600-Pound Woman Forklifted from Home: "I Want to Go to the Sea"
(CBS/AP) A 603-pound woman waved gently to her neighbors as she was lowered from her Bangkok apartment by forklift Thursday.
It was the first time Umnuayporn Tongprapai,40, believed to be the heaviest person in Thailand, had left her apartment in three years.
Umnuayporn's neighbors contacted the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority when they learned she needed medical attention to remove a tumor in her right leg. Bangkok's media-savvy governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra summoned camera crews to document the event, which involved engineers, demolition crews, rescue workers, doctors and nurses.
Seated on the floor of her modest third-floor apartment on the outskirts of Bangkok, Umnuayporn told reporters she could only walk a few feet on her own and was confined to her studio apartment where she ran a laundry service with the help of her two adopted sons.
"I've been living in this room and have not gone outside for three years," said Umnuayporn, whose weight is roughly the equivalent of a grand piano. "I can walk a little, just enough that I can go to bathroom. But I have to cling to my son the whole way."
Before being lowered to the ground by forklift, Umnuayporn was rolled down a corridor in her building to a nearby empty apartment where workers had torn down an inner wall to allow her entry and demolished a section of the building's facade to take her outside.
As neighbors cheered on the pavement, Umnuayporn smiled, waved, and flashed a "V" for victory as she was lowered from the apartment by an elevator constructed outside. A forklift then transferred her to an ambulance that took her to a Bangkok hospital.
"It's very likely that she is the heaviest person in the country," said Pijaya Nagavachara, director of the BMA General Hospital.
Her treatment will involve removing the tumor and reducing her weight, which doctors suspect may be due to thyroid problems, Pijaya said.
Once her medical treatment is finished, Umnuayporn says her dream is to go to the beach.
"I want to go to the sea," she said, with tears in her eyes.
"I want to play in the water."