Providing X-Rays, MRIs and CT Scans to Higher-Weight Patients
weightandhealthcare.substack.com
This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! Finding out that you need an x-ray, MRI, CT or other scan can be scary for people of all sizes, but fat* people can face a lot of additional and, unfortunately, well-founded fears about the experience. Here are some tips and tricks for people who offer these scans to make the experience better for higher-weight patients.
I love this so much. Your advocacy made me tear up a bit. I can’t imagine having someone do that, and it’s really such a simple and basic thing!
Regarding contrast dosing: I needed a CT with contrast a few months ago, and the checkin tech asked my weight. I said I didn’t know, and they told me to guess. I took one of your lines and said we are not at the county fair. (That caught her off guard!) she said the system wouldn’t allow her to proceed without a number, and against my better judgement, I gave her a random number. (I really don’t know my weight. I could’ve been off by 10% or 50%.) she types in my number and then says she thinks they need it for the contrast dosing. I said if it’s a dosing issue, why am I being asked to GUESS? She says there’s basically two doses: for under and over 200lbs.
So here’s my thing: I don’t know if that’s true but if 200 is the cutoff (which seems very sloppy and probably inaccurate for children and adults who are far under and over the 200 lb line), why didn’t they just ask if I was over or under 200lbs?
I love this so much. Your advocacy made me tear up a bit. I can’t imagine having someone do that, and it’s really such a simple and basic thing!
Regarding contrast dosing: I needed a CT with contrast a few months ago, and the checkin tech asked my weight. I said I didn’t know, and they told me to guess. I took one of your lines and said we are not at the county fair. (That caught her off guard!) she said the system wouldn’t allow her to proceed without a number, and against my better judgement, I gave her a random number. (I really don’t know my weight. I could’ve been off by 10% or 50%.) she types in my number and then says she thinks they need it for the contrast dosing. I said if it’s a dosing issue, why am I being asked to GUESS? She says there’s basically two doses: for under and over 200lbs.
So here’s my thing: I don’t know if that’s true but if 200 is the cutoff (which seems very sloppy and probably inaccurate for children and adults who are far under and over the 200 lb line), why didn’t they just ask if I was over or under 200lbs?
Hi, Ragen,
I'm trying to leave a comment on your apnea post but keep getting "page not found" -- any thoughts?
Thanks,
Conner
I wanted to send this to my cousin, an X-Ray tech. But The Share link goes to a different article.