The father of a morbidly obese Rhode Island man believes his son’s life is in danger after he was kicked out of a hospital this week for having a pizza delivered to his room.
Steven Veillette told NBC affiliate WJAR that his 778-pound son, Steven Assanti, who lost 20 pounds during his three-month hospital stay, needs professional care to survive.
“If he comes home and I do get him up the stairs somehow, some way he’s going to go right back to his eating habits,” Veillette said.
Assanti, 30, told WJAR that, before he was evicted from Rhode Island Hospital, he was aiming to get his weight down to 550 pounds so he could have gastric bypass surgery.
He said the decision to order pizza was a way of rewarding himself for his recent weight loss, while admitting that his “cheat meal” was also a violation of the strict eating plan he was supposed to be following, according to the Associated Press.
Assanti claimed in a Facebook post on Friday that the rules violation was beyond his control.
“I don’t feel like I broke the rules,” he said in the online post. “I was on a care plan and you could’ve implemented on that care plan that I had an addiction to ordering out food. You guys knew that from the get-go the moment I got admitted there.”
Assanti went on to blame the hospital staff for allowing the pizza delivery man to enter his hospital.
“Rhode Island hospital completely sickens me,” he said. “You broke the rules, not me.”
A hospital spokeswoman confirmed that Assanti had been discharged but declined to provide further details due to confidentiality laws, the AP reported.
After being kicked out of the Rhode Island Hospital, Assanti was allowed to stay temporarily at Kent County Hospital while his social worker searched for a permanent arrangement, according to USA Today.
“I just don’t know who to turn to,” Veillette told WJAR. “I called everybody — everybody you can think of in the state of Rhode Island — and nobody seems to be [able to] help me.”
A potential plan that involved moving Assanti to a Massachusetts apartment complex unraveled after Veillette learned there was a one-year waiting list for applicants, according to WJAR.
“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,” Veillette said.
