Please examine my ovaries, not my gut July 9, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Uncategorized.9 comments
Xanthine writes:
I had my first pelvic exam in 2001, at the university health centre. The doctor was fast and brusque and no-nonsense, and though it hurt and I did a lot of flailing around, I came out thinking it wasn’t that bad. Today I just went for my second pelvic exam (please don’t yell at me! I move a lot) with the doctor who delivered me; he’s prestigious and hard to book appointments with. My mom actually pulled some strings to get me a booking with him in less than six months.
He seemed like a pleasant enough older fellow, European, polite and calm; he reassured me that his prestigious fingers wouldn’t do any walking till I told him I was comfortable. I gave him permission, he got in there, and we proceeded to have a conversation about… my weight. He’s touching my ovaries and talking about my gut. “Does diabetes run in your family? Ah, I thought so. You know, that’s mostly weight related, eh? You must cut out refined starches, all refined starches. And potatoes. Ha ha! It seems you have eaten many potatoes over Thanksgiving.”
I was a bit breathless from the pain and being tensed up at this point, and he’s got one arm apparently up to the elbow in my hoo-ha, and he’s using the other to palpate my abdominal area, all the while going on about how yes, ha ha! There is a little too much of you, my dear, a little too much, too much belly here. What could I say? It’s hard to come up with a sensible, body-positive, or even logical response with that going on. He winds up, and as he’s washing his hands he says, again, unnecessarily, “So you will do as I say, eh? Cut out the refined starches. Lose some of that gut, yes, at least twenty pounds you could stand to lose. Ha ha! Goodbye!”
Finally I said very meekly, “So, my periods. Uh. And them being heavy. What do you think about that?” He blinked at me as if he’d forgotten why the appointment had been booked in the first place, then grudgingly discussed my birth control pill for a while, did my medical history, mentioned the possibility of micro-fibroids, and he gave me a prescription for a different brand of pill as well as blood tests. I left feeling pretty violated in a couple of different ways, and sore in a couple of different ways. First, my gut should not in the least affect my pelvic exam. (Does it? Someone please back me up here!) Secondly, is the sliding scale of fat discrimination still sliding? What’s it greased with, Olestra?
I weigh a hundred and thirty-five pounds.
And I had to coax this man to talk about my pelvic exam.
I have never encountered a doctor whose fat stigma started at so low a cutoff weight. I hope to never encounter one again. Next time I go in for a pelvic, I’m going to see if I can book with one of the other doctors. I think the worst part is that I agreed to do everything he said and even thanked him on the way out.
Lower back/hip pain? Pain specialist says home remedy will cure it, along with losing weight July 8, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Joints, Specialists.3 comments
JG writes:
After a few years of pain in my lower back and hips, and a long history of mobility oddities, health issues, and struggle with weight, I was referred to a Pain specialist, in the hopes he could pinpoint the cause, and suggest treatment and pain management techniques so I could return to being active.
On Monday, I woke up many hours before my appointment, and left plenty of extra time to get to the clinic. This extra time was wasted, as I went to the wrong medical center (multiple clinics in town share the same name). I’ve been to both in recent months, and I became confused. I called right away, and told the 1st receptionist what happened. She said she’d page the doctor to see if he’d still see me, and in the meantime, I headed over. The two clinics are near each other, it was easy to turn around, get back on a bus, and walk the briskest pace I could to make the last several blocks. I showed up 20 minutes late. The 2nd receptionist said “Did you get the reminder phone call about the time for your appointment today?” I had. The 1st receptionist said “This is the woman who just called!” The 2nd receptionist “Oh. It’s your first time here. I see.” I don’t find it entirely implausible that people make this mistake once in a while, I felt rather frustrated by the brusque response.
While I wait for the doctor, I finish up notes on the illustrations I’d made of myself and areas of pain and how the correlate to various activities – I brought them as suggested by my primary care physician.
I lost about 28 minutes of the appointment, so I understand a rushed exam and a lack of patience. What I do not expect is that he asks me questions, and never lets me answer a single one, he cuts me off every single time. He doesn’t have my medical history or records other than the form I filled out as a first time patient. He glances at the illustrations over my shoulder but won’t look at the documentation of pain and what it correlates to (or take them to review later). He pokes exceedingly hard in places he’s examining, and seems surprised that I can’t tell what hurts anymore (The physical therapist I’d seen with her full weight on an elbow never hurt like his prodding did.). He further ignores me repeated statements of “But that is not where it hurts!” It still hurt to touch the areas he pressed hours later.
He said I have “Degenerative Disc Disease” and “Sacroiliac” problems. Now, with him not having looked at the x-rays, or even talking to me about what the problem is with the pain (or where the pain is!), how can he diagnose so quickly? Then he tells me stuff I already knew (based on my PCP and PT doctors, and research), no surgery will fix it, no medication will help, Physical Therapy is the only thing that’ll do it (and apparently, I can do it myself with some stretching, and maybe a home TENS unit, according to this new doctor – So what, how dare I waste his time when a home remedy is all I need?), and says I don’t need an MRI or other exam because there’s no nerve damage (I have no reflexes in my right leg, and both legs will go limp periodically when I walk, my hips experience pins and needles… that’s not nerve related?). He suggests loosing weight, I give a somewhat spotty response since he keeps interrupting me. Then he gets on the phone, dictates over several minutes everything I wrote on the form, his evaluation, and a request to send it back to my doctor.
Then the real trouble starts. He gets off the phone and says I need to loose weight, it’s all about expending more calories than I take in (I would LOVE to expend calories, that’s why I’m here, sir!). I tell him I’ve been to 2 nutritionists, and that eating well is too expensive when I’m out of work. He repeats himself before I finish. I remind him of my history of PCOS – and he says “Oh, well, you could eat a matchstick and gain weight!” and repeats the other part again. I tell him mobility is a better help to me. Then he suggests starvation. I point out that I’ve done that too [1], as a precursor to a specific diet and exercise plan and it resulted in 60lbs. of weight loss, but that mobility was key. I try to explain to him that when I’m mobile, I can and do loose weight. He then says I should consider starving myself to get the weight off.
His expression, his attitude, it’s like he seemed to think I only needed to be confronted about being fat, or like none of the dozens of doctors I’ve seen in my adult life ever told me I was fat and that I should do something about it, or like he’s the first person to tell me my weight is killing me. He acted like I never before heard about weight loss options, and really, if I would just consider not gorging myself I’d be perfectly healthy!
[1]When I was 19, and living with my ex-husband in our first apartment hundreds of miles away from everyone, I ended up starving, and lost 25lbs. It wasn’t on purpose, it wasn’t instant, we had no money, and finally after a week without eating anything but 3 oranges I was eating skin from the sides of my fingernails without even noticing it. In 1999, I discovered the low-carb diet as a treatment for PCOS, and against the advice of everything I’d read, I ate about half of the minimum, starving myself for an ugly month full of hysteria, panic attacks, and extreme fatigue. Since then, having developed difficulties with hypoglycemia, and putting on much more weight than I had back then (recent surgery recovery tells me if I get weak, I’m going to seriously injure myself the first time I fall down, trip, or pass out from dizziness because the weight will get in the way), and the mental side effects (I would probably need a suicide watch at some point, I was quite suicidal during the second starvation episode), I can’t imagine this is even remotely safe to do without immediate medical supervision. It seemed highly inappropriate for him to suggest a dangerous home remedy without having looked at any test or evidence, or consulting my medical history. It also seems inappropriate for him to offer this advice outside of his specialty and experience.
On Tuesday I was in more pain than I’d had in weeks, and on Wed. I was in more pain than I had been in for several MONTHS, I had clear swelling around the spots around my spine and neck where he pressed so hard, and spots that feel like lumps in the tissue. Touching the area is still quite painful. I feel it bears repeating, even with the most severe pressing, exploration and deep tissue work done by my physical therapist, I never left her office injured. I am currently awaiting a response from my PCP, I expect I will file a grievance with the clinic.
Hernia? Lose 100 lbs or we can’t fi July 6, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Uncategorized.7 comments
CJ writes:
Two years ago, I found out that I had endometrial cancer. A total abdominal hysterectomy was scheduled by my gynecologist (who I adore and has never treated me with anything but complete respect). The surgery went off without a hitch. I reviewed the surgery report after I had recovered and noted that the surgeon who had assisted my gyn had made a very random note in the middle of the factual recount of the surgery: “The surgery was very difficult due to the patient’s obesity.” I shrugged it off and moved on.
I developed a hernia. After two years, it was starting to bother me and the surgeon felt it was time for repair. I went with the same surgeon because he was familiar with the case and I did not want to wait 4-6 months to get an appointment as a new patient with another surgeon.
Yesterday was the surgery. Or it should have been. I told the anesthesia doctor that I had been told I was a difficult intubation during my last procedure for kidney stones. I’ve never been a difficult intubation before and have been operated on at my current weight in the past. He assured me they’d prepare for a difficult intubation and that from what he was seeing, he’s sure I’d be fine.
I woke up in the recovery room to the news that the surgery had been aborted. They attempted to intubate me 25 times according to what the surgeon shared with my family.
He further told my family that my options were to lose 100 pounds and try again or do an “awake intubation” where I am awake and help by swallowing while they’re intubating me. My husband indicated to the doctor that I’d been operated on at this weight before and it wasn’t an issue.
I’m in a great deal of pain today but the worst part is feeling completely helpless. Once again the problem is my weight and the prescription is to lose the magical 100 pounds. I’m at a loss where to turn or what to do next. I don’t want to go back to this fat phobic surgeon but don’t know what to do next.
Depressed? It’s your fat, lose weight and everything will be great. July 3, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Uncategorized.14 comments
Amy writes:
In general, I have had extremely good experiences with my doctors. I
have numerous medical issues, and neither my GP, nor my gynaecologist, orthopedic surgeon, podiatrist or dermatologist have ever tried to blame a problem on my weight. I think I have been really lucky.
However, a few years ago I was suffering from pretty bad depression,
and had just broken up with my boyfriend. I’d been on Prozac for a
while, but it was having some unpleasant side effects, and had seemed to have stopped working. My psychologist recommended that I see a psychiatrist to get the medication adjusted to one that was better suited to me. She sent me to someone who had a practice just a few streets away from hers.
I don’t think I spent more than 10 minutes explaining what was going
on in my life, before he began with the fat hate. The first clue I
had, and it should have sent me running from his office, was that the
chair in his office was so small that I barely fit in it. I wear a UK
16/18, and I don’t usually have any trouble fitting in chairs – not
even airplane seats!
Basically he felt that all of my psychological problems were caused by
being fat, and that if I just lost the weight then all my problems
would be solved. I guess he never heard of the Fantasy of Being
Thin… He changed my medication to Zoloft, which is supposed to cause weight loss (it didn’t) and then told me that if I didn’t lose weight fast enough then I could come back to him and he would prescribe Topamax!
I have a friend who was taking Topamax at the time – an epilepsy drug – for migraines. Her side effects were pretty severe, and she lost so much weight (she was thin to start off with) that people kept asking her if she had cancer or something. Here are just some of the lovely side effects of Topamax: pins and needles in the fingers and toes, dizziness, lowered sense of feeling in the skin, difficulty with
language, nausea, diarrhea, forgetfulness, difficulty with
concentration or attention, difficulty in sleeping (insomnia),
anxiety, mood swings, depression, changes in taste and vision
disorders.
At the time, I just sat there and nodded and cried, and believed him.
Luckily for me, my mother recognises bullshit when she hears it, and
managed to convince me that he was full of it. Needless to say, I
never went back to him. I’m still furious with him. If I hadn’t been
in such a fragile state of mind I would have stood up and decked the
man. I wish that I had reported him for malpractice.
Endometriosis diagnosis & treatment nightmare July 2, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in OB/GYN, Specialists.5 comments
Sophia writes:
I carry my weight very well. So well, in fact, that nurses often weigh me twice, and most doctors don’t comment on my weight until they sit back and look at my chart. I was a competitive athlete growing up, and although I am certainly overweight now, I still retain much muscle mass especially in my thighs. I am tall for a woman and even at my thinnest have never dipped below a 14/16 (and I was almost unhealthily thin at that point, subsisting on diet coke and cigarettes).
Toward the middle of ‘06 I began experience constant pain. Endometriosis had been bandied around as a possible diagnosis since i was 14, and I had been on hormonal birth control almost continuously since then. My mother had endometriosis, and so did many of her female relatives. I searched high and low, and finally found a specialist (a Reproductive Endocrinologist) who supposedly had experience in treating endometriosis in my area. There were not many, and he was the only one who would treat me for the medical condition, not for the infertility aspect.
The initial interview was horrible. Right from the start he told my husband and I we shouldn’t think of children yet, that we were too young and should be out of school (as if that’s his business at all). He took one look at the weight on my chart and said that my pain was probably psychosomatic and/or caused by my weight and that I was more than likely too fat to conceive naturally anyway. After I was nearly in tears, my very typically cool-headed husband told the doctor heatedly that he had lived with me for a good deal of time and that I was in so much pain daily that I could hardly function. Of course I had gained weight, my husband pointed out, I had been hardly able to leave the house for months. Finally the doctor agreed to take an ultrasound. I lay on the table holding my husband’s hand silently gagging from the pain. Only then did the doctor look down and say “does this hurt?” like I was some freak. I hardly croaked out a “yes”. The doctor looked sternly at me, then left the room for me to get dressed.
When we met him in the hallway, he said he was ordering a laparascopic surgery to examine my insides. He was ‘piggy backing’ me onto another surgery, and told me he would ‘order a laser just in case’ but he ‘doubted it would be used’. He told me again I needed to lose weight and see a shrink.
A month later I had the surgery. What should have been a 30 minute procedure stretched 5 times that length, much closer to 2 1/2 hours. My uterus was covered with spots, and the photographs he took looked like someone had taken a lit cigarette to my insides. Upon research, he only made 2 incisions, instead of the typical three, and never checked my other internal organs beside my uterus/ovaries. While I was in the post-op recovery room, the doctor came out to speak with my husband and my mother. He flat out told them the surgery was much more difficult because he had to work through ‘layers of fat’. He told my husband I was severely overweight, and the ‘amount’ of endometriosis he found was not enough to be causing the pain i was in (which goes against all current research on the condition). My husband almost punched him right there in the hospital. It was obvious he was trying to cover up his previous insensitivity and disbelief. It was obvious i had this disease, and he didn’t even have enough time or care to treat me fully.
I have not gone back to this doctor. My GP and my last ob/gyn were and are immensely supportive of my health, overweight or not. They are both convinced my weight struggle is related to a hormone imbalance from my endometriosis, combined with the difficulty I have in staying physically active. I know they would like me to lose some weight, but mostly manage my hypoglycemia and get some cardio worked into my life. They never push or are mean about it. I told them both what the surgeon said, and neither could believe or agree with what he put me through.
The absolute worst part is that this doctor trains Reproductive Endocrinologists at my local medical university. I hope they learn more compassion and better bedside manner than he ever imparted. The best part of all of this? The guy had to be 250 lbs himself, easily.
Eye Problems and lecture about being too fat by eye doctor July 1, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Specialists.5 comments
Pamela writes:
To begin with, here’s a short back story. I’ve been having problems with my eyes for the last five months or so – I had to stop wearing contacts and use drops every day, but things weren’t getting better and my eye doc was mystified, so she sent me to a specialist.
I went to the specialist, and it was NOT a good experience.
There were two main problems. First, the guy kept insisting that I must be sleeping on my face and aggravating my sore eyelids. I definitely do not sleep on my face. But he seemed to believe that all overweight people were simply incapable of sleeping any other way – he didn’t seem to believe that I could possibly sleep comfortably on my side because I would “choke” on my fat.
The next is the worst part. After telling me that I probably have Floppy Eyelid Syndrome and have to tape shields to my eyes every night so I don’t move my eyelids when I sleep, he proceeded to lecture me for ten minutes about being overweight, including advising me to get gastric bypass surgery and, when I said I wouldn’t do that, he suggested that I go on an extreme diet like MediFast.
Now, I’m sure you don’t know this, but I was on some medicine that made me gain about 75 pounds in less than six months. I was always a big girl (size 16/18) beforehand and quite happy with myself. However, after that weight gain and hormone issues also caused by the medicine, I got severely depressed and went on a lot of crazy diets to try and lose weight and am just now getting to a point where I have decided that rather than go on any more crash diets, I will just eat well and exercise and try to accept myself for the size I currently am (22/24/26, depending). Having my EYE doctor degrade me like that, without knowing my medical history at all, and with HIS DOOR OPEN SO OTHER PATIENTS COULD HEAR just made me feel absolutely horrible.
Persistent ankle pain? It’s not incomplete healing after a sprain, you’re too fat and need to lose weight. June 30, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Joints.4 comments
Sarah writes:
‘The most common cause for a persistently painful ankle is incomplete
healing after an ankle sprain. When you sprain your ankle, the
connecting tissue (ligament) between the bones is stretched or torn.
Without thorough and complete rehabilitation, the ligament or
surrounding muscles may remain weak, resulting in recurrent
instability.’
So says the American Orthopaedic Association, but what would they know?
Fifteen years ago, when I was still in secondary school, I sprained my
ankle badly. In line with NHS standards, I wasn’t given physio, or
even crutches, and eventually I recovered.
Ten years ago, I went to university. I had tutorials and friends
scattered all over the city; I did a _lot_ of walking. In the middle
of walking to lectures, I experienced sudden pain down the back of the same ankle I had injured previously. This persisted for a couple of
weeks before subsiding, but from that point on I started to regularly
experience minor sprains and ankle pain.
I went to my doctor, who examined the joint briefly and told me there
was nothing wrong with it, and that I just needed to lose weight and
the pain would go away.
I didn’t really believe him, but I had a number of issues and didn’t
have the emotional reserves to fight that battle, so I went away and
tried to avoid putting so much strain on the ankle.
It gradually got worse. I went to a different doctor, who again told
me there was nothing wrong with me and that I should just lose weight.
How I was meant to do this when the repeated spraining was preventing me exercising, I don’t know.
The ankle gradually got worse. I saw yet another doctor. This one
accepted that the ankle was damaged, but (without anything but a
cursory examination) told me there was nothing they could do about it
even if it was, and I should just take ibuprofen and try not to limp.
Last year I moved house, and the condition of my ankle substantially
deteriorated, to the point where I had to rest with my foot up for an
hour after walking to the post box two hundred yards down the hill. I
went to my new doctor.
My new doctor asked me what investigation and treatment I had had
previously. He asked me three times, apparently finding it hard to
believe the answer of ‘none’. He sent me to X-ray, just as a
precaution, with the intention of referring me for physiotherapy
afterwards.
Well, I’ve had the X-ray, and I’m not going to physio. I’m going to a surgeon.
Apparently my tibia and fibula are much-chipped about their ends from
all the spraining (it seems that if you really bugger up a tendon, it
breaks off a little bit of the bone it’s attached to) and the surfaces
of the joint itself are, in his own words, ‘manky’ (probably as a
result of the repeated trauma). All of which indicates that the
ligaments that connect the tibia and fibula are damaged, which would
destabilise the entire shebang and cause it to sprain at the drop of a
hat (which is exactly what it’s been doing). And of course, the more
it sprains the more damaged the ligaments get.
My best chance is to have the joint cleaned out and a screw put
through the tibia and fibula to tighten it up again. Sadly, my weight
makes it unlikely that the surgeon will be willing to put me through a
general anaesthetic.
If anyone in the last ten years had sent me for X-rays and physio
rather than telling me to lose weight, I might not now be looking at a
lifetime of pain.
Migraines? Caused by being fat, lay off the chocolate, wine, and cheese. June 29, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in General.13 comments
A reader writes:
I feel like this is nearly insignificant compared to some of the horror stories up on the site. In fact, I nearly didn’t send it. In the end, I am, because I feel like it’s significant for several reasons – it has made me much less likely to seek medical attention, it’s made me much more body conscious, and it’s an indication of how little some practitioners trust their patients – to tell the truth about their diets or their bodies or their experiences.
I was diagnosed with migraines when I was twenty. I have classic symptoms, although only occasionally do I get an aura. Migraines differ dramatically between people, and mine vary dramatically between episodes – sometimes I can grit my teeth and bear through, and sometimes they are incapacitating, and very occasionally I can only rock back and forth and weep. I’ve always, always been uncomfortable around doctors, and this got much worse after several bad experiences in college, where the doctors at the health clinic refused to prescribe cough medicine for me, despite my nearly retching coughs, because they were afraid I’d sell it on the black market. Combined with a lack of health insurance, this made it much easier to avoid doctors.
When I got my current position, it took 6 months for health insurance to kick in, but I scheduled an appointment and went anyway. I chose a nurse practitioner, because I believed they were generally less blinded by their own egos. I wanted drugs for my migraines, and I wanted to discuss my difficulty with weight loss. I was 192 at 5′2″, my highest weight.
When I told the nurse practitioner I had migraines, she nodded, and told me that “of course” they were caused by my obesity, and triggered by certain foods and overeating. She used the word “preventable.”
In real life, my migraines are actually not triggered by foodstuffs – I’ve kept a journal, and food is not one of the things that triggers them. So I told her that, no, my triggers are mostly barometric pressure changes, fluorescent light overexposure, sun stroke-type conditions, where I exercise too hard in hot conditions, and exercising very strenuously. Some of these things are easy to avoid, but good luck with barometric changes and fluorescent lights.
She didn’t acknowledge this, and repeated advice to stop eating chocolate, red wine, and cheese. These *are* triggers for *some* migraineurs. Just not me. But I think she assumed that because I was giant size 16/18, I couldn’t knock off the dessert, booze, and cheesesteak long enough to see if that would stop the blinding pain behind my left eye. (Fish can also trigger migraines in some people, but notice this wasn’t on the list. Hmmm.)
I told her I’d worked myself down to 1500-1800 calories a day, and anything less than that and the hunger was overwhelming. I thought about food all the time, and I felt miserable about my weight. I was also exercising some, although less since I’d started my restrictive diet, because I was hungry and tired all the time.
It was clear she didn’t believe me, but she let it go for a while. Then she asked if I was eating greens. I told her I was trying, even though I’m not really a big fan. She told me I was going to get osteoporosis, “especially with your body”, and instructed me to start drinking 2-3 glasses of milk a day. Apart from the fact that I don’t really like milk that much, I was concerned about the increase in calories.
“Well,” this medical professional said, “just cut back on the desserts.”
After I agreed, and begged her for drugs, she gave me a prescription for the migraines, but urged me to “move more, eat less.”
I walked three miles home in 95 degree weather (developing a severe migraine), and didn’t eat for a day. I also did not go back for blood tests on cholesterol and pre-diabetes.
I’m exercising much more now – and eating more, including bad food and good food and green food (but no milk – I may never drink the stuff straight again). I have a doctor who doesn’t discuss my weight unless I bring it up, and, despite suggesting Weight Watchers, nods understandingly when I tell her I’m afraid it will only exacerbate my already disordered eating. Despite the fact that I should have been losing weight then, it’s only after eating more like what I want that I’ve begun (very very slowly) to lose weight. I’m 186 now, and every time I have a migraine, I wonder if it’s my fault, even though I know it’s not.
Gyn exam, followed by 20-minute lecture on “death by fat” June 26, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Uncategorized.4 comments
Tammy writes:
Currently, I’m lucky I’ve got good doctors right now. My opthamologist is
a bit of a jerk, but since that’s generally the easiest exam to get through, I don’t worry about him 
But when I was younger, I had a doctor who put me off of getting care for
years.
I hit puberty early, and by junior high was well acquainted with menstrual cramps that required many pills to touch. This went on (with added problems) until I had my hysterectomy in 2002. During college, I was mostly healthy, so I didn’t really bother with a GP, I saw my GYN for any problems since I had started seeing him for the cramps & the yearly exam. Which, in itself, became a problem. He was an asshole.
Pelvic exams are usually nightmares for me – they always hurt. Which makes me nervous and tense. Which makes them hurt worse. A vicious circle.
So whenever I’d go see him, my BP would be high. He had me get my BP taken on a regular basis outside his office for a couple of weeks once to check it. I went to the college infirmary, where my BP was *never* high, except for the one time I came running in because I was running late. The nurse and I waited a few minutes and then it checked out fine. Basically a case of White Coat syndrome
But that wasn’t the reason I went for several years without seeing any kind of doctor unless I thought I was dying. No, that I attribute to the lecture – the one I got every time I saw him. I’d suffer through the horrible exam, get dressed, and go get lectured about my death.
I am fat. I know it. Medically, I’m in the “OMG, why aren’t you dead yet?!?!” stage. Then? I was 19 or 20 and overweight (somewhere in the mid to upper range of the BMI overweight category).
So I’d get dressed and go sit in his office and listen to a twenty minute lecture about how, if I was ever in a car wreck, I was going to die because the paramedics wouldn’t be able to get me out of the car and into the ambulance because I was so fat.
I heard this lecture every few months with increasing fervor, since I was still fat. And my fears at going to see him got worse until, finally, I just stopped.
So I got through 2-3 more years of college, 2 years of grad school, and 2 years of job hunting without medical checkups, using urgent care clinics whenever I contracted that year’s plague, and just using mega doses of pain relievers during my increasingly extended and heavy menstrual periods. I finally get a job and medical benefits and still don’t go because I don’t want to hear about ‘Death Due to Fatness’.
Until finally my periods are so bad that I’m overflowing the maxi
‘overnight’ pads and having to leave work because I need to shower and change clothes due to the blood. And the fatigue! I don’t remember being constantly that tired until undergoing radiation treatments for uterine cancer.
I finally make an appointment with the doctor I signed up with when I
started at this job around 2 years ago. No panic over the BP – she understands after I explain. The exam still sucks. And some blood tests. Then I go back for results.
The period? Take these pills the week before your period starts. The
fatigue? Severely anemic. Take iron. Lots of iron. Results? Miraculous. Well, I still had cramps, but I got some better pills for those. But the bleeding leveled off and so did the fatigue. (And finally even the iron supplements)
The White Coat syndrome? Not even at the dentist (and, believe me, you *don’t* want to know about my childhood dentist. He was the stuff of nightmares).
The bleeding problem came back years later and led to my cancer diagnosis. But I’m 5 years past that – and given the all clear by both the surgical and radiation oncologists. And I truly <3 my hysterectomy, which removed that whole bleeding issue completely
If only I remembered the doctor's name – I think I'd go bitchslap him into next year, just for fun.
When fat hatred and misogyny collide June 25, 2009
Posted by vesta44 in Birth Control.5 comments
ModernElinor writes:
I think my experience is what happens when misogyny and fat hatred collide…
When I was in my early 20s and in my first sexual relationship, my then-boyfriend and I had a contraception bungle – I had taken the pill late on the Thursday, forgotten completely on the Friday morning and the condom we used that night broke. As having a baby in my early 20s with a man I had only been dating for about six months wasn’t part of my plan, I decided to take the ‘morning-after pill’, at that stage only available by prescription in Australia. I was probably being over-cautious, but as I had been diagnosed with PCOS (wrongly, as it now turns out) and my ex had been very explicit about not wanting children, I was a bit paranoid that if I got pregnant it might be my only chance to have a child and that complexity was not something I was ready to deal with.
I tracked down a doctor who could see me on the Saturday of a long weekend and told him the story – forgotten pill, broken condom – and asked for the morning-after pill. He first of all quizzed me about why I ‘had to have’ sex the night before.
He then asked whether I had had sex since my last period. I couldn’t remember as the ex had been travelling so much. And, quite frankly, I’ve never diarised my sexual encounters.
He subsequently went off on a rant about how he couldn’t prescribe the morning-after pill because if I was already pregnant I could sue him if the baby was born with a birth defect. When I protested, trying to explain the situation, further, telling him that I was monogamous and this was a one-off glitch with our usual ‘belt-and-braces’ approach to contraception, he interrupted me, accusing me of lying about my sexual history. And where this becomes a story for this site is that he went on to say, ‘I know what chubby girls like you will do for male attention.’
I felt like he had physically hit me. At the time I was an Australian 12-14 max (I think in US sizing that would be about an 8-10?) and noone had ever, ever made a negative comment like that about my body before.
He did end up writing the prescription but insisted I take a blood test to make sure I wasn’t pregnant beforehand. He also gave me what appears to be the standard lecture about losing weight (except for the nifty diet tip that drinking beer when I went out with my friends would be better for me than wine or cocktails because women’s bodies didn’t convert beer to fat).
So, I emerged from his office in tears, hearing the unsaid words ‘fat slut’ ringing in my ears and because I was so used to doing exactly what the doctor told me, no matter how ridiculuous, dutifully went and had the blood test. They promised to rush the results back to the doctor that afternoon before closing down for the long weekend, so I could definitively know whether I could take the morning-after pill while still in its window of effectiveness. When I rang the doctor’s office back that afternoon at the time I had previously arranged in order to find out the results, the receptionist told me he had ‘gone on holidays’ and she ‘wasn’t authorised’ to read me the results that the lab had rushed through and wasn’t prepared to ring the doctor.
Despite the best efforts of both me and a very riled ex whom I’d stopped from storming into the doctor’s office (today, I wouldn’t have stopped him – maybe that doctor would have listened to an irate 6ft 120kg bloke – or given him diet advice) she wouldn’t budge but did say he would call me first thing on the Tuesday morning. So, the ex and I talked about it and agreed it would be incredibly unlikely for me to already be pregnant, given our usual contraceptive hyper-vigilance, I peed on a stick (negative) and took the morning-after pill that day. Roundabout seven years later, I am still waiting on a call from that doctor to tell me if I am pregnant.
I did look into reporting him, but a dear friend who works in public health laid out for me exactly what would be involved and I decided that I had neither the time nor emotional energy to enter into what would ultimately come down to ‘he said, she said’. I do sometimes regret this.
I still to this day have trouble believing that someone who is paid to care for people nearly denied me the help I was seeking, based on his assumptions about women in their early 20s who aren’t thin – and that despite having a fair amount of self-confidence I was so easily felled by someone judging my honesty essentially on the basis of my size. I would like to think now I’m in my 30s, I would just tell him to get stuffed. But who knows? Fortunately I have had pretty good doctors for the most part, so this sort of thing hasn’t happened again, despite being quite a bit bigger now.
