The sad story of Jeison, the man with the biggest feet in the world

When Jeison Rodríguez has a headache, he knows that it’s because he’s growing. Not being able to fit into shoes or having to bend down to walk through a door is the least of his troubles. Rodríguez has acrogigantism: his pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone. Finding the money every two months to pay for a very expensive treatment — which costs about $1,500 — to control his chronic endocrinological disease is his biggest concern. When he doesn’t take it, he gets headaches, convulsions that make him lose his memory, and he finds it hard to stand up and walk because of his body’s unstoppable growth.

At the age of eight, the first pains began. At 10, he started to grow. At 12, he was diagnosed. By that age, he was taller than his mother, wore a size 50 shoe and was the victim of bullying by students at the Palo Negro school, in Aragua state, in the central region of Venezuela. “They spat at me, they kicked me, they made fun of me. They called me a freak, big foot.”

He tried to commit suicide three times, emotionally broken by the violence and rejection typically faced by those who don’t meet the norms. The doctors at the time didn’t give him much hope after the diagnosis. He wanted to be a chef, but ended up embracing the Christian faith, which was what his family practiced at home. “I feel privileged, the Lord provided this great body for me to preach the word of God. It is not easy to live with this condition, depending on people and the support of my family, but when people come up to me to ask me for a photo I tell them about God,” says the 28-year-old in a telephone conversation from Colombia.

His relationship with his body changed in 2016, when he was 20 years old. That was when he received a Guinness World Record medal for being the man with the biggest feet on the planet. With this record, he entered a new canon, one that revolves around the amazing feats recorded by this international organization, which gave him a certificate in English. Rodríguez did not initially understand that it did not involve a cash prize.

By not taking his medication for four years, Rodríguez believes that he has already surpassed his own record and that Guinness should measure his feet again, because they are now bigger. He believes his feet have grown one size a year. In 2016, when he was included in the records, his feet measured 40.5 centimeters. Today, he says he is five centimeters taller. That is equivalent to a shoe size 70-72. He is also the tallest man in Latin America, with a height of 2.38 meters, and the second-tallest in the world.

Robert Wadlow holds the Guinness World Record for being the tallest man who ever lived. He was born in Illinois in 1918 and grew to be 2.72 meters tall. He worked as a circus performer and died at the age of 22. “Wadlow had the same thing as me: acrogigantism. There are people who only suffer from gigantism and have normal feet, and people who have acromegaly, which means they have thick faces, hands and feet like Shrek,” explains Jeison in reference to the character in the animated Disney movie. In Venezuela, he says, he is the only person with this condition. For a time, he received the medicines he needs through the country’s Social Security system. Then, there was a supply shortage, and he received generic medicines that made him feel worse. Now he pays for his treatment on his own.

Jeison has spent his life dealing with doors — to the point where he developed scoliosis from having to constantly bend over — and flimsy chairs that don’t support his weight like his cement bed, built by his parents in his home in Palo Negro, is able to. But despite his height problems, or perhaps because of them, Jeison has become a social media influencer.

Social media gives him a “little work,” he says. On his account @elpieguinnesoficial, Rodríguez has done advertising for tech equipment stores, food businesses and security companies. He takes advantage of his size to perform optical illusions to make people laugh. In one of the videos, a store worker pushes a 50-inch TV with great difficulty, which is then lifted by Jeison as if it were a folder.

Rodríguez entered the Guinness World Records looking for shoes. In Venezuela, wearing a shoe size above 45 turns anyone into a phenomenon. He doesn’t remember well what happened — his seizures leave him with memory loss — but he says that a cousin who was helping him get some shoes contacted Georg Wessels, a German manufacturer of orthopedic shoes who has been developing specialty shoes with people with Rodríguez’s endocrinological disorder for 40 years.

Wessels came to Caracas carrying three suitcases with three pairs of shoes for Rodríguez. In an interview this year, Wessels said that he has given more than 600 shoes to his friends, “the giants of the world.” On his company’s Instagram account, Wessels appears in photos with Sultan Kösen, who holds the Guinness World Record for the tallest living male — beating Rodríguez by 13 centimeters — and also the record for the largest hands in the world.

Before wearing the German leather orthopedic shoes — which properly support his 165-kilo body — Jeison walked with handmade sandals made from rubber and denim that were not very sturdy. For a time, he even stopped wearing shoes. The German shoemakers put him in contact with Guinness World Records and also organized his first trip outside Venezuela. He remembers that he was in France in 2020 for a “meeting of the giants,” where he had the opportunity to travel around Europe. “The shoemaker invited me to spend time with the giants, so that I would feel normal, with people bigger than me.”

Rodríguez has been in Barranquilla, Colombia, for a month. He is performing in the circus of an amusement park that recently opened in the coastal city. He is part of a sketch involving two clowns who get into a fight. One of them calls their “little brother,” and Rodríguez jumps out from behind the curtain to his defense. All of the shows are sold out, says Rodríguez. “People don’t believe it. When they see me, they think I’m a doll, for the grace of God.”

Unlike when he received the Guinness World Record, Rodríguez now has a manager in order to continue taking advantage of his size, but with better conditions. This is how he makes a living, but he is always willing to do any “little job” to get money for his medication. “These are small doors that open for me, that push me to continue, so that later bigger doors will open for me.” Doors that he can go through.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition