Reprinted Rant From 2010
I'm tired of living in such an intermittently hostile world.
During two days last month I was dealing with nosebleeds, five or six in succession over the course of the day. I put a doctor's visit (at an outrageous cost) on my credit card because I don't have insurance (partly because of my chosen employer) . The waiting room was showing the end of the Dr. Oz show. This was a bad sign and I'd have walked out, nosebleed or not, except they made me pay in advance. The nurse found an elevated blood pressure reading, which came down to "borderline" ten minutes later when the doctor rechecked it (Nosebleed? Hostile Territory? Fear? Gee, I wonder why it was up...). During the longest fifteen minutes of my recent life, the doctor spent about two minutes talking about dry heat and saline spray (I'd been using that, not that she asked me or anything). She spent about three minutes more doing a cursory physical (I'd never had a doctor try to auscultate one of my breasts before--maybe looking for bruits? Maybe? Please don't be a total quack, Doc?). She looked partway into my nose for about two seconds and said she didn't see any polyps (this is one thing I DID want to rule out.). The remaining ten minutes was spent repeating "You need to lose weight" at least five times, one of those was "You need to lose a hundred pounds".
(::::::blink, blink:::::::)
She never asked me anything about what I'm eating, she just repeated "Don't drink soda. Don't eat sugar. Don't eat carbs." I have been avoiding sugar since my teens and anything else that makes me hungry or pukey, since an otherwise-useless liaison with Atkins seven years ago. She never asked me what kind of movement I might enjoy, or what my baseline activity level was. She never asked me about the size of the other women in my family (according to Dr. Oz, they're all marked for death at 150-pounds plus 8P ). Oh, and she insisted that if the nosebleed was being caused by hypertension, I'd have had higher numbers. She never suggested following up on the blood pressure, either. She just said "Get some insurance". So I guess the bigotry was a mere courtesy detail. I have no idea why the practice made me see a GP or whatever she was rather than the ENT I asked for, but she told me that if the bleeds persisted after the humidity went up, THEN my morbidly obese nose would qualify for a moment of the ENT's precious time.
Okay, maybe I paraphrased that last bit a little.
If I ever figure out how to fire my Weapon of Wit IN THE MOMENT when someone really behaves like this doctor, I'll probably be less frightened and less frustrated. But there you have it, my friends: Fat Cauzez Teh Nosebleedz. (It's a good thing I treated myself by putting saline spray in my nose and petrolatum around my nares and a water pan on my heater instead. If I'd started jogging while on a starvation diet, I could have bled to death...) I bled on the way to the doctor's office, and I had one last bleed while I tried to eat dinner out after seeing the doctor, but I did not have any bleeding while I was in her office. Unfortunately.
One of the reasons I do not have a regular doctor is because no matter what problem brings me to a doctor, every doctor I've seen in the last ten years uses the examination room to badger me about my size without asking me even one question about my baseline diet or activity level. You know, because every fat person eats exactly the same thing and has the exact same activity level as every other fat person. "Just like VD--always the same cause, and you brought it on yourself, you nasty subhuman thing, you." Oh, wait, you can't talk like that about people with VD, cause that's bigotry. Oops.
I spend huge amounts of effort blocking out the voices I already have in my head, insisting that I'm defective because everybody else I see can walk faster than I can, or that my amazing body is the reason I'm still single and alone, doubting that I can ever really feel accomplished about anything because, after all, look at me.
Why? Why is "You need to / would be so pretty if you'd / looked so good and so happy the last time you did lose weight" foisted off on me and everyone who looks like me as helpful, or loving, or DIAGNOSTIC (and deserving of PAYMENT)? Why do some people insist that obesity = addiction and therefore we NEED to hear their bullshit? Because we have no mirrors? Because public shaming and shunning are such documentably successful methods for persuading people to adopt healthful behaviors?
Why isn't it properly labelled as the intrusive bigotry and unsolicited opinion that it is? Why does your prejudice about my weight weigh more than I do?
And why in G-d's name do I continue to internalize it? Because it's making me so happy? Because devoting this energy to rejecting myself frees me up for anything else? Because my life would be so much easier and better if only I could "Pass''?