My post this week is taking a weird turn. As I was brainstorming with my roomie for a topic, she mentioned our enormous dinner and the fact that we had both skipped the gym that day. She laughed and suggested that we were good examples of “Alternatives to Wellness”. What started as a bad dad joke got me thinking, and I remembered a story that we talked about in my sociology class in high school. Mrs. D’Souza called her GayleChouch.
This story is actually pretty sad and horrifying, but it’s odd that as high school students we couldn’t help but to laugh.
Gayle Laverne Grinds was 40 years old, 4 ft 10 in tall, and weighing 480 lbs when she was discovered by medics. A 54 year old man who identified himself as Gayle’s husband named Herman Thomas had been caring for her “best he could” until one night Gayle’s brother and his girlfriend called rescue staff to attend to Gayle because she was experiencing “emphysema problems” and breathing trouble.
The medics arrived to a shocking scene. The apartment in which Gayle and Herman shared was filled with such an unbearable stench that the medics could only enter once they had put on full-body protective suits and pumped in fresh air to ventilate the space. Once they entered they found trash scattered all over the apartment, pictures knocked off the wall, furniture overturned, feces smeared on the walls, and most surprisingly, 480 lb Gayle sitting on her couch.
Gayle supposedly had not gotten off her couch in 6 years. The couch was her restroom, her kitchen, her living room, and her bedroom. Do to the amount of feces that had built up within and between her and the couch, Gayle’s skin had fused with the fibers of the couch making it impossible for her to get up even if she wished to. Medics discovered this when they could not lift Gayle from the couch and that she experienced excruciating pain at the attempt of separation.
After making this discovery the team removed the deck sliding door and carried Gayle, still fused to her couch, out to the ambulance. The couch couldn’t fit into the ambulance, so a neighbors pickup truck was used to transport Gayle to the emergency room. Unfortunately Gayle, still attached to the couch, passed away 6 hours into procedures working to separate them. The medical examiner listed her death as due to “morbid obesity”.
Mrs. D’Souza talked about Gayle in her class during our discussion of depression. Her theory was that one day Gayle just decided she wasn’t willing to do much about life anymore, so she just sat on that couch and that was what she did. Herman brought her food and her restroom was now the couch and that was all she decided she needed. Now Gayle is on those lists of unbelievable but true or crazy ER stories, but a lot of her story is not discussed. What caused her to stay on that couch was never seriously called into question in those articles. Questions of her need for care and the possibility of neglect from her family is rarely mentioned. Her neighbors had no idea she was even living there.
I don’t know really what I want my takeaway from here to be, so I’m just gonna throw things to think about at you to close.
Try not to get caught up in crazy stories and forget that the characters in them are in fact people.
We all have felt like Gayle at some point- burrowing ourselves into the couch in isolation for a few hours. What makes us different is that we always have something to get up for. Sometimes people think that they don’t have anything to get up for anymore and it’s our responsibility as friends and family to be that reason.
Herman says that he cared for Gayle “the best he could”. Some of Gayle’s family were aware of her condition Over the course of 6 years, someone could have reached out for help. At this degree of need, something more could have been done.
Please get off the couch.
Oh wow…this is crazy to think about. I think more people need to recognize the connection between depression and poor health, and we still need to dispel the negative stigma surrounding mental illness. I completely agree – we need to be present as friends and family, and remember that we have people to help us in tough times, too.