As her world shrank, Marie Bowman grew.
With every loss — her son, her mother, her grandmother — the Harlem woman gained weight, becoming so large, she stopped being able to walk or even move her own legs.
But it wasn’t until Friday, when Bowman felt ill enough to call 911, that she realized just how bad things had become.
She was unable to make it out of her own front door.
In order to get Bowman to the hospital for treatment, the FDNY had to use a crane to lift the 910-pound woman through the window of her second-floor apartment.
It “was the first time I discovered I couldn’t get out of my apartment,” Bowman said.
“I had grown too big. And that was frightening, because you don’t think, never once, that I wouldn’t be able to get through my door.”
But now Bowman, 70, is ready for a second chance, she told The Post Saturday in an exclusive bedside interview.
“This is my life, not a show. I want to live. I’m here in the hospital because I want to live,” she said through tears, as she reflected on years of lost loves and pain.
When emergency responders took Bowman to St. Luke’s Hospital Friday, it was the first time she had been outside her apartment in nearly a year.
Firefighters had tried to get her outside by removing the door of her home, but even that wasn’t enough.
“They tore out the frames and all the knocking and hammering, only to find I’m still wider than the frame,” she said before dissolving into tears. “Oh, God.”
By the time emergency responders were able to wrap a yellow netting around Bowman and maneuver her outside, a crowd had developed.
Cruel bystanders began cheering and clapping when rescue workers finally got her through the window and down to the ground by crane.
That was also the last time she was able to walk, she said.
“I was just coming home and it happened all of a sudden,” she recalled.
“I was pivoting to sit down on the bed, and then I couldn’t swing my other leg back — and I was frozen.”
Bowman, who is now retired but said she used to work for the state, hasn’t been able to use her legs since.
“I keep trying to move my legs but I just can’t do it . . . I don’t know when this occurred, believe me. I have a loss of appetite,” Bowman said — in spite of the chicken leg in her hand and an unwrapped turkey sandwich beside her bed.
Bowman has been married twice but both relationships ended, she said, referring to both her husbands as “bad choices.” She wouldn’t draw a connection between her weight and the tragedies in her life, but through tears she described the deaths of her beloved adopted son, her mother and grandmother.
“Every person I ever tried to get close to slipped through my fingers,” she said.
In October 2001, her only child died in a motorcycle accident. He was just 19, she said.
He had been a security guard at the World Trade Center and by coincidence was not scheduled to work on Sept. 11, 2001, she recalled.
“He had worked a double the day before 9/11, so he didn’t have to work that day,” she said.
“At least I got one more month with him.”
When he died, it was the third family member Bowman had lost in a little over two years.
“I lost my mother in August 1999 and my grandmother in March 2001, and I never grieved fully. It was all too much,” she said.
She also had a fraught relationship with her parents, which left her struggling with feelings of abandonment, she said.
Bowman says her folks picked up and left their home in The Bronx when she was a young woman, without ever warning her of their impending move.
“We weren’t close again for a long time after that,” she wept. “Maybe they never really loved me.”
Her mobility had been limited long before she became bedridden, she said.
Every person I ever tried to get close to slipped through my fingers.
- Marie Bowman
“I’ve taken the bus more times than I can say I’ve actually walked. I can only take one kind of bus, though — the hybrid ones are not wide enough,” she explained.
“I can ride the accordion [bus] because I’m able to cut the corner past the driver in my wheelchair.”
She has been able to survive with the help of aides who visit her home daily, but says that as she got larger, they failed to help her.
“It got to the point where the aides wouldn’t even try to lift me anymore,” she said.
Doctors are trying to figure out just what kind of toll her weight has taken on her body.
They’ve told her she likely has lymphedema, a condition where fluid fills the fat cells.
Bowman is hoping that with proper medical help and a prescription diet, she will finally be able to lose weight and get her life back — before it’s too late.
“I’m hoping that they can help and I’ll be able to walk again,” she said.
The traumatic experience of having a crane lift her from her home was not without its silver lining, she said with hope in her voice.
“Feeling the sun on my face again never felt so good.”