*740-pound Houston native Katrina Randall is in desperate need of a life-saving gallbladder operation, but doctors refuse to operate on her because she is obese. Randall was rushed to a hospital on Friday after a team of firefighters and first responders struggled to remove her from her home.
Katrina’s father, Kenneth Randall, says she can’t hold her food down. He says doctors refuse to operate because she’s too obese to safely administer anesthesia during surgery. Too much anesthesia can kill her.
The symptoms of gallbladder disease include nausea and vomiting, fever, severe abdominal pain, and loss of appetite. Sometimes removing the gallbladder is required to alleviate the symptoms, per CW39.com.
“We transferred her to the hospital hoping someone would actually take the next step in doing the gallbladder surgery,” Randall said. He added, “Most doctors say if she can’t walk in, we can’t see her.”
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Mr. Randall understands the risk but believes surgery is the only way to save his daughter’s life.
“In a city like Houston, as big of a medical field as this is, there’s no way she shouldn’t be able to get some kind of surgery done,” he said.
Dr. Younan Nowzaradan of the TLC show, “My 600 Pound Life,” explains that a patient like Katrina is too high risk even for emergency surgery.
“When putting a patient to sleep that is 700 pounds we have to breathe for them and sometimes they have heavy chests and its very difficult to breathe for them,” said Nowzaradan.
Sixty-seven percent of American adults are overweight (BMI of 25 or higher). Thirty percent are obese. Five percent of American adults are morbidly obese—a 400 percent increase since 1986.
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