NEAREST AND DEAREST

READING

1 Read the text below.

Fat Frank

The problems of being fat

“Fat Frank” Banks is unrecognizable from five years ago. At 1.98m and 115kg he’s still a large man, but a shadow of his former self. Sitting at his kitchen table he describes what is was like to be one of the most obese people in America.

42 year old Banks, a teacher from Chicago, said that he used to be mocked by people when he went shopping, he couldn’t use the public lavatories and he suffered from severe body odour because of the sweat trapped in the folds of his flesh. It was an effort to lift himself from his chair at home and go to work in his truck. And arriving at work he would be left gasping for breath having staggered from the truck to the front door of his classroom.

He is disappointed that he couldn’t go to his brother’s wedding in New Orleans because he couldn’t afford the two seats the airline demanded for the flight. He didn’t go to the cinema or theatre for 20 years because he was too large to sit in one of the seats. He was still able to go to his favourite restaurant though – he took his own specially designed chair with him. The chair was so big however that it had to be put in the back of his truck, and the restaurant had to open its double doors so that Banks and the chair could go inside.

His home also had to be adapted for his huge size. The bathtub had to be removed because he could no longer climb into it and was replaced with a walk-in shower. “Even going to the bathroom to do your business is a problem you have to learn to cope with,” he says.

Eventually Banks weighed an astonishing 347kg and had a waist measuring 214cm. His spine was being crushed by the pressure of his stomach whenever he stood up. He realized then that he had to choose between dieting or death.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 1375