On a day like today, a week like this one, I'm looking forward to menopause. Hot flashes? NSM.

Speaking of self-advocacy, for those of us over the "acceptable" BMI, lists like this are a good place to start looking for a health care professional: [link]

There are a number of people out there who collect lists of fat-friendly doctors in various areas of this and other countries.

I have some at home. I think I will partake this evening.

I suggest doing so in moderation, or if you do, make sure that you drink a lot of water. Drying out your tissues with booze can increase your cramps.

Re: your whitefont, have you been checked for fibroids? Because I was having the same sort of issues before we realized the problem. I was glad that I was wearing a black skirt.

I want my menopause, dammit.

re: pathologists--I thought they were medical examiners, or is it that medical examiners are pathologists but pathologists are not necessarily medical examiners?

I shouldn't get so much of my medical knowledge from detective shows.

It's also something anyone visiting a medical professional should learn and probably could.

But its not something they'd necessarily KNOW to learn or quite HOW to learn.

An example. My Mother the teacher. (This is all very hypothetical) She has more of a sense of how do discuss with the principal if she thinks Christy Jones shouldn't be in Mrs. Smith's fourth grade class next year.

She can say, "Christy gets really anxious and stops communicating when she's put on the spot. Fourth grade teacher Mr. Jackson is really good at encouraging a kid like that to feel confident enough to raise her hand and participate."

Mrs. Jones, Christy's mother, wants to go to the principal and say, "Mrs. Smith is mean. She made my older daughter cry ever day after school. I don't want Christy in her class."

That's a reasonable thing for a mom to think and feel. It's a bad thing for her to say. Particulary to this principal who quickly digs in his heels when told what to do - he won't be pushed around.

So, in the medical example (and now I'm completely hypothetical so please bear with me) someone with a sense of "the doctor knows best, the doctor is always right, just do what he says" gets scolded for being fat before she even mentions her breathing problems. Or in response to mentioning her breathing problems. She might not know that's inappropriate, unhelpful, could be handled better, etc. Have this happen a dozen times.

She eventually starts avoiding the doctor. Unlike yourself (who knows she's avoiding the doctor because the doctor makes her uncomfortable), she could easily (and logically) think, "Well, if I wasn't fat I wouldn't be having breathing problems. There's nothing they can really DO since I'm so fat. If I loose weight it'll go away. If it doesn't go away, well, that's my fault."

billytea, Ryan is just adorable! Also, allow me to throw a few new ones of my son (holy shit, I have a son - yes, still surprised over here) into the mix: [link]

Also, they said once before that it hurt when people said those things, and yet people continued on without acknowledging that.

There was something I said on Sunday that painted the medical profession with a broad, ugly stroke. I made a generalization based on painful experiences. I have apologized for expressing myself that way. I am not sane on the topic of this horrifying, disgusting, hideous thing, and once again I apologize for allowing it to annoy anyone, doctors and those that love them included.

I have been imprisoned without trial in this thing. I do not know how to force this thing to function correctly. I cannot figure out how to force medical professionals to treat me as something that is worth listening to. I spend a lot of time fantasizing about building a guillotine - I could shove a lot of the fat through it, and chop a bunch of it off. I keep waiting for my turn to be young and pretty and skinny - I've been old and fat and ugly since grade school. This isn't my life. It's marking time until I'm allowed to die. I'm never going to get my turn, am I? It's not like I'm asking for someone else's turn. I understand why it has to be fat when I'm doing the wrong things, but no one will tell me why doing the right things doesn't make the thing skinny. I'm being punished for being fat by being forced to be fat. No one will help me. because it has to be punished for being fat. Punish it. Make it want to be dead. punish it for b eing fat never let it be skinny. never let it have a life that is worth living because it needs to be punihsed.

I went to a nightclub once with a wonderful singer who was a woman of decided size. She said she'd trained for years, and one day her teacher said, "You should go perform." She said, "I want to lose some weight first." Her teacher told her that if she was waiting for that she might never get to a point where she was willing to perform, so she might as well just go out, be a big woman with a big voice, and knock 'em dead.

It's a hard thing to get past, "I'll do X when I've achieved Y." Especially when Y is a hundred extra pounds huddled lovingly on your frame.

This isn't my life. It's marking time until I'm allowed to die. I'm never going to get my turn, am I?

Isn't that a nasty, ugly place to be in? Where you want to push the Redo button because the game you've gotten so far into is just tied up into nasty knots and there aren't any moves left that will do any good? You can look at the chessboard and say, "This isn't going anywhere, let's start over," but it's not so easy with life.

But its not something they'd necessarily KNOW to learn or quite HOW to learn.

True, but that's also true of almost any form of self advocacy.

And going to the doctor makes me uncomfortable because I feel guilty that I haven't managed to re-lose the weight I regained, and then there's a guilt spiral, and I'm constantly worried that I won't be treated for whatever could be wrong because it's all my fault for liking to chow down on cookies and more deserving patients should be treated before me. So, umm. Actually not that different from the ignorant patient, in reality.

(And, yes, I'm very bad at practicing what I preach, and am dealing with currently unmedicated depression and anxiety. Because the hump of getting a doctor for that is too big and sets off the anxiety. VICIOUS IS THE CIRCLE OF MY BRAIN.)