All posts in category OB/GYN

Too old and too fat to be pregnant (FFS!)

Amy Finn says:
I was 36 years old, 5 feet tall and about 170 pounds when I went in excitedly to my initial ob appointment for my third pregnancy. I was stoked about this little surprise the Universe had dropped into my lap.

I had delivered my second baby through this practice just five years earlier and admittedly, while I liked one doctor more than the other four, I didn’t have any issue with them throughout my care despite my gaining 50 pounds during that pregnancy.

That changed immediately with this visit.

The doctor walked in holding my chart. The first thing she said was, “We all know you don’t want to be here.” I laughed just because I couldn’t figure what she was on about. She continued, “Thirty six years old and a third baby. Hmm. We all know your eggs aren’t any good any more.” My eyes darted around the room looking for just who “we all” were in the room. Nope, no one else there. Just the two of us and of course, my baby.

She spoke on and on about why it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to have the baby and that time was running short for me to terminate the pregnancy. I finally held my hand up and said, “I am not terminating the pregnancy. Let’s just move on from there.” She sighed and looked down at the chart, her eyes popped out a bit.

“Well, you’re rather obese, aren’t you?” At this point I was looking around the room for the hidden cameras because clearly, this could not be real life. “If you look further in my chart you’ll see my blood work and health markers are all terrific.” I felt frustrated having to justify my size to her but I was in shock and truly regretting sitting on that cold table clad only in a paper sheet being berated by this woman who didn’t know me at all.

“Well, you can’t gain much more weight. It’s detrimental to your health and… and your baby’s health. You will only be able to gain nine pounds this pregnancy.”

At that point I guffawed so broadly, I’m sure patients two rooms over could hear me. “Listen, doc, if you again check my chart you’ll see that my two previous babies were each nine pounds. How could I only gain nine pounds? How do you accommodate a baby, extra blood flow to me and what not?”

“Nine pounds,” she repeated. She turned on her heel and left.

If I had been further along in my size acceptance philosophy, I would have calmly gotten dressed and walked out refusing to pay. However, I was still struggling with my size and so I continued at that practice. I made sure to never see that doctor again. I did complain to the senior practitioner about this doctor’s behavior, but I do not know if anything was ever done about it.

For the record, I gained 50 pounds with this baby. Not one of the practitioners said a word about it to me. And my baby was exactly nine pounds at birth.

——–
This took place about a year before I realized and fully accepted size acceptance and health at every size. My life is much different now and I am thankful for that.

9 Comments
by vesta44 on February 3, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Birth Control, OB/GYN, Pregnancy, Weight Loss

Posted by vesta44 on February 3, 2013

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/too-old-and-too-fat-to-be-pregnant-ffs/

Shamed by ob/gyn – health not important, weight more important for pregnancy.

Emily writes
I am 5’4″ and weighed about 153 lbs before my current pregnancy (I’m about 8 weeks along). When I went to my doctor in December and mentioned to her that my husband and I would be trying for baby #2, she immediately told me that I should lose a little weight because I was carrying a little too much and that it would help me get pregnant.

I felt terrible about that for several weeks. I have been trying to get back to my personal ideal weight of around 135 since baby #1, and it’s been a struggle, even though I pretty easily got back down to my pre-pregnancy weight of 150. I also resented the fact that she brought up my weight when talking about pregnancy since my husband and I have never had any problems with fertility. (Three pregnancies within a month of starting to try, with one healthy baby, one miscarriage and my current pregnancy). I weighed about 150 pounds all three times. My doctor was basing her comment on absolutely nothing that had to do with me, as she doesn’t know my eating habits (very nutritious) or my exercise habits (I run 12 to 20 miles per week).

When I went back to my doctor for the pregnancy confirmation appointment this week, she told me that the maximum ideal weight for my height was 126. She seemed to be using the chart as the bad guy so she wouldn’t have to tell me directly that she thought I was fat. I told her that was ridiculous and that my personal ideal weight was around 135. She then told me that living in an overweight culture means that your view of normal gets skewed. Again, I told her I was in my absolute best shape at around 135, and asked if she would say that meant I was fat at that weight. She said “I wouldn’t use that term. I would say overweight.”

I sobbed in my car for 10 minutes and I am now feeling like I’m doing nothing right. I have already switched doctors, but this woman’s bugaboo about weight (when again, she knows NOTHING about my level of cardio health, nutrition, etc) has really hurt me and made what should be a joyful time stressful and unhappy.

Thank you. I’m so glad your website is out there. I felt so isolated and ashamed after this happened, and because I’m not yet revealing the pregnancy to friends, I also felt as though there was no one I could tell about this.

25 Comments
by vesta44 on January 31, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in OB/GYN, Pregnancy, Uncategorized, Weight Loss

Posted by vesta44 on January 31, 2013

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/shamed-by-obgyn-health-not-important-weight-more-important-for-pregnancy/

THIS is one of the reasons the war on childhood obesity needs to end, NOW!

Kris writes:
I came across your blog recently and it made me recall two things that happened to me when I was younger. I’ve been overweight for most of my life – it’s definitely in part because of genetics, as the women in my family are all about my size (and the men are even bigger) and also, I’m guessing, in part because my mother overfed me when I was younger because I was two months premature. It’s something I’ve always struggled with.

When I was eleven, I started having strange symptoms. Headaches, tiredness, dizziness, blurry vision. I went to doctor after doctor, and they all said one of two things. It was puberty or it was my weight. I’m not sure how being overweight gives you a headache (apart from having to listen to people be jerks about it) but my mother took it at face value. After all, they were doctors, right?

A few months later, it all got a lot worse. I wound up passing out, and was rushed to the hospital. Finally they gave me a CAT scan and found orbital cellulitis – I had an infection in the orbits of my eye, that was dangerously close to affecting my brain. If it’d gone on, it could have caused blindness, deafness, or a blood clot in my brain and killed me.

I got a new doctor, one who I saw for a few years after that. She must have suggested weight loss about 500 times to me while I was going to her, which caused a lot of discomfort and self-esteem problems for me. I felt like saying, trust me lady, I know I’m fat. The kids at school would never let me forget it. Do you think this is news?

At about fifteen, I started having weird periods. They’d come and go at random; sometimes I’d go months without having any, and sometimes I wouldn’t stop bleeding for weeks and weeks. I went to the doctor and mentioned it. She did that test where they press on your stomach. I had intense pain when she pressed on a particular spot, to the point where I cried out.

Her response? “Oh, poor baby.” And to suggest weight loss to make my periods more regular, of course.

At 18, when I left for college, I was in constant pain. The cramps were unbearable, so I finally visited the ER. I was given an ultrasound and they found a large ovarian cyst – about the size of a large grapefruit. “If you weren’t so overweight, your doctor would’ve felt it,” the ER doctor said. Because it was completely my fault that my doctor didn’t do an ultrasound or follow up on the pain and symptoms I was having. I wound up having it removed, and it was a whopper – 18cm.

When you’re fat that’s the only thing that can be wrong with you. Every disease is obesity. If I was bleeding out my eyeballs, some doctor somewhere would insist that it could be fixed with diet and exercise.

10 Comments
by vesta44 on January 25, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Childhood, Emergency Room, OB/GYN, Weight Loss

Posted by vesta44 on January 25, 2013

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/this-is-one-of-the-reasons-the-war-on-childhood-obesity-needs-to-end-now/

Lots of strange symptoms? Nothing that weight loss won’t cure!

Kae writes:

I have always been heavy for my height. However, as a child and teen I was also very active and generally healthy and so for a long time I only weighed 15-25 lbs more than I was “supposed” to. However, around the time I turned 16 my family’s regular doctor (whom we all loved) was preparing to retire and her office hired a new doctor to replace her. Unfortunately, this new doctor had a bad reputation for being dismissive and impatient. One friend whose mother used to go to him at his former office had nothing good to say about him. He had misdiagnosed her and the medicine he put her on made her illness worse. She switched doctors and warned everyone to avoid her old doctor if they could. Sadly, our insurance gave us limited options as far as primary docs were concerned and so we had to see him until we were eventually allowed to change providers.

My father hated him. He said he was rude and arrogant toward him. My mother disliked him because he never fully listened to her and basically ignored what little he did hear. Then I met him. At the time I was experiencing some strange symptoms. My periods were irregular and very heavy and painful, I was growing hair in unwanted places, and I was losing the hair on my head. Worst of all, I began to gain weight rapidly even though my eating habits and mobility had not changed. At the time I also suffered from terrible allergies that made it impossible to breathe through my nose. It was primarily because of the allergies that I went to see him. He took one look at me and suggested I lose weight. I then explained about all of the things I was experiencing and he dismissed it all, saying that all I needed was to try harder to lose weight and that everything would magically right itself.

His dismissal of my symptoms dismayed me, but as he didn’t indicate anything else might be wrong, I let it go. However, his blithe attitude also made me wary of doctors and I only ever saw one after that if I was really sick. Fast forward five years. I was 22 and newly married and I had just learned that I was pregnant. Because I now had different insurance I had to scramble to find a new OB/GYN. After a few let-downs I ended up with the nicest of doctors. During my first exam my new doc shook my hand, looked me over (while I was still fully clothed) and said, “I want you to get your thyroid checked.” When I asked why, she said that I had several very obvious outward signs of hypothyroidism and she was very surprised that no doctor had had me tested for it yet. We talked for a while about my symptoms: Unusual body hair growth, thinning head hair, painful and irregular periods, abrupt weight gain, and the fact that exercising wasn’t helping to take it off. She ordered the blood work and I had it done the next day.

Sadly, it was not quickly enough. I had a devastating miscarriage a week later, and although my doc said that anything could have triggered it, she surmised that my severe hypothyroidism was an attributing factor. The blood tests came back the day after the miscarriage and I was immediately put on thyroid medicine. Within three months my periods became lighter and more regular, my hair became thicker, and I dropped 30 lbs. I also became pregnant again and 39 weeks later I gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

Still, whenever I think back on it I get angry. If that bastard doctor had actually taken the time to listen to me or to see more than my weight, would my first child have survived? I do know that if I had been properly diagnosed when I was 16 I wouldn’t have had nearly as many problems as I ended up with.

8 Comments
by vesta44 on June 28, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Endocrine Disorders, OB/GYN, The Family Doctor, Weight Loss

Posted by vesta44 on June 28, 2012

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/lots-of-strange-symptoms-nothing-that-weight-loss-wont-cure/

Woman doesn’t know she’s pregnant because missed periods are because she’s fat

Reader Sarah writes:

Just saw this clip from the show “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant,” and thought of your blog.

24-year-old woman took the morning-after pill when the condom broke. Started missing her period. At first she doesn’t worry because her periods had been irregular, but finally she goes to the doctor. He says it’s normal for such an overweight woman to miss her periods. No mention if he did a pregnancy test. But guess what, she was pregnant with twins, whose health was compromised because the mother received no pre-natal care:

10 Comments
by vesta44 on May 8, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in OB/GYN, Pregnancy

Posted by vesta44 on May 8, 2012

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/woman-doesnt-know-shes-pregnant-because-missed-periods-are-because-shes-fat/

Health problems? They’re all caused by your fat, even the ones you had BEFORE you were fat!

Chai writes:

My problems began when I was involved in a gymnastics accident, that left me with recurring back, neck and left shoulder pain (still not officially diagnosed to this day). It left me unable to do anything more than mild exercise without pain. Two years later, I got an extremely bad flu which left me bed-ridden for 4 months. Over those 4 months I gained weight. I went from malnourished and underweight to overweight fairly quickly. From there on, I gained weight.

I will state now, that I am not yet morbidly obese, but I am fairly overweight.

I walked a lot, and used public transport. I couldn’t seem to lose any weight. After a long battle with Irregular bleeding I was referred to a gyno. The first lady was awesome. The problem was officially diagnosed as PCOS and she advised me to lose 5% of my weight, but understood that putting a number to my weight would do me more harm than help. My theory is that I could work on losing weight more effectively if I didn’t have to feel bad about the number that is my weight. She tried putting me on the pill to help with the PCOS, it didn’t help, it just made my problems worse.

In between appointments (which was a number of months due to the public health system) I changed GP’s. I found an awesome GP who understood my problem and didn’t judge me for it. She re- referred me to the gyno. I still see this GP.

The next appointment, I had this young registrar. I told her how bad things had gotten for me over the period between the first appointment and the current one. My life had gone to shambles. I’d gained more weight, been miserable, had no sex life (at this point I had been married just under a year…. No sex is sooooo not cool for newly weds) and was always tired. She gave me an exam and made the comment that I seemed to be so hairy. Then she asked if this was a recent thing. I answered truthfully and told her that my grandparents and parents had always said I used to be a hairy child (a fine blonde layer of hair (also co-incidentally a symptom of PCOS)).

Then this doctor changed tactics. First she accused me of not trying the pill (uh hello! its on my file that I tried it!), then she moved onto saying ALL my problems were caused by my weight. My lack of sleep, my bleeding, my pcos, my injury…. everything! Yes that’s right folks, EVERYTHING is caused by my weight. Now, I’m the first to admit that, yes, I need to lose weight…… But to be told my a medical professional that all my problems were caused by my weight (even my prior to weight gain problems), I cried on the inside. When I got home after the tests she ordered, I cried in my husband’s arms, not really understanding how a doctor could be so mean and dismissive of my problems, when I’d been referred there for a reason.

I went on to get mirena prescribed and I hope to god that I never meet this doctor again. Because I never want to feel as horrible as I did the day that doctor decided that because I wasn’t skinny, that my weight was the cause of all my problems.

9 Comments
by vesta44 on February 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Birth Control, Endocrine Disorders, OB/GYN, PCOS, Physical Injury

Posted by vesta44 on February 13, 2012

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/health-problems-theyre-all-caused-by-your-fat-even-the-ones-you-had-before-you-were-fat/

Period after menopause is NOT normal – get a 2nd opinion if necessary

Qultluvr writes:

I’d like to tell my story so that women in menopause know that having a period (after not having one for at least 6 months) is NOT normal.

My tale really involves 2 women – myself and a friend who is about my age and about the same size as I am.

We both had what seemed and felt like a menstrual period after having been told we were in full menopause. Since I had a reliable doctor, off I went to be checked out. My doctor said it is definitely not normal and sent me for a D&C. The tissue from the D&C came back as “pre-cancerous” and my doctor said the standard prescription for that is a hysterectomy. I did a little research and found the same thing. So my doctor sent me to a surgeon, who though grumpy and mean (to everybody), scheduled the surgery. The surgery was decidedly not fun, but all went well. The pathology report came back with the info that there had indeed been a tumor (cancer) in the cavity of the uterus. Now it is 6 years later and I am able to dance/work/chase-my-grandkids to my heart’s delight.

My friend’s story is very different. She had what seemed like a period and thought it was normal and ignored it for several years. She mentioned it to another friend, who urged her to talk to me and I urged her to go see a doctor. So she did and got the usual “you’re too fat” run-around. She insisted that something must be done and did get a referral to a local surgeon – who said she was too fat, that nobody could do a hysterectomy on her and refused to do the surgery. I’m not clear how many doctors she went through, but she did eventually find one competent enough to do a hysterectomy on a 300ish pound woman. My recovery was 6 weeks; hers has been over 6 months. My total time from first visit to totally recovered was 5 months; hers was about 3 full years, some of it listening in misery to some jerk tell her she’s too fat and refusing to treat something she clearly knows is not okay. Her outcome now is pretty good, so this story has a reasonably happy ending for both of us.

I think it does have two clear points.
1) If you think something is wrong, get to a doctor and keep going until you find one who will treat you respectfully and actually listen to what is going on.
2) It does really help to have found a doctor you can trust before you really need one. I know how hard that is and yes, it is hard. I had to drive an hour and a half from my home to the doctor’s office (same distance to the hospital) and it was absolutely worth it at the time I needed a reliable doctor most.

6 Comments
by vesta44 on September 26, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Cancer, OB/GYN, Surgeries

Posted by vesta44 on September 26, 2011

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/period-after-menopause-is-not-normal-get-a-2nd-opinion-if-necessary/

Too fat to get pregnant – need WLS, ob-gyn doesn’t believe patient

Mel writes from Australia:

Hi
I found your blog and thought my story would fit right in.
I don’t have a good relationship with doctors. Frankly they terrify me, and I avoid them at all costs. Before we started trying to conceive I only went once a year for my annual pill prescription and pap smear if needed. My gp is good though, a really lovely person who never tries to tell me it’s all about how fat I am. Unfortunately not all doctors are as helpful.
I have been trying to conceive for more than a year now. In that time I have been to my gp for preliminary tests, taken vitamins every day, cut out the caffeine, watched what I eat and have recently taken up exercise at the gym. Unfortunately I have still not managed to get pregnant and have been having long long cycles with irregular temperatures and heavy bleeding. Off to my gp in January-she was very helpful, sent me off for an ultrasound and some blood tests, mainly general stuff since I hadn’t had any tests for around a decade, but also a GTT. It came back fine-no diabetes, nothing wrong with my girly bits on the ultrasound. She told us to keep trying and come back in a couple of months.
I returned to her in April, still with some crazy issues relating to long long cycles, long periods and no pregnancy. She told me it was fine to keep trying but would like me to see a gynaecologist. She wrote on the referral “Mel has been trying to conceive for more than 12 months but has been unsuccessful. She has a family history of PCOS and is overweight. Please help her with her fertility issue”. Okay I have no problem with what she wrote, it’s all accurate.
Off I trudged to the gynaecologist, test results in hand. In the time between January and May when I saw the gynaecologist I had been exercising and had lost around 15kg, which I thought was a stellar effort and showed I was trying to address the inevitable “you need to lose weight”. My gp had told me to lose 5% of my bodyweight and if my weight was the problem then my cycles would miraculously sort themselves out-after losing the weight there has been no improvement so I thought I had pre-empted their comment.
The first thing out of the gynaecologists mouth was “How much do you weigh”. 135kg. “Do you realise how obese you are?” I then told her I have been working hard to lose weight through diet and exercise, thinking to cut her off before she got into her fatbashing rant. As i explained that I had lost 15kg since January, was doing 90 minutes of cardio at the gym 5 times a week, and eating a low GI low fat low carb diet she rolled her eyes at me in disbelief. Her reply was “You are too fat for a baby. You need to get down to 65kg before I will help you”.
At that point I should have stood up, told her to go f*** herself and walked out but I was stunned. I guess she took the stunned silence as agreement because then she whipped out the lapbanding pamphlet and told me I had to have weight loss surgery. I told her no, not under any circumstances would I do that, it doesn’t work (my aunt had it done and is bigger than she was before), and she then continued to patronise me. She told me I was infertile because I had been on the pill for 15 years, that taking basal body temperatures was a waste of time as they don’t show ovulation, and that I would need ivf to conceive. She could tell all this apparently from looking at me and reading my full blood count, my GTT results and looking at my completely normal ultrasound results. I just sat there as she lectured me about how I had to take pre-natal vitamins (because of course, being fat, I must be stupid and incapable of reading). She told me I must be very lazy because she only had to walk for 30 minutes a day to lose 1/2 a kilogram.
Not once did she ask me about my symptoms, and when I pointed out that I didn’t have the crazy cycles and issues before I went on the pill and I was fat then, she ignored me and kept bringing up the weight loss surgery as the only option available to me. As I left she handed me the weight loss surgery pamphlet and told me to think about it for next time I came. No hope was given, no suggestions on how she was going to investigate or manage the issues I am having in terms of cycles and some pretty severe bleeding, just “you are fat. you are fat. you are fat”.
By the time I left her surgery I was in tears, and as I walked away I had never felt so depressed in my life. All I wanted was a baby, just one, I had walked into her office so full of hope and had been in a really good place before she opened her mouth. I rang my husband and could barely speak, I was so upset. As I told him what had happened he got more and more angry till finally he said “How can you let someone speak to you like that. You are worth so much more than that”. At that point I realised that the strong assertive Me had been turned into the compliant humiliated voiceless Me by someone who didn’t know me, didn’t care about me, and didn’t even behave in a professional manner towards me.
I don’t know what box of cornflakes she got her medical degree off the back of, but if she actually genuinely wanted to help me (even if in her opinion the only possible option was helping me lose weight) then did she really think she was going to get very far by just humiliating me? As for me I am now needing to go off to my gp again for another referral, but I have put it off for the last few weeks because I am not sure if I can face going through that again with another specialist. I thought the Hippocratic oath said “first do no harm” but I guess that emotional damage to a fat person doesn’t count as she didn’t see me as a person, just a big pile of lard.

23 Comments
by vesta44 on May 23, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Infertility, OB/GYN, PCOS, Uncategorized, Weight Loss, WLS (weight loss surgery)

Posted by vesta44 on May 23, 2011

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/too-fat-to-get-pregnant-need-wls-ob-gyn-doesnt-believe-patient/

Miscarriage, D & C scheduled, doctor suggests WLS

A reader writes:

First I want to say thank you so much for this blog. It makes me angry, but it also helps me feel understood.

I have always been fat. I was a fat child, a fat teenager, and now am a fat adult.

When my husband and I decided to try to have a baby, we discovered that I had a fertility issue (unrelated to my weight) that would prevent any sort of natural conception. Fast forward six years to our second IVF try and we were ecstatic that it worked. Until week 10 when I went in for my first scan and they found that the baby did not have a heartbeat. We were crushed. We decided that I would go off all medication that was supporting the pregnancy and wait for my body to spontaneously abort.

Unfortunately a week later, I ended up in the emergency room, bleeding heavily and in a significant amount of pain. I will say that I in all of these situations, my fertility doctor, the OB who did the first scan, and the ER staff & doctors, all of them treated me with respect and compassion. After receiving some pain medication, I opted to come back the next day for a D&C, considered a same-day surgery.

Here is where my story turns so awful. Because of my husband’s work duties, he was unable to accompany me to the surgery wing the next morning, although he was able to be there before I actually went into surgery and for my recovery. I waited alone for my file to get processed, for the nurse to take my blood pressure and temperature and finally I sat and waited for the anesthesiologist.

I got called back by Dr. H and walked back to sit at his desk. He ignored my medical history (which showed no prior problems with anesthesia at my weight) and began to detail all of the complications that can happen under anesthesia at my weight. Fine. Whatever. I was in a haze and pretty much ignored him unless I was asked a direct question.

But then he looked me in the eye and said, “You know, we have a really excellent bariatric surgery program here. You should think about doing it. You can always get pregnant again later. Your knees will thank you if you do it. I know you’re fine now, but that much extra weight will have a lot of repercussions later on.”

I sat there, stunned. And shamed. And to this day, thinking about it makes me cry. I said nothing in my own defense.

Later as I was laying in pre-op, a chaplain came by and prayed with me. Then he just stood and talked to me for awhile. Out of nowhere, Dr. H comes up to my bedside to check in before surgery. He looks across the bed at the chaplain and says, “I’ve been trying to talk her into doing our bariatric surgery program.”

Did I mention that pre-op is just a bunch of curtained off areas?

Thank God for the chaplain who glared at Dr. H until he left and then just stood with me and held my hand. The shame I felt was indescribable. I was already blaming myself and my body and my weight for being the reason that my baby was gone.

I didn’t tell anyone about what Dr. H said. I didn’t write an angry letter to the hospital. I tried to forget it, but even though that was almost 3 years ago, I remember every second of the horror that I felt. The way that my shame almost choked me.

You don’t have to post my story on your blog, but I felt that this was the time and place to share what happened. Maybe I will go ahead and write that letter telling the hospital how I was treated. I’m fairly new to the Fat Acceptance blog world and it’s going to take me some time to change the way my mind works. I’m hopeful that I can work to put that shame behind me and stop blaming myself for what happened.

Thanks for the venue and for reading this far.

11 Comments
by vesta44 on May 16, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Emergency Room, Hospitals, Infertility, OB/GYN, Pregnancy, Uncategorized, WLS (weight loss surgery)

Posted by vesta44 on May 16, 2011

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/miscarriage-d-c-scheduled-doctor-suggests-wls/

Depo BC & extreme weight gain – must be all the sugary soda/juice you drink.

Christine writes:

Several years ago I decided to go on the Depo shot for birth control and to help with heavy bleeding/painful periods. It worked great, and my periods completely stopped for several years. However, my doctor never mentioned weight gain, let alone severe weight gain, as a possible side effect. I gained 70 – 80 lbs in my first 2 years on the shot. (And since I was still in the body hatred/pro dieting mindset at the time, I blamed it all on myself. My Family Practitioner certainly never brought up the possibility it was due to the medication.) Once I started reading about the extreme weight gain that can happen with Depo, I decided to go off the shot. (My last one was about a year ago.)

Unfortunately, the heavy bleeding/painful periods came back with a vengeance and I ended up in the ER, where I was given an ultrasound. I was told it looked “suspicious” for adenomyosis (a condition in which endometrial tissue grows into the muscular walls of the uterus) and referred to an outpatient OB-GYN clinic for an endometrial biopsy.

The doctor at the clinic started off great. He looked at my chart and said, “I see you had the lovely side effect of weight gain with the Depo shot. Unfortunately, for some women, they have to watch their diet so closely to keep from gaining weight that it outweighs the benefits.” We talked for a minute about what my weight had been before the shot (stable between 220 – 230), my weight after the shot (300), and then an additional weight gain that had come with quitting smoking (340). I’ve since lost about 20 lbs. since my periods returned 5 months ago.

So, as I said, things were going great. He had mentioned my size and weight as it related to my issues, but it was respectful and matter-of-fact. Then he said, “Let me ask you this…what do you drink during the day?”

“Crystal light.”

“And that has sugar?”

“No.”

He frowned like he hadn’t heard me right. “What else do you drink? What about juice? Soda?”

“No, not really. It’s Crystal Light morning, noon and night.”

At this point he was incredulous. It was obvious he didn’t believe me.

“You NEVER drink soda or juice?”

I answered, “Juice, almost never. I’ll have an occasional soda when I’m out, but I don’t buy it for the house.”

At this point he smiled and nodded an “Ah ha!”

“Diet?” he asked, with a sly look on his face.

“No,” I answered.

“Diet?” he asked again.

“No,” I repeated, “I drank nothing but diet soda for over 20 years. I can’t stand the taste of it anymore. If I’m going to drink a soda, it’s going to be the real thing.”

“DIET!” he said forcefully, with a huge grin on his face. “That’s the problem,” he said, “regular soda is 100 calories a glass!”

“I don’t drink it often enough for it to matter,” I said.

“How often is that?” he asked.

“Maybe once a week, if that.” I replied

He mumbled something about Diet Dr. Pepper and how it tasted better than other diet sodas, gave a little shake of his head and dropped the subject. Then he went back to being kind, informative and respectful. But that incident really upset me. I’ll see him again in 3 weeks for the results, and I’m tempted to haul in the bag full of plastic Crystal Light containers I save for a local preschool to use for crafts. I don’t mind that he asked about my soda-drinking habits. I mind very much that he refused to believe my answer, and continued to hammer the issue – especially after acknowledging the extreme weight gain Depo can cause.

23 Comments
by vesta44 on July 26, 2010  •  Permalink
Posted in Birth Control, OB/GYN

Posted by vesta44 on July 26, 2010

http://fathealth.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/depo-bc-extreme-weight-gain-must-be-all-the-sugary-sodajuice-you-drink/

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