Shout out to the RN who, upon diagnosing me with postural orthostatic hypotension, did not follow through to maybe figuring out I have POTS?
Shout out to the many doctors who have looked at my perpetually weird blood pressure and my inability to thermoregulate and my weight gain and everything and decided “ah, well, we can’t do anything about that”.
Shout out to all the doctor who, after being told I was dizzy all the time, said “ah, it’s a shame we can’t do anything about that”.
Shout out to the doctor who, when I showed up to his office with a cane, diagnosed me with agoraphobia and told me I was too pretty to be depressed.
My mom (the one I chose, not the one I was born to) is a doctor. One of my very best friends is a doctor. I still don’t trust doctors as far as I can throw them. Some of them are great. Most of them are ableist fucks, and most of them fully deserve your distrust.
Shout out to the surgeon who wrote fatphobic garbage in Ryn’s medical record (that I don’t even know the extent of because Emi knew it would make me too upset) and gave them a halfass hernia repair after removing their tumor. (AS A FUCKING TEENAGER)
Shout out to the doctors (PLURAL) who Ryn went to about “hey this seems weird” with their surgery scar who just told them to lose weight about it.
Shout out to the dietician their mom took them to at age six to get them to lose weight (and shout out to mom the nurse too).
Shout out, even, to my own doctor who I have always liked and respected, when I went to see her about possible acid reflux who said “well weight loss is on the list of things we usually suggest” immediately after I had told her about my experiences with Ryn AND my issues with making myself eat regularly (yay executive function and grief). At least she sounded fucking apologetic about it.
Like, I cannot speak highly enough of the people at Children’s Seattle, including the pharmacist who also raged about medical fatphobia with me, and Ryn’s surgeon, who filled me in on stuff about what had happened the first time that neither of us had known about. And like Birdie, I count Emi as one of my dearest friends, and I know she too is carrying the responsibility forward.
But also, the system is stacked against good care for fat people.
