600-Pound Woman Dies After Being Surgically Removed From Couch UPDATE 8-18-04

[Lootr2Core]

STUART, Fla. -- A dramatic rescue ended tragically in Stuart, Florida, a rescue so difficult firefighters say they have never seen anything like it.


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It happened late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning at the home of a 600-pound woman who was having trouble breathing. Rescuers went in not knowing how difficult it would be to get her out. 40-year-old Gail Grinds was literally stuck to her couch and had to be removed surgically at the hospital.

Authorities estimate she had been on the couch anywhere from two to five years.

Martin County Fire amd Rescue crews faced what seemed to be an impossible mission. Everyone going inside had to wear protective gear. The stench was so powerful they had to blast in fresh air.


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They tried to cut out the front door, but at four-and-a-half feet wide, it wouldn't work. They had to cut plywood since a normal stretcher wouldn't do.

An ambulance was too small, so they brought in a trailer to get her out. While rescue crews came up with a back-door rescue plan, detectives secured what had become a crime scene, questioning family members about how it got so bad.

Using planks, they loaded the woman on to the trailer, still attached to the couch. Removing her would be too painful, since her body is grafted to the fabric. After years of staying put, her skin has literally become one with the sofa and it must be surgically removed.

Detectives are investigating whether they have a case of neglect, or if it is simply a very sad story.

Grinds was taken to the Martin Memorial hospital where doctors removed her from the couch, but she died in spite of all the attempts to save her life.

[Moxio]

Two words:

HOLY ****!

[Jaket]

LMFAO

oops! i mean... uhhh..... thats sad

[bignick]

WTF? How can that happen?

[punqsux]

thats just bizzare....

[kraid]

Wow, that is sad. I can't believe that her family left her on the couch for years and that the skin actually attached to the couch. I've never heard anything like it.

[The Successful Dropout]

i heard about this on the radio like 4 hours ago and was trying to find it on the internet to post, but had no such luck....very interesting story...sad...disturbing...weird...etc

[Javery]

God people in this country are FAT

[The Successful Dropout]

im almost afraid to ask for pictures...

[EndlessChris]

Wait, her skin melded with the couch? That's possible?

Creepy...

[ex0]

Whats the link for that article? I wanna see those other weird pictures its talking about.

[pimp_daddy_smurf]

i wanna see pics of this

[crazytalkx]

LMFAO

oops! i mean... uhhh..... thats sad

That's what I was thinking. But damn she was ONE with the couch. That is crazier than the 1000 lb pound guy.

[punqsux]

LMFAO

oops! i mean... uhhh..... thats sad

That's what I was thinking. But damn she was ONE with the couch. That is crazier than the 1000 lb pound guy.

the 1000 lbs guy is awesome, he lost like 400 pounds in 2 months! thats like me not existing 3 times!

[Lootr2Core]

http://www.wftv.com/news/3643877/detail.html

theres the link its on drudgereport now.

[WhipSmartBanky]

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0811/3643906.jpg

What I want to know is, who kept feeding her?

[biggestinuyashafan]

how do people allow themselves to get that fat? i understand some people are lazy,but when you are so lazy that you become stuck to the couch after being there for 2-5 years,that is just very wrong. with that said,it is very sad that it happened.

[Xevious]

Lootr2Core,

You seem to have a talent for finding the weirdest news articles on the net.

[Moxio]

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0811/3643906.jpg

What I want to know is, who kept feeding her?

Another: did she go to the bathroom by using a bedpan or what?

[MeGaWC27]

hmm not much of a life if she been sitting on that couch from 2 to 5 years...
I mean it's sad that she died, but why would anyone stay on one spot for 2-5 years?!?! That's just ridiculous!!

[Fatesealer]

Today is officially Gross Stories about Fat People Day... if ever there was a time to request a headshot, it'd be now...

[punqsux]

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0811/3643906.jpg

What I want to know is, who kept feeding her?

Another: did she go to the bathroom by using a bedpan or what?

no dude....no...just no!!!

[JaytheGamefan]

That's just tragic, and rather disgusting.

[Graystone]

I call bullsh*t I think that is one of those things you see on the front of the papers at the store in the checkout line.

[WhipSmartBanky]

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0811/3643906.jpg

What I want to know is, who kept feeding her?

Another: did she go to the bathroom by using a bedpan or what?

I know if *I* planned on getting that fat, I'd cut holes in the bottom of the couch and the floor, then dig a privy under the house. Man, get one of those helper-monkeys and I'd be set.

[Lootr2Core]

I call bullsh*t I think that is one of those things you see on the front of the papers at the store in the checkout line.

http://www.wftv.com/news/3643877/detail.html

Not so weird, on an EMT call once to this old coger out in the country rolled up his sleeve to do vitals and thought.. man this skin feels weird.. turns out it was long underwear that he NEVER took off, it became a part of his skin.hair, stunk to beat hell. He was very nice (for a backwoods hermit type) and didn't think anything was wrong. Not sure what they did if they tried to get the shirt off or just leave it (to take it off man I suppose they would have to cut off layers of skin!)

[pimp_daddy_smurf]

yeah, i once had gauze on my knee(you could see the bone, it was a bad accident.....but thats another story)

i had the gauze on for 3 days and it was just stuck to my skin and i had to end up ripping more off and you could see my bone, that was the nastiest thing ever because i was sitting in a bloody bathtub trying to get this thing off and it wouldnt stop bleeding

[suko_32]

What I want to know here is how do you stay on the couch for 2-5 years? Do you still eat or go to the bathroom? Someone answer this and I'll believe this story............more than I do now.

[sblymnlcrymnl]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[SoulEdgeVII]

What I want to know here is how do you stay on the couch for 2-5 years? Do you still eat or go to the bathroom? Someone answer this and I'll believe this story............more than I do now.

Yeah, is this one of those tabloid stories?

[coolperson03]

Is it even physically possible to have a couch become attatched to your body? I have to go with Graystone on this and say that this was made up.

[Lootr2Core]

its on WFTV.com FLorida newstation website.

[Xevious]

I hate to be the person that has to help this fatso! Jeez...Talk about a bad day at work.

Can you imagine all those rolls of fat jiggling around like that. It looks like a scene from the Blob (except there is no young Paul Newman).

[Lootr2Core]

largest one I've helped was about 400 and (this is just an obervation) the stench in the house was unbelievible) this was actually one of my first runs... she fell out of bed.. so I stupidly didn't put on gloves....I'm not lying but my hands reeked for hours!

[Moxio]

Reminds me of the Meat King from Hitman: Contracts.

http://www.silicon-fusion.com/games/PC/1629/8.jpg

[jbroush99]

Good lord!
Strangely enough, I went couch shopping today. We went to several stores but didn't see any couches with 600 lb. woman cushions.

[Lootr2Core]

jbroush.. what is that avatar? looks so familiar whats it from?

[Lootr2Core]

hey moxio my wife is pissed off at you...

[Moxio]

hey moxio my wife is pissed off at you...

Lmao what?

[Lootr2Core]

Been getting about 7 magazines a week.. mostly from your links.. can't read em all.. they are 'polluting the house'

[Moxio]

Lol next time I'll include a disclaimer that you cannot sue me for using my links. :D

[Lootr2Core]

just don't be surprised if you get a slap on the back of the head sometime... you're warned dude... :)

(I'm leaving freaking Golf magazines all over town ! ) :)

[eldad9]

Lol next time I'll include a warranty that you cannot sue me for using my links. :D

Disclaimer.

[Dok Diamond]

2-5 years damn

[cyclonus11]

http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0811/3643906.jpg

What I want to know is, who kept feeding her?

From what they said on the radio this morning, there's a criminal investigation going on for neglect. Someone had to feed her. They also had to pump fresh air in there from all the stank, during the rescue.

[Ericnmel99]

Her crap must of acted like glue, fusing her ass and the couch as one.

[livetnediser]

10 bucks says somebody like Lieberman decides that she was enthralled with some videogame and that's what caused her to let herself go like that. Did anyone else happen to catch his site when it claimed that Dead or Alive XBV let you customize that breast size of the girls and let them appear topless (the game does neither)?

[AdamInPlaidum]

So...all I have to do is lay on top of some scrap metal for 2-5 years, and I can become the Terminator?

[Moxio]

Lol next time I'll include a warranty that you cannot sue me for using my links. :D

Disclaimer.

Bah, disclaimer. Thanks for making me feel dumb lol.

[rpgpeng]

So...all I have to do is lay on top of some scrap metal for 2-5 years, and I can become the Terminator?

it might work. hahahah just promise me you'll use the bathroom.

[chess380]

:shock: Disturbingly amazing. :?

[Ericnmel99]

Check out this site of fat people:
http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/dimtext/kjn/people/heaviest.htm

[Dok Diamond]

damn there legs weigh more than me

[Dok Diamond]

DLF needs to read some of these fat people post.

[1SwtDeception]

musta been one heck of a couch.. but damn that's amazingly crazy god at least i know there's lazier people out there than me

[evilpenguin9000]

At what point do you decide gettign off the couch is too much work? I mean I'm a big guy but I make it off the couch occasionally. Certainly enough to keep my skin from fusing to it.

Has to be related to some disease or psychological problem.

[GuilewasNK]

Unless she was paralyzed, there is not much excuse for laying on a couch and balooning to 600 pounds. There has to be some self-responsibilty even if there is a pyschological reason.

As for the bathroom question, considering the overwhelming odor, she most likey defacated and urinated on herself for 2 years with someone wiping or scooping or whatever just before she was fed.

[Lootr2Core]

just so sad really, how anyone could let that happen to themselves, or to others. There HAD to be people buying food, delivering food, cooking food, paying billls for her, and they let this take place? One can't be bedridden (or couch ridden in this case) for that long with no one to help, I truly hope they find the people that turned a blind eye and send them to jail for abuse!

[Lootr2Core]

At 478 pounds, Gayle Grinds had become the invisible woman.

Her neighbors never knew Grinds was among them, even though she lived in her small, fading, green row house in the Golden Gate community south of Stuart for 10 years.

Social services agencies hadn't heard of her; Grinds got by on Social Security checks while suffering from life-threatening obesity. Visitors rarely came. Grinds lived in a squalid home with a man unable to care for her, stuck too far from the stove to cook, too far from the bathroom to take a shower.

WPEC News 12

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Rescuers had to fabricate a makeshift stretcher big enough to accommodate 478-pound Gayle Grinds when they came to her home Aug. 10.
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Strangely, there is no trace of Grinds in the 1981 Martin County High School yearbook, even though she attended that school for four years. Her name isn't there. Her picture is missing.

It is as if she never existed.

"My mom didn't like anyone taking pictures of her," said Grinds' 14-year-old adopted daughter, Deanna. "She was a proud woman."

Grinds would have turned 40 on Aug. 27. She died early Aug. 11 at Martin Memorial Hospital South. Her case was so disturbing that some members of the ER crew that night sought counseling, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

Grinds had been lying on a dirty burgundy-and-gray fabric couch in her living room for most of the past six years when family members called 911 late on Aug. 10 to report that Grinds was having difficulty breathing. Unwashed for months, lying in her own excrement, couch fabric intertwined with the skin of her back, Grinds screamed in pain when the rescuers, clad in protective gear, tried to lift her.

They had to fabricate a makeshift stretcher big enough to accommodate Grinds, a 4-foot-10 woman who weighed 140 pounds more than the 7-foot-1 Shaquille O'Neal, but they couldn't fit her into an ambulance. With Grinds still fused to the couch, they laid her on a borrowed trailer pulled by a pickup. Surgeons never had time to separate her from the couch. She died less than two hours after being hospitalized.

While her death certificate lists "morbid obesity" as the cause of her passing, police said they are investigating the circumstances surrounding Grinds' care. Criminal neglect charges, they said, are possible.

Humiliation began with a fall

Earlier in her life, things were different for Grinds.

In her 20s, she was visible in the community where she lived at the time, a blighted, high-crime complex of $100-a-month rental units in East Stuart. Gregarious, already 300 pounds but mobile, Grinds was known as a great cook who loved to pass around her fried chicken and fish. She had a giant appetite, but she told friends a thyroid problem made her obese.

Former neighbors said she already lived with Herman Thomas, a roofer who was with her until the end. At the time, Thomas was bringing home enough of a paycheck to buy a small Japanese car that Grinds used to drive residents to the supermarket or church.

"Gayle Grinds?" repeated Alice Robertson, a longtime resident of the Tarpon Commons complex. "Everybody knew her. She was a nice lady. You couldn't help liking her. She was well-adjusted. You could hear her laugh all over the complex. She stood out because she was so big."

Although she didn't have any children of her own, Grinds asked a local judge to award her custody of a 9-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl orphaned when Grinds' younger sister, Jessie, died at 25. She also was known to watch other residents' children.

"She was a good mother to us," said Deanna, the girl whose custody Grinds was awarded in 1992. "She was buying us stuff all the time. She taught me to cook."

About the same time, however, Grinds' life changed in the few seconds it takes to lose one's footing.

Years of humiliation started with a fall.

"She was just walking in the complex, and she fell in mud," Robertson said. "I remember waiting for the ambulance with her. She was in pain. She was lying in mud, and no one could lift her up until the ambulance came. She broke her leg pretty bad."

According to Robertson and another neighbor at the complex, John Harris, it took Grinds almost a year to recover. While she was laid up with pins in her left leg, she gained another 100 pounds. For a time, she got around in a wheelchair, then with the help of a walker. Eventually, she became mobile again, and in 1994 moved a few miles south to Golden Gate, into her last home.

Couch an island of no return

In 1998, said Vivian Kendricks, Grinds' older sister, she fell again and broke the same leg. She sought treatment and recovered, Kendricks said, but never left her couch again.

"There is one thing that kept my sister on that couch — fear," Kendricks said. "She had been in such pain when she broke her leg that she was too afraid it would happen again."

Thomas, Grinds' longtime boyfriend, could not be located after Grinds' death. But several of Grinds' acquaintances said he couldn't take care of her — except to get her basic groceries.

Basically jobless, Thomas looks 20 years older than his 54 years. Criminal records show he has been arrested on drug- and alcohol-related charges, including a DUI on his bicycle in 2002. He was described by one Golden Gate neighbor as someone who did little more than sit alone in the yard for most of the day, drinking bottles of Budweiser while Grinds lay on the couch.

Then, just as Grinds needed help the most, relatives also were in trouble. Her younger brother, Clifford Grinds, was arrested 14 times in Martin County in the past 20 years on charges ranging from cocaine possession to assault and robbery. He was sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison. And Marcus, the son that Grinds adopted from her sister, last year was arrested for allegedly trying to shoplift a camera from a Stuart Wal-Mart.

One cousin in an ideal position to help said she didn't know about Grinds' problems. When Grinds adopted her niece and nephew, court documents show, she listed her cousin Evelyn Harris as the person who would take care of them if she died. That cousin is a family support worker for the state's Department of Children and Families in Stuart, which has a unit charged with taking care of adults who can't take care of themselves. By law, DCF workers must report cases of children or adults in need of services.

Harris, a 23-year DCF veteran, hung up on a reporter when asked about Grinds. Later, she put out a statement through the department's public relations office.

"I am deeply saddened by the loss of my cousin," she wrote. "I had no knowledge of the condition of my cousin or the home, as I had not been inside the home for more than five years. Had I known about the condition of my cousin and the home, I would of course have done something."

All of Harris' work evaluations at DCF showed performance ranging from "exceeding expectations" to "outstanding."

DCF later issued this statement by Christine Demetriades, a DCF public information officer: "After looking into this matter, the Department of Children and Families has no reason to believe there was any misconduct on the part of our employee Ms. Harris. Ms. Harris has always been a very capable and caring employee."

Deplorable living conditions

On her couch — mostly watching television, Kendricks said — Grinds sank into depression, according to an acquaintance who visited her three years ago. The home became so squalid that some of Grinds' friends who used her to watch their kids stopped taking them there.

The stench of stale urine and feces still emanated from the home two days after Grinds died, reaching the street 90 feet away, and at least two adjacent properties. Scrawny cats jumped in and out of the house through a broken floor-level window.

When the fire-rescue crew arrived at the house, they found a sparsely furnished home with no air conditioning and letters piled on a table with cockroaches eating their way through the envelopes. Around the space where Grinds' couch had been, they saw dozens of empty Publix soda cans strewn on the floor. Empty bags of Doritos, Ruffles chips, an ice-cream cone wrapper and rotting, maggot-infested oranges had been thrown on the floor among unwashed pants, T-shirts and underwear.

A television and stereo equipment were on the floor — bare concrete in some parts. In the kitchen, the fridge wasn't working and contained several plates of decomposing food. Two bedrooms had mattresses on the floor, including one partly burned, among clothes, paperwork and more food wrappers.

Two of Grinds' three surviving siblings couldn't explain why rescuers found her in such a shape. Brother Clifford Grinds, now out of jail and living 5 miles away, said he loved his sister.

"She was the sweetest person I knew," he said. "If we knew things were so bad, we would have done something." He declined to comment further.

And sister Vivian Kendricks said she did visit Grinds once in a while, washing her on her couch and cooking for her. She didn't remember the last time she saw Grinds and said nothing seemed to be wrong with her lifestyle.

"I know she started feeling real bad two weeks ago," Kendricks said. "But she had asthma. My sister was hard-headed. She just wouldn't get off that couch."

Kendricks said people in her neighborhood of East Stuart have been looking at her differently since the news spread.

"Some say we should go to jail for letting her deteriorate," the 44-year-old Kendricks said. "Why should we go to jail? Gayle was a grown woman. She could make her own decisions."

[Wlogan31]

Geebs. Thanks for the follow-up on that story Lootr2Core...I think...

[Magician]

Thats disturbing, but in a pitiful way. I can't help but feel sorry for the woman. Can you imagine being stuck on the couch for a day, much less years? Horrible way to live, horrible way to die.

[evilpenguin9000]

It kind of reminds me of the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

[jbroush99]

jbroush.. what is that avatar? looks so familiar whats it from?

It's Dave Marcis!