Fighting Obesity

New Iberia resident Catherine Wilson is 46 years old and trapped, but her prison is not one with bars.

Wilson’s prison is her obesity.

Her health problems are myriad, and many of them are caused, or worsened, by her excessive weight.

She needs knee surgery, she said, but could not do it because of her weight. She has high blood pressure, high cholesterol and she is diabetic.

She does not know how much she weighs, and said she does not have any response for what she weighed most recently. She believes the weight gain might be hormonal, as it started after she had a hysterectomy five years ago. She said she eats the same things she always did.

Wilson said she struggled some with her weight for a long time. Before her health declined so drastically, she said she always kept active, doing housekeeping for her job, walking and going to church regularly.

Now she is unable to leave her house, where she lives with her mother and her brother.

Eva Lewis is Wilson’s friend, the mother of a girl the same age as Wilson, a neighbor and is a Congregations Organizing People for Equality volunteer. Lewis has helped drive Wilson to doctors appointments for the past year — until she got so big she was unable to bend her legs to get into the car. She is also now afraid of falling.

“It makes you weaker, not being able to get around,” said Wilson. “It’s scary.”

One of the worst things is being unable to go to church, she said.

“When I stopped going (to church), it was like everything stopped,” Wilson said.

Nothing but an ambulance is equipped for someone of Wilson’s size. She is now unable to visit even her doctors.

She is cared for largely by her mother, Mary Lee Wilson, and Lewis.

“We’re trying to get any type of help (for Wilson),” said Lewis. “Medicaid only pays for so much.”

Lewis has been searching for a place that will take Wilson in and give her rehabilitation, counseling and maybe the doctor’s recommended gastric bypass surgery, and will “help her get back on her feet” in more ways than one, but has so far been unable to find one. Most, she said, don’t accept Medicaid.

“This is it,” said Lewis. “We’re up against a rock and a hard place.

“I was there when she was born ... and I’m seeing the decline, and it’s daily.”