20 Comments

It makes SUCH a different to have a provider who doesn’t have on “fat goggles.” For the first time in my life I have such a doctor, and she ordered tests for me that should have been done so long ago — and that quickly resolved issues that every other doctor attributed to weight. (For example — my hypertension resolved in mere weeks with CPAP therapy, and no other doctor even considered testing for sleep apnea.) I may just erect a statue in my doctor’s honor. :) But honestly it shouldn’t be so remarkable.

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So happy for you that you have one!

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I wish it wasn’t so unusual!

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Sleep apnea is absolutely something so many of us have - can't believe a provider missed that!

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Seriously. And in my case it was for DECADES! And so many providers!

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I snore and get out of breath easily when moving (biking, running). The problem was/is my nose, due to an allergy and a skewed nasal septum. It got much better with a perception nose spray, I'm choosing not to operate the septum so it won't go away completely. This has been an issue for literal years, I was bullied for getting red-faced at PE in high school and so on. Finally a reasonable laryngologist actually looked inside my nose 🙄

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It's great when providers ask before they assume. But then they have to BELIEVE (what the patient tells them). I think this is the bigger problem.

Otherwise the patient just changes from a subhuman object, to a human "liar."

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My husband ran into that. He approached the door to his then go and he was a few minutes late. Two women working in the office were discussing him and gossiping that he wasn't serious about losing weight, etc. he never went back. He's very reticent about doctors anyway.

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Apropos of this discussion, just two days ago I was at a pain clinic to discuss the cortisone injection my spine surgeon had recommended. Without any prompting from me, the anesthesiologist asked if I was "on Mounjaro."

When I said no he said "Why not?" What I wanted to say was that it was none of his goddamn business. Instead I told him "It's complicated."

"Well, you should really talk it over with your primary care physician." With as weary a tone as I could muster, I told him we had, in fact, discussed it.

I strongly doubt this individual had any inkling that his line of questioning was, pardon the pun, totally out of line.

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Grrrrr!

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So sorry that this happened

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Thank you Mara

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Oh, man, I have so many of these. But one small one has stuck with me. I was at the dentist. I had some extra plaque somewhere and the dental hygienist told me that I needed to brush in circles. No big deal, but she didn't know how I brush my teeth. Perhaps she could have gotten that information before assuming she knew why there was plaque somewhere. Again, a small thing, but it's stuck in my mind.

Another was right after Roe v Wade was repealed. My primary care provider prescribed me Plan B, "just in case." The issues with Plan B and fat people aside, normally, that would have been helpful, considering a pregnancy could be life threatening for me. However, she made the assumption that just because I'm married, I must be having sex. Sure, I'm on birth control, but that's for period control. I didn't correct her at that time, but I've mentioned it since (and I never filled the prescription.)

The good news is that my work as a standardized patient (essentially a test patient for medical students) had given me some hope in this area. They're being taught to assume nothing: ask what the patient wants to be called, ask what the patient understands of the situation and why they are there, don't assume you know what parts a patient has just based on their appearance, and stuff like that. I haven't seen it filter down to practicing doctors yet, but I just saw a doctor much younger than most of the ones I see and the approach was just so different. I don't know if it was because he knew me from when he was a resident, but I was very much in control of the appointment--in orthopedic surgery, no less!

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I've had several doctors treat me as though I'm dumb or delusional, most recently a specialist who told me that of course I'm chronically exhausted since I'm fat and old (mid-50s).

Turns that I'm probably very undermedicated for a thyroid problem.

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23 yo me goes to urgent care after I almost hit a car driving to work after a yoga session bc I am suddenly semi blind in one eye. I explain what happened, that I've slowly regained my vision, that I have no idea what happened and it scared the piss out of me. Intake nurses do the usj and note I have high blood pressure, but otherwise I wait for the doctor to review me. Doc comes in and with minimal questioning explains I had some sort of high blood pressure episode that caused this and I can't even tell you the name of what they told me bc it just felt wrong to my bones and I just clammed up, walked out, flabbergasted and angry about how much I paid for nothing. My mom looks up my symptoms on the home computer--does this sound right? Do you think you had an occular migraine? Yeah! That's it to a T! My PCP confirms a week later and dismisses the other doctor's diagnosis. "You had high blood pressure because you were freaked out!" And they missed the occular migraine because I was a fat person who just haaddd to have chronic high blood pressure. Despite being 23 and attending a yoga studio 3-4x a week and playing softball 2-3x a week and and and.

I have so many more stories like this, it's ridiculous 🙄

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My ADHD doctor is also a bariatric doc.

Or, to be more specific, he refers to his practice as a clinic for "Bariatric Medicine, Nutritional Disorders and ADHD"—not just for adults, for kids, too!

But... my options are very limited, so I went with him.

He has:

- highlighted a specific medication because it may help with weight loss by suppressing my appetite (a bigger struggle is getting me to remember to eat throughout the day, doc, but okay)

- asked if I've considered Ozempic, then was jokingly like "how am I supposed to make money off my ozempic stocks if you don't buy it??"

- tried to talk to me about my size when he knows that's not why I'm in contact with him

- was THRILLED when I said I was trying metformin for PCOS because of the weight loss side (metformin made my insides revolt so I stopped taking it)

My GP is highlighted the weight loss aspect of metformin when I requested treatment for insulin resistance caused by PCOS.

I finally snapped and told my GP that I don't eat *ENOUGH* and it's frustrating to have appetite suppressing stuff suggested as a good thing when my day looks like: two coffees, dinner, dessert, maybe a snack after midnight, rinse, repeat, and I'm taking Vitamin D and Iron supplements to make up for DEFICIENCIES.

I'm in Canada, btw. This nonsense is so frustrating.

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Ditto on Metformin and PCOS. I tried it bc of the insulin resistance and my concern that my A1C kept rising; told my Endo I needed to stop bc it felt like I was poisoning myself and could barely work and function - - "you should keep trying, the weight loss benefits aren't something you should throw away!" Do they even listen? 🤦🏼‍♀️

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Here is a quote from my mammogram from 2 days ago "The technologist indicates these are the best possible images secondary to patient related factors. The patient was stiff to position with a distended abdomen. There is suboptimal compression, limiting evaluation of fine detail." My take is that she couldn't talk about the fact that I'm fat and help me to negotiate so that she could properly examine my breasts. I'll be reaching out to my PCP to find out what the next steps are given that the mammogram sounds like it was not properly executed.

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I got a 'suboptimal imaging due to body habitus" on an ultrasound once--it's literally the tech' s incompetence as I've had an ultrasound every 1-2 years since I was 13 yo with no problem 🙄 I'm sure yours is too 💜

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In the scheme of even my own bad experiences this one is so small, but for some reason it is the one that sticks most in my craw. My primary care doctor simply cannot incorporate the idea that I am vegetarian into her brain. Every visit she recommends that I "eat less meat," and every time I remind her that I am vegetarian and have been so for years. Every time she gets a shocked face, and goes to update my chart with this information, only to see... yep, right there, vegetarian. Same as last year, and the year before that, and the year before that...

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