Joyce Holloway’s CRY FOR HELP

by Ronda Einbinder

Each day is the same for Joyce Holloway. She lies in bed in her small trailer, unable to get up to use the bathroom. Her fiancé, Ray, serves her every need. She watches life through her television set, unable to use the computer because it sits on a desk. She tells people she weighs 650 pounds, but she has no way of knowing if she actually weighs more. She has a large tumor growing on her stomach, but the doctors say they will not touch it before weight loss surgery. No surgeon she has reached has been willing to perform weight loss surgery on a woman her size.

Joyce has spent her entire 41 years in Newport, a small town in southeastern Tennessee. The only child of a mom who worked long hours and a dad who was her harshest critic, Joyce turned to food when no one was around. “I remember when I went to get my shots before entering kindergarten and they were concerned about my weight,” Joyce recalled. “At the age of five, I was weighing 100 pounds. My mom bought me Ayds, which were supposed to suppress my appetite. She said two would fill me up, but they were like caramel, so when she would lay down before her midnight shift was going to start as a nurse, I went into the kitchen and ate four or five.”

Always the largest student in class, Joyce began diet pills at an early age. “Mom has always been upset about my weight and tried to get me to take better care of myself and try not to get big but I did,” said Joyce. “It was always a problem in our home. I was a brat and an only child, so they felt sorry for me and gave me whatever I wanted. She was giving me diet pills while my dad was giving me candy bars.”

Joyce describes her parents’ marriage as dysfunctional and says her mom’s help would also hinder her. “My dad did not want children before I was born and he would pick on me. My dad’s sisters would tell him to leave me alone. They would say, ‘She is just little and she will grow out of this.’ This is really a sore spot with me because I loved my daddy and I thought maybe he didn’t love me because he talked to me the way he did, yet he would give me anything I wanted. He would compare me to my cousins, saying I wasn’t as smart or pretty as they were. He said no man would ever want me and before I got married, he said he didn’t see why my husband would want me.”

After graduating high school, Joyce walked away and never looked back. “I did not go to the graduation,” she said. “I just went straight to work at the healthcare facility because I would rather be at work than at graduation. I worked there for five months before hurting my back.”

After breaking up with her high school boyfriend of five years, 21-year-old Joyce met Gerald through a friend, and they were married. Joyce weighed 300 pounds at the time of the marriage, and she and Gerald desperately wanted a baby. “I took fertility drugs and soon they discovered I was pregnant with twins. When we made an appointment for the sonogram, they did not hear the heartbeats. They think I was five months pregnant. I was 28 years old at the time.”

Joyce says Gerald did not allow her to work and she found herself bored with no hobbies. “He was a mechanic and worked on cars, and I tried crafts but did not really get involved in anything,” she said.

What began as financial problems for the pair would ultimately end in divorce in 2003. With her weight up to 400 pounds, Joyce moved into an apartment in her mother’s apartment complex after the foreclosure of her trailer. She had been living on disability since 1996.

Some time later, Joyce went to the BBWRomance website and met an Alabama man named Ray. Ray, who is also on disability, moved to Newport, and the two set up home in a new trailer.

While she has found happiness in her relationship with Ray, fear for her health and future are constant. “No one wants to help me,” Joyce said through her tears. “I have gone to different surgeons in Tennessee. I went to the ER so many times and then was sent to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The surgeon that was there just lifted the sheet up and said the tumor was clearly cosmetic. After I tell doctors about the tumor, they don’t want to lay a hand on me. I haven’t been to the doctor since April 2007.”

Joyce receives regular check-ups at home by a nurse from Dr. Lawrence Mathers’s office, but that is all the medical care she has received. She feels she is running out of options, but desperately wants to begin living her new life with Ray. “We will get married after my health is taken care of,” she quietly said. She is just hoping that someone will hear her cries for help and find a way to save her.

Contact ObesityHelp at editor@obesityhelp.com.