This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! Before I get started on this, I want to point out that, in addition to my primary audience speaking with healthcare audiences about best practices for working with higher-weight patients, I also write and speak a lot about how higher-weight people can navigate weight stigma in healthcare. I always want to point out clearly that this shouldn’t be necessary and that, even when medical weight stigma becomes our problem, it is not our fault. Also, the ability to do this kind of self-advocacy is wrapped in many kinds of privilege. That said, as a fat* person who has to navigate weight stigma in the healthcare system, sometimes I have to test my own advice.
I love a happy ending! I am so glad you continue to be cancer-free.
But it's SO frustrating to have to be the expert on the things providers are paid to be experts on, only to have to constantly prove over and over again that they are not, in fact, experts. It also blows my mind that today, on the cusp of 2024 and in the midst of ZOMG_oBe$iTy_pAnIc where we can't go anywhere without being confronted in some way about how our bodies are need to be eradicated from the planet, and none of these so-called oBe$iTy_ExPeRt$ can be arsed to acknowledge that healthcare settings aren't designed for us, and instead choose to focus on how they can maximize profits rather than teach their colleagues how to better accommodate us. (Hilariously, their colleagues would also be more profitable if they weren't turning away fat patients, but that's neither here nor there and I have Big Feelings about the role of capitalism in modern healthcare.)
accessing a CT scan (or any other necessary test or treatment) should be as simple as calling up and scheduling (and IMO the onus should be on the scheduler to ask EVERY patient about access needs, every time)... and yet when we're well-informed (because we HAVE to be) and bring up this knowledge to the providers (again, because we HAVE to), we're labeled things like hypochondriacs or "Chronic Googlers."
I occasionally wish we could invoice them for our time when they waste it like this.
We should not have to deal with this garbage. I'm glad you were able to get a proper scan.
I think I've told this tale here before so I'll try [ha!] to be brief.
When my leg was infected with MRSA it was slow to heal and the damage was considerable. The doctors got a CT scan - whew! But they wanted an MRI for better imaging. It was 2003 and MRIs were not new but they were still in relative infancy for wide-spread use. The table of the MRI machine in the hospital would not handle someone over 250 lbs.
My doctor said he asked his office to find an MRI with a higher weight limit and they told me there were none anywhere nearby. He pulled out that old trope, "We might have to send you to the zoo." For those who don't know, this isn't just fatphobic garbage, it's a complete myth: No zoo will take the liability risk to examine a human being.
After 3+ weeks in the hospital I was sent home (I was supposed to go to a rehab hospital but that's a different clusterfudge). The first thing I did was hop on the computer and get online (I think I had DSL by then!) and search the still fairly new Web for info. I looked up the names of the companies that made most of the MRI machines, then looked up the company's fairly bare websites. And then I got to calling them.
I only had to call two of them before I found that they both had many machines in the city that would handle weights up to and over 300, even 400 lbs, and many of them were in the hospital's system. A couple were within a mile of the hospital I'd been in.
This reminds me of my first experience with a cancer surgeon. She basically said that my weight was both the reason they had to make a much bigger incision to remove an ovarian cyst that was potentially cancerous and the reason I was at higher risk for cancer in the first place. I got a total hysterectomy, it was after that they found uterine cancer. It took me almost a week to get a clear diagnosis - she called and left a garbled message, and when I called back to get clarification, they told me she was unavailable. It was the worst, especially at a terrible time.
I'm glad your surgery was successful. We are perpetually cancer patients at this point, and frankly, this allowed my second bout to get diagnosed very early, so that treatment has been successful as well. But the gall of these so-called caregivers is really something.
I love a happy ending! I am so glad you continue to be cancer-free.
But it's SO frustrating to have to be the expert on the things providers are paid to be experts on, only to have to constantly prove over and over again that they are not, in fact, experts. It also blows my mind that today, on the cusp of 2024 and in the midst of ZOMG_oBe$iTy_pAnIc where we can't go anywhere without being confronted in some way about how our bodies are need to be eradicated from the planet, and none of these so-called oBe$iTy_ExPeRt$ can be arsed to acknowledge that healthcare settings aren't designed for us, and instead choose to focus on how they can maximize profits rather than teach their colleagues how to better accommodate us. (Hilariously, their colleagues would also be more profitable if they weren't turning away fat patients, but that's neither here nor there and I have Big Feelings about the role of capitalism in modern healthcare.)
accessing a CT scan (or any other necessary test or treatment) should be as simple as calling up and scheduling (and IMO the onus should be on the scheduler to ask EVERY patient about access needs, every time)... and yet when we're well-informed (because we HAVE to be) and bring up this knowledge to the providers (again, because we HAVE to), we're labeled things like hypochondriacs or "Chronic Googlers."
I occasionally wish we could invoice them for our time when they waste it like this.
We should not have to deal with this garbage. I'm glad you were able to get a proper scan.
I think I've told this tale here before so I'll try [ha!] to be brief.
When my leg was infected with MRSA it was slow to heal and the damage was considerable. The doctors got a CT scan - whew! But they wanted an MRI for better imaging. It was 2003 and MRIs were not new but they were still in relative infancy for wide-spread use. The table of the MRI machine in the hospital would not handle someone over 250 lbs.
My doctor said he asked his office to find an MRI with a higher weight limit and they told me there were none anywhere nearby. He pulled out that old trope, "We might have to send you to the zoo." For those who don't know, this isn't just fatphobic garbage, it's a complete myth: No zoo will take the liability risk to examine a human being.
After 3+ weeks in the hospital I was sent home (I was supposed to go to a rehab hospital but that's a different clusterfudge). The first thing I did was hop on the computer and get online (I think I had DSL by then!) and search the still fairly new Web for info. I looked up the names of the companies that made most of the MRI machines, then looked up the company's fairly bare websites. And then I got to calling them.
I only had to call two of them before I found that they both had many machines in the city that would handle weights up to and over 300, even 400 lbs, and many of them were in the hospital's system. A couple were within a mile of the hospital I'd been in.
This reminds me of my first experience with a cancer surgeon. She basically said that my weight was both the reason they had to make a much bigger incision to remove an ovarian cyst that was potentially cancerous and the reason I was at higher risk for cancer in the first place. I got a total hysterectomy, it was after that they found uterine cancer. It took me almost a week to get a clear diagnosis - she called and left a garbled message, and when I called back to get clarification, they told me she was unavailable. It was the worst, especially at a terrible time.
I'm glad your surgery was successful. We are perpetually cancer patients at this point, and frankly, this allowed my second bout to get diagnosed very early, so that treatment has been successful as well. But the gall of these so-called caregivers is really something.