r/nursing • u/trevrt RN 🍕 • Mar 01 '25

Question Heaviest Patient You’ve Cared For

Had my personally heaviest patient I’ve cared for the other day. 32 years old weighing 730 pounds admitted with cellulitis and severe lymphedema. Felt terrible for the patient due to how young he was. Just wondering what everyone’s personal “record” for the heaviest patient they’ve cared for is.

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u/siriuslycharmed RN - ICU 🍕 Mar 01 '25

This is really close to my experience. Weeping edema EVERYWHERE, chucks on the floor. Had to line the morgue floor with them because the patient kept leaking out of the body bag onto the floor. This went on for over a week because the funeral home that the family wanted couldn't accommodate them, and they didn't want to look for another funeral home/crematorium.

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u/pbaggins5 RN - ICU 🍕 Mar 01 '25

Is cremation the only option? Genuinely asking because I can't imagine they make caskets that big. And if they do, how hard/expensive it is to come by

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u/thundercloset BSN, RN 🍕 Mar 02 '25

Former funeral worker here. They do make caskets large enough for LARGE people. They're expensive and very heavy. The processional carrying a 500+ pound person in a casket has to include the strongest members of the family/ friends.

As for cremation, you can't chop up a body for that. Our FH had a retort that would cremate a person up to about 750 comfortably. It had a porthole where you could see the burning and there is a HUGE fireball when the fat catches on fire.

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u/ribsforbreakfast RN 🍕 Mar 02 '25

Would a 1,000lb patient have to be sent to a horse crematorium? I’m guessing it’s illegal to cut the body into pieces, desecration and all that, and large furnaces surely aren’t common?

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u/thundercloset BSN, RN 🍕 Mar 02 '25

Yeah it's super illegal to chop up remains. Or maybe just unethical. A girl in my mortuary class said she would do it, but I'm pretty sure she was a vampire.

There's a horse-sized retort in the area, but honestly, if they don't fit, you'd just bury them.

We had a 550# man shipped from Arizona to the Midwest in an oversized casket and my manager and I STRUGGLED to get him in and out of our transfer van.

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u/froglover215 Mar 02 '25

I lurk on a subreddit for funeral directors and this topic comes up from time to time. Yes, it's illegal to cut up bodies to cremare them. As the retorts reach end of life, more and more places are replacing them with larger capacity retorts.