The Day I Took on My Doctor and Won

Doctor appointments have always been challenging for me since I am super fat, and doctors assume that is the only reason I am ever sick. I cannot get through an appointment without them mentioning my weight and shaming me for being so large. It is as if all they are taught in medical school is to shame fat people into losing weight, as if that is a winning strategy. All this treatment does is keep fat people from going to the doctor.

I recently had an appointment to see a doctor an ENT specialist about the fact that my sleep apnea was getting worse with an oral appliance. (Not because of any weight, changes by the way). I was nervous coming up to the appointment. I knew as all fat people know that the first thing, he was wanting to talk about is my fatness. I practiced how I was going to respond to his treatment of me and then I went to my appointment.

When the nurse took my blood pressure it was very high. I told her I was just nervous about speaking with the doctor and it would come down when I leave. It did.

He left me in the room for 30 min where I sat in a very uncomfortable chair for someone my size, so I already felt this treatment was not going to be appropriate for me.

He was nice. He asked what brought me to see him and I told him what had been going on and what the other doctor had recommended.

Without making eye contact with me he went in for the kill. “Who is working with you on weight management,” assuming my weight was a problem or that I needed help with it. I said “I am working on my weight with my eating disorder therapist. I have been restricting food since I was 6 and as you see that has not been an effective strategy. Dieting has caused me great emotional and physical harm. I have been struggling with disordered eating most of my life. My eating disorder therapist has instructed me that under no circumstance should I engage in intentional weight loss. So I will not be working on losing weight to address my sleep apnea.”

I caught him off guard. He was dumbfounded. I felt great. I had done it.

It was clear he wasn’t used to being pushed back on like this, and he was at a loss for words. He turned to his computer and read out loud as he put what I said in his notes. He asked for the name of my therapist. That was it. His tool kit was empty, and he had to come up with a new strategy to treat me. Ultimately, he had no other advice. It was clear he thought weight was my problem, but he also was not going to bring that up again. All he finally said is you may need to use a c-pap machine the rest of your life. I said I understand, and the appointment ended.

What victory for me and all fat people. Doctors think they know everything. They do not. He thought shaming me into weight loss was the best path to solving my problem. Who is he to say that is true? I have been smaller and still had apnea. Maybe this is just caused by my anatomy, but he did not even explore that.

It has taken me 50 years, but I am now clear that being straight-sized is not going to solve all my problems. I am clear that I cannot let doctors run all over me and make everything medical about my weight. I am a whole human being who is complex and has complex issues. I insist that doctors respect me and use all the tools they have access to treat me as a whole person.

I need to go to the doctor often, and I do not want to be bullied every time I go. I deserve respect and high-quality care every time I go not just when I am thin. I want the care doctors give thin people. Maybe then I will have better health outcomes.

I encourage all fat people to no longer tolerate mistreatment from doctors and demand respect and proper treatment.

I encourage all thin people to advocate for us too. To notice when the gowns are too small, the chairs do not accommodate larger sizes, that everyone is required to weigh or how the BMI is reported on the front page of discharge papers and portals. You can actively be an ally and help make change happen.

I know that demands may be hard or not safe to do. You may be in an area that only has one doctor, and you cannot risk getting kicked out of the practice. So, I commit to do my part to advocate for you. To hopefully get enough doctors to change so that their professional associations and medical schools change what they require of doctors and others in the medical profession.

Shaming and bullying are killing us and keeping us from the care we need.

You can be in control when dealing with your doctors:

• Do your homework. I know that should not be your job but just know it is.
• The Association of Size Diversity and Health has Health At Every Size (HAES) fact sheets  about health conditions that you can arm yourself with when you see the doctor. Also just reading them is reassuring that maybe your condition is not about weight, and you can prove it.
• If you are fearful of a face-to-face interaction, use the portal. Doctors have limited time to read their emails so be quick and concise. You may want to say you have an eating disorder and you do not want to discus weight loss as a solution to your problem or you may want to say restriction has been a problem for you and you have been advised to not use intentional weight loss as a solution to your health problems.
• If you doctor pushes back stand your ground. They are not used to being pushed back on. Come armed with facts and do not be afraid to use them. You can create a convert. Yes, you.

My doctor tried to shame me into losing weight and saying that was to only solution for me to overcome an illness. Instead of taking on the shaming and bullying that I always get from doctors, I took him on. I pushed back with the knowledge that intentional weight loss was detrimental to my physical and mental health and told him that my eating disorder therapist required me to no longer diet. He backed down. Stunned at my ability to challenge him, I won this battle. The war is still ahead.

You can do this. You are a Mighty patient!