800-Pound Man Says Hospital Kicked Him Out for Ordering a Pizza
A 33-year-old Rhode Island man, who weighs nearly 800 pounds, says the hospital where he was staying to lose weight kicked him out after he ordered a pizza.
Steven John Assanti had been staying at Rhode Island Hospital, where he was on a plan to get down to 550 pounds and become eligible for gastric bypass surgery. On Tuesday, he moved to Kent County Hospital, NBC 10 News reported, and his social workers are trying to arrange a way for him to stay there through the weekend.
Assanti’s dad says that after he leaves the hospital, he’ll have nowhere else to go.
“He needs to be monitored, because if he’s on his own like he was in Fall River, he’s going to just blow up because he’s uncontrollable when he’s by himself cause he’s lonely,” Steven Veillette told NBC 10.
Veillette says he can pay for a hotel for his son for a few weeks, but the apartment complex they were looking at has a one-year waiting list.
Assanti also formerly posted comedy dance videos on YouTube under the name John Assanti, a.k.a. “FatBoyGetDown.” They are something to behold, and hundreds of thousands of people have beheld them:
He continues to post updates on his FatBoyGetDown Facebook page, where he welcomed his new followers today. Assanti said in a Facebook video this week that he hopes there will be “a positive followup with my weight loss.”
Assanti has been on this road for a long time. He appeared on Dr. Phil in 2007, discussing with the bogus self-help guru how he convinced his dad to buy him food by throwing temper tantrums so loud that his dad feared they’d be kicked out of their house.
But everything that happened on Dr. Phil should be taken with a grain of salt, because this was basically a perverse version of Big Brother where Assanti spent 9 days in a “House of Hatred” with five other people including a white supremacist and a tiny girl who hated fat people.
At one point, Dr. Phil McGraw accused Assanti of “running a con,” by claiming he hated skinny people to get into the “Dr. Phil House” when what he really wanted was to talk about his weight.
“You gonna live like this the rest of your life?” Dr. Phil asked him.
“I won’t make it the rest of my life if I live like this. I will die,” he responded.
Assanti also filmed a video application for The Biggest Loser five years ago (he weighed 600 pound at the time) and Assanti’s father told NBC that a “television medical show” called up his son this week.