London - The story of a 283kg mother of six who died as a result of her weight is documented in a new TLC show.
Dominique Lanoise, 40, of Miami, Florida, was virtually housebound for almost two decades with her daughters washing, feeding and caring for her.
She died in March, after being given less than a year to live by doctors who had been waiting to give her potentially life-saving stomach surgery.
Commenting on her situation, Dr Oscar Hernandez, of the Southern Bariatric Centre in Miami, said: “She’s gone to town eating, there is no operation at these numbers.
“It wasn’t a one time slip-up, it was a systematic assassination of her weight loss programme.”
During the TLC special, 600-Pound Mom: Race Against Time, he is seen visiting Lanoise at home, telling her: “You are going to die in this bed; this bed is your coffin.”
Dr Jorge Rabaza, the bariatric surgeon in charge of giving her life-saving surgery, agreed that operating would be too risky.
“I’m willing to be reasonable with that number. Dominique is 625 [pounds] – I will not do the surgery,” he said. “There is a high mortality rate for morbidly obese patients, where they get blood clots in their legs and the blood clots go up to their lungs. A large blood clot will kill a patient instantaneously.”
He said the eventual goal was to reduce her stomach by 90 percent.
Lanoise, born in Haiti, started gaining weight aged 16, following the birth of her first daughter, Witelane.
“I used to be skinny, but after I had my first baby I got so big,” she told Asiantown.net.
As her weight skyrocketed to more than 270kg, she spent her days sitting in bed wrapped in sheets as she couldn’t find clothes to fit.
She first came to the media’s attention in 2010 when she was forced to stay in Haiti for three months after the earthquake, because she was too heavy for commercial airlines.
Instead she was forced to travel back to the US in a military cargo plane.
Despite doctor’s orders, she indulged in her favourite Haitian dishes, sprinkling her meals with appetite-suppressing powder, wrongly thinking it would counteract the calories.
At one point, Lanoise was close to her target weight for the operation – but she explained that “sometimes I feel so hungry”.
Lanoise’s daughters had mixed feelings about the surgery and some were concerned about the risks, although they were keen to get her walking again.
One of her daughters recalled: “When they told me the weight, I was like very surprised and very angry. I thought the scale was wrong, but as they did it over and over again it was right.”
The only problem was that doctors wanted to get her to 226kg before doing the surgery. Instead, Dominique continued to gain weight.
Believing her weight was killing her, doctors decided to go ahead with the procedure, despite her mass.
It was an incredibly risky surgery due to her size, but it was successful.
Tragically, though, Dominique got sick and died just two weeks later. – Daily Mail
* The Discovery TLC is on DStv, Channel 172.