chapter 19

A year after first going off sick, His employers stopped paying him. He was still officially employed by them, but he was unable to Return to work. He had made no effort at all to change his liftestyle, despite all the counselling and advice that he had received. They could do no more. They could not redeploy him because he was unfit for even a simple desk job. They had to let him go.

Simon was not disappointed. He had been expecting it. He was enjoying his new career as a fat man!

He ate constantly through the day now. No amount of feeding seemed to fill him up to the level where he felt stuffed any more. His body was used to taking in so many calories.
His inactivity and extreme food intake still added extra layers of fat to his body, but progress had slowed. He was getting nearer fifty stones. Fourty stones of pure lardy fat!
He loved to feel the soft dimply wobbly skin, but it got in his way more often now. The huge pads of fat at the side of his chest and under his arms restricted his arm movement and his reach. He could hardly walk at all because his giant apron of a belly got in his way. He could stand up for a short period and he could transfer to his buggy, if it was close enough.
He could go to the toilet, but he could not wipe himself. His arms were too short to go around the acres of fat on his buttocks and he could not reach his undercarriage. He had to wait for Jennifer to come home to wipe him. In the end he decided that going to the toilet was far too much effort anyway and resorted to using giant adult nappies. Jennifer could change them easily enough and she could put him in the shower to get him nicely cleaned.

Jennifer attended to his every need when she was home. He did not have to do a thing. She spent hours washing him, drying him, changing his nappies, smothering him in moisturising cream, then dressing him, then feeding him.
But she knew their tactics would have to change soon. It would not be long before Simon could no longer feed himself. His arms would be too fat to reach his mouth. She could not be there all day every day. If his nutritional needs were not met, he would lose weight.
Simon wanted to see how big he could get. He had no limit. He had ready about other fatties stopping when they got immobile. He wanted to go beyond that! He just wanted to keep growing and growing. He imagined himself as a cartoon like superhero. He would get too fat for the house. His fat would ooze out of the doors and the windows. He would have to put on even more weight to push on the walls and finally break them. He wanted to be the fattest man in the UK! No, the world! He wanted to be so extraordinarily fat! Could he become a professional fat man? How could just being fat earn him a wage?
Jennifer introduced him to a feeding tube to increase his calorie load. A thick wide bore tube was placed in his mouth and a thick creamy liquid poured in through a funnel at the other end.
Simon swallowed enthusiastically. Jennifer kept pouring until Simon gave her a signal to pause, then she would start again.
Simon continued to swallow. This was the most fun he'd had in months! He started to struggle after an hour. He rests got longer, the feeding got shorter. He was, at last getting full!
He finally finished with his giant belly tightly stretched out a good two or three feet in front of him. The giant heavy dome rested on his thighs and extended beyond his knees! This was the feeling he'd missed the last month or so. The feeling of being so full, so utterly content. The guilty pleasure of a proper glutton!

Jennifer marked the feeding tube down as a success, but Simon pointed out that an oral feeding tube could be dangerous, especially if it was unsupervised. If he could not keep up, he could easily aspirate and end up with feed in his lungs. What was safer was nasogastric feeding. He'd done it often. He instructed her what to buy on the internet. Then he told her exactly what to do to instert the narrow tube through his nose and down into his stomach. He told her how he wanted her to secure the tube to his nose and how to check it was patent, then to remove the guidewire. He told her how to flush the tube to maintain it's patency and how to prime the giving set with feed before she attached the giving set to the nasogastric tube and then fed the giving set through the peristaltic pump which was going to become his new feeder. She had to set the pump at a low rate to begin with, until he got used to it. Then she could gradually increase the volume until the optimal feeding rate was achieved.

The introduction of the nasogastric tube and the feeding tube was a definite success! Simon wished he had thought of it sooner. It enabled him to be fed 24 hours a day, every day and still eat.
The unfortunate thing was that he missed the taste and the feeling if the extra calories that the feed gave him, but he appreciated how bloated and how full he could become.
He was still getting fatter!

He got so big that he could no longer get out of bed. Fat oozed off both sides of the king sized bed. He struggled to sit up. He developed sleep apnoea because his fat neck restricted his movements and his tongue flopped back and restricted his airflow.
Now he couldn't move, Jennifer found him difficult to look after on her own. He had a team of assistants who came in to hoist him into different positions and keep him clean and dry.
He developed sores on his sacrum, elbows, knees and outer buttocks that were difficult to treat and heal. The skin between his legs was burned with the ammonia from urine that had stayed in place for too long. They tried placing a concern over his penis to collect his urine and allow it to drain away, but they were difficult to put on and difficult to stay in place.
The sores became infected.
Even entering Simon's room was not pleasant due to to smell of the infection mixed with stale urine and faeces.

And still he ate.

His doctor made a home visit. He pleaded him to stop this nonsense. He was young! He could have a life! He had referred him to bariatric services. He could have a gastric bypass before it was too late! He was not just endangering his health any more by continuing this way, he was endangering his life!

The bariatric surgeon made a home visit. He wanted to help, but Simon had to agree to help himself too.
He was too big for surgery as he was. A gastric bypass was a major operation. He would need to be in intensive care afterwards. He needed to lose ten stones before they would consider operating.
He had a fatty liver, which would complicate things. He had to go on a very strict food replacement diet.
As usual, when dealing with medics, Simon smiled and nodded... then totally ignored their advice.

His weight continued to climb. Until such a point that the fat on the outer wall of his chest started restricting the movement of his lungs. He was so much fat that he could not breathe!

Simon died at the tender age of twenty five. He was fifty five stones. The fire brigade had to knock down the outer wall of his house to get to the body and lift it out with a crane.
He had to have a specially built coffin. The crematorium had to increase the size of the furnace entrance because it was not big enough.
Simon was no more.