I know that there are a lot of people out there that fervently believe that I'm just a lazy disgusting slob who does nothing but chain eat bacon cheeseburgers dipped in chocolate and that I should stop inconveniencing them by continuing to breathe (Google "Fat Hate" if you don't believe they exist). I've suffered great humiliation and physical and emotional pain at the hands of some of those mean spirited people, but in the end they're just strangers on the street, so they have no responsibility to get to know me before passing judgment. Medical "professionals", however, do have a responsibility to know something about me since they are being paid to provide me a service that cannot be performed adequately otherwise, yet the worst, most demeaning, devastating humiliations in my life have happened in a doctors office.
Several years back, before I was obese, but around the time I started to gain weight, I was at work when my hands and feet suddenly, and quickly started to swell. It got so severe that I was unable to use my computer keyboard and I had to remove my shoes because they had started to cut into my feet. I immediately went to urgent care. Once my doctor entered the room and saw that I had gained a few (less than 10) pounds in 3 months he just sat down, looked me in the eye and said "Marlo, you're just getting fat". No examination, not even a poke at my ballooned hands or feet. He wrote out a referral to see a dietitian and walked out.
I continued to have swelling problems, and started having digestive and bowel troubles, odder than normal menstruation and my hair started breaking off in large quantities. After a short period of loosing unhealthy increments of weight (4-5 pounds a week) I was gaining weight though my eating habits and physical routine had not changed significantly. I kept going in to the doctor for these issues and was farmed out to various and sundry high paid specialists. Over the course of 6 months several diagnoses were handed down and then changed when the treatments proved ineffective. Every one of those diagnoses were related to either my gaining weight, or the mental health issues or the meds I was taking for them. After a few blood tests at different offices I saw a pattern of fluctuating thyroid hormone levels, ranging between extremely low and normal . Each time I brought this up with doctors they dismissed it, patted me on my "wittle" head and sent me on my miserable way. I know that thyroid levels can fluctuate like this for a variety of reasons, but I also know that I told every one of those doctors that there was a family history of thyroid disease, which should have made them a little more motivated to investigate. Doctor visits became nothing more than draining, shameful exercises that left me in tears on a regular basis.
Time passed, I continued to get progressively sicker, and horribly depressed as well, and went on Short Term Disability. Without a real diagnosis and prognosis I was soon dropped. I much latter found out that my primary care physician told the Disability people that I had no physical illness and only included evidence of visits with him, a GP, and none of the information from visits and diagnoses by specialists, flawed as they may have been. By the time I had found that out it was well passed the alloted time that I could file an appeal. I already had a shit pile of medical expenses that I couldn't afford, so when I lost coverage I wasn't about to accrue more debt. I just quit going to the doctor.
It was 3 years before I would go back to see a doctor, this time for spontaneous bleeding from my breast. Instead of examining my breast, or even asking me any questions about it, the doctor lectured me on my weight. When I pushed him on the matter of the bleeding he told me to have an OBGYN nurse explain abnormal lactation to me and stop worrying needlessly about fictitious cancers. In the end, I actually did have some benign tumors removed, and that's when I decided that I would not seek medical care for anything that wasn't extremely obvious, like a broken bone, or a need for stitches. I STILL felt like crap on a good day, but I didn't return to a doctors office for another year.
At my husbands urging, I did finally go back again, when, after quitting smoking not only did I not feel any better physically, I actually started feeling so ill that I thought I may actually die. A nurse quickly, and properly, diagnosed me with Diabetes, and the new doctor, seeing the family history, list of symptoms, and past thyroid irregularities ordered a simple blood test that confirmed I did indeed suffer from hypothyroidism. That was 6 years after I first started feeling sick and gaining weight. In that 6 years I was dismissed, demoralized, and debased by so called professionals who took an oath to do no harm. I guess that doesn't include psychological harm.
I am now plagued by so many physical ailments that even a walk around the block or a rigorous session on an exercise bicycle is extremely difficult to accomplish. Diabetes has led to painful neuropathy in my feet and on some days even getting about the house is difficult. These are not excuses, these are facts, real issues that would compromise the mobility of even a fit person. Imagine going out for a jog or heading to the gym when it feels like someone is shoving skewers under your toenails. Try sticking cockle-burrs under your kneecaps and then hop on a treadmill. I don't have pain because I'm lazy, I'm lazy because I have real pain, pain that doesn't go away with a rush of exercise induced endorphins. Pain that does, in fact, get worse the more I move.
I didn't have a chance to address things early on, before they were so far out of control, because for six years, as I saw 15 different doctors, not one of them stepped up and did their job objectively. All it would have taken was one doctor to order a simple test and I could have been set on the right, healthy path a long time ago. If you want to rant about how me and people like me are stealing your tax dollars you better start also ranting at the doctors who think like you and don't provide unbiased medical care in the first place. I'm not asking for preferential treatment, I don't want obesity to become the social norm, nor do I believe that any mentally stable person would. If being treated with a basic level of decency and objectivity is too much to ask then this society has a bigger problem than me. (Pun intended)
There's extensive information on the net about the prejudice of the overweight by the medical community, and I was going to post a few links, but why? I'm not here on the side for or against fat acceptance. If you believe me and want to know more, do a web search. If you don't believe me you probably won't care to read studies in which doctors readily admit to their prejudice and how it affects the level of care they provide.
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.
-Confucius-
-Confucius-
