't a hundred percent sure why, but their larger sizes and some of the masses they had on their legs, kind of scared me off from watching the show. Please know I realize this sounds bad and I don't mean it to be, I was not trying to be judgmental I just think it was a case of a fear of the unknown. One day though I decided to sit down with no judgement and watch a whole episode, and what I learned was to have empathy with each and every person.

In this episode that I am talking about it stars Penny she is a married mother of one who is currently confined to her hospital bed in her home, where she is cared for by her husband whom has quit his job to care for her. One of the  things I first noticed about Penny was how much she blamed everyone but herself for her weight. Through this whole episode I don't think we actually see her take true accountability, which bothered me so much. The reason it bothered me is, if you cannot come to that point in your life when you look in the mirror and you say "The reason I am fat, and overweight is because I eat and choose the wrong foods to eat, that I am to blame and no one else". Until you have reached that point that you are able to take full accountability I don't think you should have any weight loss surgery because it simply will not work for you.

Penny is so big that she has to have a team of paramedics help her out of her house and she has to sit in the back of a minivan that has had the back seat taken out and a hospital mattress put in its place. I remember watching all the paramedics and fireman trying to get her out of the house and into the minivan and just being horrified for her. Part of me wanted to reach through my TV and just try to offer her some comfort for being so brave as to venture out of her house, and then part of me felt so bad for her as I would feel so ashamed and embarrassed.

When Penny does finally get her gastric bypass surgery, one of the things that made me so mad was the nurses and doctors kept begging her to get up and start walking. Because the sooner you get to moving the sooner you go home, but not Penny she refused and because of this wound up staying a month in the hospital now here is the kicker. Every other patient that has had gastric bypass surgery wound up losing alot of weight fast after surgery, not Penny she lost nothing while being in the hospital. The doctor made the remark that there was simply nothing else they could do for her, because she obviously had someone bringing her food from the outside in and she was not eating healthy and following her diet.

From that moment on it only got worse, she eventually stopped making her appointments with the doctor and keeping in touch with the doctors. And you would see her husband frying her food in a fry daddy and saying "Well maybe this is healthier than fast food". This was the most maddening episode I had watched, my thoughts through this episode is I am fighting, tooth and nail just for the opportunity to have the surgery. I would give anything to have this surgery and change my life, and Penny was given this gift and she didn't care and threw it all away. The episode never gets any better and I just read online her update and she is still bed ridden, and she hasn't lost any weight. It was a very very sad episode.