A photo caption with a June 26 Style article incorrectly described John Keitz's attempt to sit up. Keitz was trying to sit up for the first time in nearly three years, as the article noted, not seven years.
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Big as Life
Weary and frustrated, John Keitz is put in a bed in a nursing home in Millersville, Md. The apartment he expected to move into in Wilmington was not ready for his arrival.
(Carol Guzy -- The Washington Post)
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Every time Keitz must be moved -- usually to the hospital to treat his asthma -- a major public drama ensues.
The spring after he went down, firefighters pried two windows from his second-story apartment in Essex and extracted him with a lift truck. Streets were closed for blocks. Two months ago, firefighters used a whale sling from the National Aquarium in Baltimore to haul him out of his house in nearby Dundalk. They put him on a flatbed truck. A television news chopper monitored from above. His ordeal was rehashed on late-night television and morning radio.
Keitz reacts to the cruel attention and the implied condemnation not with humiliation -- he is way past humiliation -- but with rage. He wanted to moon the helicopter. Of course, he couldn't.
He didn't know it then, but something worse was just ahead.
But he did have advice for those who might think him a pathetic loser:
"Don't underestimate the fat man."
The Man of the House
A reporter will sometimes conduct an interview over a meal in a restaurant. This is not an option in Keitz's case.
Instead, "I'll cook you dinner," Keitz proposed one day last month after he got home from the hospital.
It turns out the fat man cooks from his bed.
The first glimpse of him is shocking.
Keitz is lying on a specially constructed hospital bed in the living room, just inside the front door. The foot is against the interior wall, and his head is facing the door, which is kept open in good weather so he can greet passersby. A telephone and a PlayStation 2 controller lie within reach. A sheet covers his body to where his waist would be. The rest is bare.
He has the head of an average-size man, albeit extra jowly. His arms from the elbow down appear average, too. The hands are strong and fine, his brown eyes lively.
![[slate.com logo]](http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2007/09/27/GR2007092701096.GIF)
