Counting My Blessings

You know that I have strong feelings about how the overweight are treated by many medical personnel. I've had doctors suggest that I wouldn't have gotten that sty if I weighed less. Hell, I had an ENT, who eventually operated on the congenitally malformed turbinates in my sinuses, suggest weight loss surgery (which would have had absolutely no effect on my turbinates or the problems they caused)! And, when I said I wasn't going for a procedure with that high a fatality rate, he told me it was actually twice as high as the horrible numbers I had just quoted.

So, when I read things like this, Just Lose Weight, on Sandy Szwarc's blog, Junkfood Science, I am so grateful for my physician.

Dr. Anne Standerwyck has been taking care of me for years, and she takes excellent care of me. She listens to my concerns, takes the time to make sure she has covered all the bases, gives me thorough care, and never suggests that all of my problems would be over if only I were thin. Our first visit I told her about my experience with trying to become thin and why I had decided that I would rather be this size than keep trying to lose weight and keep getting ever bigger. Dr. Anne, who anyone can tell by looking is a naturally slender young woman and certainly can have no personal experience of the heartbreak of trying, decade after decade, to change your body, only to have it rebound on you so that you finally realize that you would have been better off if you had just left it alone, still seems to have absolutely no bias against fat people. Her office waiting room has chairs with strong arms for those of us who need the help standing, and good chairs without arms, for people who don't fit the chairs with arms. Her staff are always helpful and friendly and, no more than Dr. Anne herself, would they ever treat any patient differently than others.

Bless her.