This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! In Part 1 we talked about some general information about asking for accommodations as a higher-weight person. To get more insight into the legalities of this, I reached out to the brilliant folks at
This is so very, very excellent. So much I wish I'd known years ago.
Way back in the early 2000s I got MRSA and it was a nightmare. I wouldn't have gotten MRSA if it weren't for a fatphobic doctor, but that's another tale.
I spent nearly 3 weeks in the hospital and they couldn't figure out why I was not healing as fast as they wanted me to. They decided I needed an MRI, but MRI machines were still relatively new to hospitals. The doctor told me they knew of just one that would hold someone "of your weight" - it was at the zoo. There were none known in the hospital or the hospital system.
I did not get into fat acceptance until my 30s and was just learning to stand up for myself. As sick as I was, I basically told them to shove it. When I finally got home again, I got myself online and looked up the contact info of manufacturers of MRI machines, and then got on the phone. Two of the companies happily told me the locations of all of their machines, in a 20 mile radius, that would hold a 300 lb patient. There were at least a dozen. FIVE of them were in the very hospital system that I was told didn't have any at all; the nearest machine was less than 2 miles away.
When I went for a followup appointment I gave the list to the jackass doctor with a stern lecture on how it took me all of 15 minutes to find that information, and if the people he worked with were unable to find that info [as overworked & underpaid as they were], he could have taken the time himself.
This is so very, very excellent. So much I wish I'd known years ago.
Way back in the early 2000s I got MRSA and it was a nightmare. I wouldn't have gotten MRSA if it weren't for a fatphobic doctor, but that's another tale.
I spent nearly 3 weeks in the hospital and they couldn't figure out why I was not healing as fast as they wanted me to. They decided I needed an MRI, but MRI machines were still relatively new to hospitals. The doctor told me they knew of just one that would hold someone "of your weight" - it was at the zoo. There were none known in the hospital or the hospital system.
I did not get into fat acceptance until my 30s and was just learning to stand up for myself. As sick as I was, I basically told them to shove it. When I finally got home again, I got myself online and looked up the contact info of manufacturers of MRI machines, and then got on the phone. Two of the companies happily told me the locations of all of their machines, in a 20 mile radius, that would hold a 300 lb patient. There were at least a dozen. FIVE of them were in the very hospital system that I was told didn't have any at all; the nearest machine was less than 2 miles away.
When I went for a followup appointment I gave the list to the jackass doctor with a stern lecture on how it took me all of 15 minutes to find that information, and if the people he worked with were unable to find that info [as overworked & underpaid as they were], he could have taken the time himself.