The family of a morbidly obese Houston woman say she desperately needs a life-saving gallbladder operation — but doctors refuse to operate on her.
Katrina Randall, who weighs 740-pounds, was rushed to a hospital on Friday. A team of firefighters and first responders struggled to remove Randall from her home for the trip to the hospital.
Kenneth Randall, Katrina’s father, says everything she eats she brings back up. He says she needs a life-saving gallbladder operation, but 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.
“We transferred her to the hospital hoping someone would actually take the next step in doing the gallbladder surgery,” Randall said.
“Most doctors say if she can’t walk in, we can’t see her,” said Kenneth Randall.
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 breath for them,” said Nowzaradan.
Kenneth Randall knows the risk but he believes surgery is the only way to save Katrina’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.
