A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 8: Hysterical Neurotic

 

Image by Christian Dorn from Pixabay

This one's short and sweary.

When I was sixteen years old, I was branded a hysterical neurotic by a clown of a shrink.

I realized this guy was a bigger fuckwit than I was, even though I was a self-deprecating, self-destructive, self-medicating trash fire of a human being.

He labeled me a hysterical neurotic, and I labeled him a dipshit with his head so far up his own ass that whenever he farted, he thought he was seeing clouds.

I’m still proud of my younger self for not buying the bullshit he was selling.

He didn’t give a damn about anyone he stuck labels on.

  

A to Z Challenge 2024: Day 4: Drugs

 

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

I wanna be sedated, but for me, the cure is worse than the problem. The kinds of drugs that most people take for anxiety and depression fuck me up even worse than I already am.

Benzodiazepines have a severe rebound effect. Valium works a little differently than the others. Most of them take the edge off, and then about 20 minutes later, I get blasted with a panic attack from hell.

Valium makes me thick as a brick, except if I’m going to the dentist when adrenaline overrides it, so it doesn’t work at all. I’m already prone to nightmares, and while Valium helps me fall asleep nicely, it also intensifies my nightmares.

SSRIs make me manic and psychotic.

So, yeah. For me, the magic pills are bad magic.

Don’t get defensive if you take these medications and they work for you. I’m not passing judgment on you. I’m not you. You’re not me. That’s something you can be thanking whatever deity you worship or fate or the Universe or whatever for.

This post went over 100 words. So what? It’s my party, and I’ll go over 100 words if I want to.

Yeah, I agree; it’s a lame party.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Greg Waskovich from Pixabay

Ornery Owl's coming in fast with a hot take.

Carpe Diem #1774 Renga With Jane Reichhold ... apples for lunch

Image Source

dad on high

dropping from his trees

apples for lunch

I walk to the chicken coop

to visit my friends the hens

southern sunset

filling the apple bin

a deeper red

thinking of a time gone by

when the sky was beautiful

applesauce

the cinnamon glow

of a kerosene lamp

we didn't need to have one

my mother liked how it looked

windfall apples

palaces for worms

American pie

I started getting to know

worms eating into my brain

straight falling rain

tiny lakes upon the tree

stem hollows of apples

I have always loved the rain

but it's the snowy season

baskets in a row

overflowing with apples

on one a sweater

was it my mother's or mine?

Dad goes on picking apples

~Jane & Cie~

Notes:

The Hokku stanzas of these Tan Renga were created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The Ageku were created by me.

When I was writing my Ageku, I was remembering my childhood in New Mexico between the ages of four and ten.

It wasn't idyllic by any means. We were very poor. But we did have a half-acre of land, and we had chickens and fruit trees and we grew corn and beans.

We also ate a lot of stuff like boiled soybeans and buckwheat groats. I still like buckwheat groats. You could put a bit of butter and honey on them and they tasted good. However, to this day, I loathe boiled soybeans. I would eat my shoe before I would ever eat another boiled soybean.

I knew I was weird and different from a very young age. These days doctors would probably put me on Ritalin and antidepressants. One did try to put me on phenobarbitol when I was a year and a half old because I didn't sleep for crap. My mother said it had the opposite effect and I was awake for three days straight. 

It probably put me into a manic state. It may even have been what triggered the onset of my bipolar disorder. Any doctor who would instruct a parent to give phenobarbitol to a child needs a damn good whacking, and nothing will change my mind about that.

Fat Friday #9: Psychology, Psychiatry, Fatphobia, and Misogyny

I have rapid cycling type 2 bipolar disorder. I have paradoxical reactions to most medications. I am a big woman.

I was told to “just stay on” Zoloft, which made me feel like my brain had grown tiny hands and was trying to pick its way out of my skull. I didn’t stop feeling the hands picking at the inside of my skull until I quit taking the Zoloft, against the doctor’s orders.

Effexor made me manic and psychotic as well. I normally do not experience psychosis or full manias.

Most counselors and doctors have gone the “weight loss is the be-all and end-all route,” even though I have serious endocrine problems and weight loss is extremely unlikely. I am food insecure. I don’t even eat three meals a day. I’m still big. Even though I told them to stop pushing weight loss because it was triggering anorexic behaviors. Obviously, I can’t be happy until I’m a petite delicate flower who is pleasing to the male gaze.

Psychology and psychiatry are absolutely misogynist. These doctors don’t care if their patients are happy. They want women to be pleasing to the eye and obedient.

Shrinks: I don't trust them damn crooked vultures.

Sly Speaks: Why I Noped Out of my Hysterectomy

I'm 53 years old and I have a history of sexual trauma and issues with my endocrine system including my reproductive system. I have PCOS. I have a degree of endometriosis, and I have polyps and fibroids in my uterus. The fibroids are small, not some grapefruit-sized thing.

I avoided having pelvic exams for close to 30 years because of past sexual trauma and fear of being shamed for being a larger person. I finally found a doctor I could trust to be honest with about my plumbing problems, so to speak. I see her quarterly because of my endocrine issues. When I told her that I had my "annual period" and was hoping this would be the last year for that mess, she said that wasn't normal and referred me to a gynecologist.

The gynecologist was a very sweet person who made me feel at ease. She never shamed me for my size. She did a D&C, which sucked because I felt like someone had been up in my business with a cheese grater, but I wanted to rule out cancer. The biopsy showed that I have simple endometrial hyperplasia with no cellular atypia. My risk of developing uterine cancer is 1.6% greater than the risk for someone who has no hyperplasia.

Hyperplasia is par for the course in someone with diabetes and PCOS. I produce too much estrogen. My primary care doctor is having me try a bio-identical progesterone, which may reverse some of the issues with my plumbing. One can always hope.

I was scheduled to have a hysterectomy, but I canceled the night before. Let me be clear that I'm not fanatical about women keeping their uterus come hell or high water. My son's best friend's mother had such horrible endometriosis that it had invaded her digestive tract. Some people have fibroids the size of a full-term fetus. There is no reason that these people should be forced to keep an organ that is malfunctioning to that degree. But this is not my case.

I always had miserable periods from hell and was glad when they came to an end. Initially, I was gung-ho to get rid of my reproductive organs, but after doing some research I realized I might be trading one problem for another (i.e. my incontinence could get significantly worse) and the inside of my hoo-hah could turn into the Great Southern Desert for the remainder of my life. In the end, it didn't seem worth it to undergo major surgery for a 1.6% higher risk of possible uterine cancer down the line.

Although two of the doctors involved in the process are women themselves (the person who would have done the surgery is a man) and they were all respectful to me, not a single one of them said a thing about the downside of having a hysterectomy. I think that doctors are taught to have this attitude that post-menopausal women are no longer able to have children, so why not just take the uterus out? But major surgery comes with risks. For me to agree to it, the risks have to outweigh the benefits, and they simply do not in this case.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright Juliahenze @123rf.com

Realizations about My Surgery

Trigger warning for mention of sexual assault, eating disorders, and medical procedures.

I am realizing that part of my issue with this surgery has to do with PTSD rather than the fact of having surgery itself. I must say that berating, belittling, and terrorizing a person in a vulnerable situation can have lifelong consequences.

I had my first surgery when I was eight years old. I had multiple ear infections as a child to the point where hearing loss was a real possibility if something wasn't done. They removed my tonsils and adenoids and put drainage tubes in my ears.

The protocol in those days was to send the family home, so I was this dumb 8-year-old kid left alone in a hospital with strangers. I wandered down to the playroom and was approached by a nurse. He told me to come back to my room so I followed him. He proceeded to bring out what looked to me like the biggest needle in the world and tried to draw my blood.

I had quite a needle phobia and I screamed and pulled my arm away and tried to hide. He called another nurse in and he held me down while she drew my blood. He said "Look at what you did. Now we have to do this again. Shame on you!"

I had this dreadful roommate who delighted in telling me how much the surgery was going to hurt. To this day, I think shared hospital rooms are an awful idea.

When I had to have a c-section, I knew that I was going to be poked with needles and have invasive exams so I was steeled for it, but this (rhymes with hunt) of a nurse added insult to injury by treating me with disdain, trying to force a catheter on me, and throwing the emesis basin at me in disgust when I felt nauseous after being given magnesium sulfate because I had toxemia. This bitch should not have been dealing with people in any capacity, let alone a medical setting.

I have a history of sexual trauma, and I did not even get one of "those" exams for close to 30 years. After my son was born, I said: "to hell with this, nobody is digging around down there anymore." 

The only reason that changed is that I finally found a doctor that I could trust not to shame me for my body type and who I felt comfortable talking about the plumbing with. I have quarterly visits with her because of my endocrine problems. During my April visit, I mentioned to her that I had my "annual period" and lamented that I thought I was done with this crap but every year for the past couple of years I had one very heavy period. She said that wasn't normal and referred me to a gynecologist.

Thus began the year of my life revolving around my plumbing.

I don't want my life revolving around my plumbing anymore. I no longer have a need for my plumbing. In truth, most of my life has revolved around my plumbing. I always had miserable, heavy periods. I started having issues with overactive bladder and urge incontinence (not the more common stress incontinence) when I was in my late thirties. Not the dainty "light bladder leaks when you sneeze or exercise" that the advertisements like to talk about in a sweet and discreet way. Full-on flooding. NOT FUCKING FUN! Highly embarrassing. But I figured it was something I'd just have to live with because I had no intention of letting anybody root around down there.

So, this past year I went through feeling like I was being raped by a robot for a half hour (that damn vaginal ultrasound) and feeling like someone had gone up in my business with a cheese grater (that damn D&C). I do not EVER want to feel either of those things again as long as I live.

While the risk of endometrial hyperplasia becoming cancer is low in my case because the cells are normal, there is a degree of increased risk. I also have fibroids and polyps. I have cystic ovaries, so there's no reason those shouldn't come out too. The tubes serve no function if both the ovaries and the uterus are gone, so there's no reason not to take them as well. The only thing I am going to ask about reconsidering leaving is the cervix because it presents as normal and, apparently, it provides the stuff that allows the plumbing access to be a self-cleaning environment and not become the great Southern desert of the anatomy. Then again, I don't want to have to risk having to have it taken out later, so...I don't know.

I had a person say to me that all women over 40 have fibroids and polyps, implying that I was being foolish for agreeing that this surgery is the correct option in my case. Maybe that is so, but not all of them have endometrial hyperplasia. That is actually the issue of concern, not the fibroids, although they have been causing me trouble for years.

I have honestly never known anyone who had a hysterectomy who regretted it. Everyone I know who has had one has either been neutral about it or said they felt a lot better after it was done. I'm hoping to be in one of these categories. I don't feel sad about losing my reproductive organs. I can't use them anymore and they are causing me trouble.

I'm sure my business really doesn't look that much different from anyone else's business. I don't know. I don't much make it my business to look at people's business. The people who will be doing the surgery see such business repeatedly. It's just business. But, as I said, I do have PTSD and I do have a lot of dislike for my own body because of being shamed for my physical appearance for as long as I can remember. I am also having to fight the disordered eating tendency which is telling me I should maintain my pre-surgery fast even after the surgery is done.

I am having a difficult time with this, and there are no resources.

~Cie~

A Very Personal Post: My Hysterectomy and Sub-Par Treatment of Women and Larger Patients

Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat, a blog which people of every size should read

I normally try to keep my money-saving and life hacks blog confined to products, recipes, and apps which can help put money in your pocket and keep it there. However, sometimes I feel it is important to share personal and societal issues. This is one of those times.

I have blogged recently about having my eldritch horror of a uterus removed on December 17th. My uterus is full of polyps and benign fibroid tumors. There are other treatments for this (ablation, breaking up the tumors with ultrasound, hormones), but they tend to have to be repeated down the line. I no longer have a need for my uterus in this life. I feel that the most efficient course of action at this point is a once and done option: take it out and be done with it. Then there will be no future ablations, no future d and c's, and no more pap smears ever again in this lifetime. Weighing the pros and cons, I believe this to be the best option in my case.

Reflecting on the situation, my uterus probably should have come out ten to fifteen years ago. I always had brutal periods. I do not joke when I say I didn't bleed, I hemorrhaged. However, due to past trauma (sexual assault) and fear of being shamed for my body type (I am built similarly to Ragen, but am nowhere near as beautiful and graceful), I avoided having any sort of "well woman" type of exam for close to thirty years.

I feel like the current approach to focusing on a patient's weight first and, often to the exclusion of all else, is lazy medicine. Doctors fail to take into account that weight is only one part of the equation and correlation is not causation. There are multiple factors at play in a person's body type. DNA is the first and most powerful of these. 

Repeat after me: a rhino is not a unicorn. A rhino does not even know what a unicorn is. I doubt there is a rhino anywhere in the world that dreams of being a unicorn. Also, unicorns aren't real, much like the ridiculous appearance ideals that we learn to impose on ourselves from a very young age.

Dr. Oz (Oprah's pet snake oil salesman) once said that he never sees a fat person who doesn't have cardiac problems. What he neglected to mention is that he never sees a thin person who doesn't have cardiac problems either. He's a cardiologist. But there isn't a big market for weight gain products. There is a multi-billion dollar industry built on convincing people that their bodies are wrong and it's their fault that diets fail time and time again.

Doctors don't tend to see (or notice) healthy fat people, because when a person avoids the doctor's office like the plague for fear of being shamed and lectured about their weight, they tend not to seek medical treatment until the situation becomes catastrophic. Further, poor people regardless of size often can't afford medical treatment and thus avoid seeking medical treatment until the situation becomes catastrophic.

Teaching doctors to shame and scold patients for their physique (or anything else) leads patients to avoid seeing doctors. This is counterproductive. The Western medicine focus also tends to be on treating illness rather than maintaining health. This is counterproductive. The U.S. medical system is broken, and the definition of insanity is insisting on doing something that doesn't work and hoping it will work this time. It doesn't work and it isn't going to work this time. The dead horse needs to be replaced rather than flogged and shocked in hopes that it will wake up and gallop around the pasture like a healthy young colt.

In any case, after many years of going to a doctor who wasn't the worst but seemed to be burned out and going through the motions, I was doing a search for doctors with a Health at Every Size approach. I hope the future will present with many, many more such doctors, but currently, such a search can be extremely frustrating. I happened on a doctor in my general area who stated that she provides a safe space for patients of any race, sex, orientation, or size. I made an appointment right away.

Even though I got on well with this new doctor and trusted her, she had a difficult time examining the plumbing, so to speak. However, we got through it. The results of the dreaded pap smear were normal. But there was more to come.

I see my doctor quarterly because of my endocrine problems. During my April visit, I told her that I'd had my "yearly period." I said it was frustrating to me because I thought I was completely done with the blasted thing, but every year for the past couple years I had a really dreadful, heavy, but fortunately painless period. 

My doctor said that this wasn't normal and referred me to a gynecologist. I was extremely worried, but this incredibly kind and wonderful woman never once shamed me about my body. She focused on the issue at hand and was compassionate about my fears. After performing a biopsy and examination of the inside of the troublesome organ, I was informed that it was housing numerous fibroids and polyps and was sent for a consultation with a surgeon who specializes in gynecologic surgery.

My case is a walk in the park for this fellow. He has a lot of patients dealing with various cancers and severe pathologies. I present with a straightforward, uncomplicated condition, and the surgery should take less than an hour. I'm still terrified and want to run screaming. I hate going under anesthesia. 

The doctors involved in this chain of events have all done things right. They have treated me with respect and not shamed or scolded me for having a body which does not fit society's definition of "ideal" by any stretch of the imagination. This means that I listen to them rather than saying: "well, fuck this shit, I guess I'm going to just have to live with my problems because I don't want to deal with these assholes."

I worked in the medical field for most of my working life. There are patients who are frustrating to deal with. They are noncompliant and expect miracles. There are patients who demand antibiotics for the treatment of viruses. There are patients who seem to believe that doctors are hiding secret cures in their doctor arsenal. There are patients who can't stop smoking even though it's killing them. All of these people need to be treated with kindness and respect, even if the medical staff feels the need to headdesk repeatedly following a visit with said patient.

I've known more than one person who was so addicted to smoking that even though it had serious negative health consequences, they were unable to stop. One was my maternal grandmother, who died in 1992 at the age of 75 from complications of alcoholism. She had emphysema and couldn't make herself stop smoking. She successfully stopped drinking once, but then my cousin (a very broken person) brought over a six-pack one night, and she was right back at it. 

My grandmother had a hard life. It would be frustrating to treat a patient who is committing slow suicide, but it would never be appropriate to belittle or berate such a person. My grandmother only had an eighth-grade education, but she was by no means a stupid person. She had a lot of "horse sense." She was also deeply conflicted and had a very low self-esteem and untreated mental health issues.

I don't know the other person's backstory. She was a customer who came into a restaurant where I worked as a bartender and waitress. She would get coffee and stay for a long time in the afternoon, chain-smoking, reading, and drinking her coffee. She was a social worker who was getting ready to retire. She had a daughter who had borderline personality disorder.

This woman eventually had to have part of one lung removed. She tried to quit smoking, but people would see her around town hiding behind buildings for a puff, even though she had to carry an oxygen tank at that point. She died within a year of the surgery.

Scolding this woman would not have made it easier for her to quit smoking. She wasn't stupid. She knew that smoking was causing her health problems. Addiction is a complicated and misunderstood issue.

Some people equate having a large body type with addiction. This is erroneous. Some people with larger body types have binge eating disorder, as do some people with slender and medium body types. Binge eating disorder is not an "addiction to food," it is a pathological relationship with food. Even if it was "an addiction to food," scolding and shaming a person suffering from said disorder will do nothing but make that person withdraw and stop listening. Nothing good ever comes from scolding and shaming a patient.

What I am getting around to is that I have a health issue which should have been dealt with years ago, but I avoided exams that might have revealed the problem sooner because I was embarrassed and afraid of being shamed for my body. This should never be the case. All patients have the right to compassionate, respectful treatment. 

Pathologizing certain body types doesn't work. Health at Every Size does.

This is why I am committed to never deliberately advertising or promoting weight loss products on the Deliver Me blog. I struggled for 33 years with disordered eating and low self-esteem because of society's attitudes towards people with larger bodies. I went on diet after diet and "failed" every time. Any weight lost always came back with friends. I literally had to stop dieting so I wouldn't gain more weight. 

It wasn't until I discovered size acceptance and Health at Every Size that I realized I hadn't failed, the diets failed. The diet industry thrives on two factors:

Diets don't work

Dieters believe that they, not the diet, are at fault for the diet not working.

I will never knowingly sell snake oil or false promises. 

I will only promote products and services which I believe can be helpful in some capacity. Diet and weight loss products never are.

~Cie~

NaHaiWriMo 2018 #8: Monkeying Around + The Fight Against Perfectionism

Notes:

Click the image to enlarge.

"So then I artistically blurred my photo to give a sense of moving back through time."

Nah. I moved my hand while the photo was being taken.

"But why would you want to use a photo like that? Any photographer worth their salt would delete it forthwith!"

I don't really consider myself a photographer. I'm a person who takes pictures because I enjoy it. 

This blurry photo isn't without its merits. It inspired me to create this Haiga of questionable quality.

Nobody is ever going to consider this to be a high-fallutin' work of art to rival the classics. But it is fun, and it illustrates the idea that you can make your mistakes work for you.

I have been battling perfectionism all my life. Embracing my mistakes is helpful for me. Perfectionism is an extremely destructive quality. I would like to share the ways in which it has harmed me from various perspectives.
In this post, I would like to share how physical perfectionism has caused untold harm to me and many others. Some of what I share involves my own perfectionism, and some of it involves the unrealistic standards which society imposes upon people.

On a physical level, we live in a society which demands that Number Twelve Looks Just Like You. We are supposed to aspire to a certain standard of beauty and fitness, and, if we fail to achieve such, we are deemed failures not worthy of even basic decency in the way we are treated by others.
However, rather than inspiring everyone to become super duper supermen and women, this attitude has a tendency to backfire. You end up with people who do not trust doctors because doctors continually shame them for their physical appearance or failure to be compliant with regimens that it may be impossible or intolerable for them.
So, instead of engaging in a program of regular visits to the doctor for preventative care and maintenance of chronic health issues, people avoid going to the doctor until they experience a critical problem. This helps no-one.
When my current doctor addressed my slightly elevated triglycerides (a common issue for diabetics) with "have you been indulging in treats?" I snapped. I said "I make twelve thousand dollars a year and generally eat only one or two meals a day. I eat what I can afford to purchase. I do not 'indulge.'"
In spite of the fact that this doctor is by far the most effective doctor that I have ever seen, I am considering going back to the guy who was burned out and had no fucks to give, because my current doctor has given me ample reason to mistrust her. The 'indulging in treats' bit is mere sprinkles on the body-shaming cake.
This doctor presented herself as offering a 'safe space' for larger people, and, during my first visit, appeared to live up to her promise. Thereafter, she suggested weight loss surgery and blamed my abnormal endometrial thickening on "obesity."
If you want your larger patients to believe for a second that you have any respect for them, you need to ditch the "o" word. "Obesity" is "other." "Obesity" is a pariah. "Obesity" is shit. "Obesity" is always said with a sanctimonious sneer. If you use that word, I do not trust you.
Abnormal endometrial thickening is correlated with a larger body type, but correlation is not causation. It is also correlated with being over fifty (guess I need to step into an age-regression machine), white (guess I'd better start tanning), and diabetic.
A larger body type is also correlated with type 2 diabetes. Again, correlation is not causation. I am inclined to think that abnormal pancreatic function is a strong contributing factor in both the tendency to gain weight and the endometrial hyperplasia. There may be a third factor which causes all of my endocrine issues. A heavy body type is correlated with endocrine issues, but it did not cause these issues. In fact, the reverse is true. None of my endocrine system works properly. It would be highly unlikely for me to have a thin body unless I were to become deathly ill, regardless of how little I eat or how much I exercise.
So, having a bench in your waiting room rather than just chairs with arms does not constitute offering a "safe space" for people of all sizes. I don't trust you, and that makes for an ineffective doctor/patient relationship, regardless of your ability to diagnose and possibly treat health problems.
People are not inclined to take care of things they hate, and that includes their bodies. While cleaning out my storage unit, I found numerous artifacts from the many years I spent trying to hate myself thin. Looking over the awful things I wrote about myself, thinking about all the money I spent playing a game that almost nobody wins, realizing that I caused wear and tear to my body equivalent to the harm done to it by the many years I spent working long hours at physically punishing jobs, thinking back on the times when I was sometimes spending five hours at the gym when I should have been spending that time with my son, I became extremely depressed.
To top it all off, none of this shit brought me to the goal of Magical Thinness, which would have won me the Handsome Prince with the Exactly Correct Body Fat Percentage, a billion dollars for every pound I lost during my incredibly successful "weight loss journey," fame and adoration of the masses, or anything but a far thinner wallet and a soul filled with self-loathing.
Thinspo is crap. Fitspo is crap. Dieting is crap. It's all harmful. None of it will bring you happiness, and it won't even bring you health. It will bring you self-loathing and turn you into an awful person that nobody likes.

Dieting is not about health. It is about perfectionism. The pressure to be perfect is purely for profit. Stop paying into a system that doesn't give a damn about you and thrives on your failure.

"In the long term, dieting is a spectacular waste of time for everyone except statistical unicorns." --Louise Adams

~Cie~

The Cheese Grates It: More from the Dumpster Fire that is Insatiable

Trigger warning for diet talk, eating disorders. 

This is my take and my story, in response to this post.

This dumpster fire manages to be offensive to pretty much everybody who isn't a conventionally attractive, white, Hollywood-thin starlet. Of course, there is the repugnant fat suit on the thin, conventionally attractive a-hole wearing it. Then there is the fact that it's "funny" that a fat girl gets punched and has to have her jaw wired shut. High-larious! What humor! Much original! So comedy!

The "show" apparently treats homosexuality as something to be laughed at and ridicules people from the South. I'm hardly surprised that it also thinks that mental illness is a big ole barrel of laffs.

I'm sick of talking about it, but I'll talk about it until it goes the hell away. For all of me, I hope that the careers of every person involved with this mess in any major way swirl straight down the crapper. I, for one, will consciously avoid anything created by or starring any of these people again, including Lauren Guissis, Alyssa Milano, and the face of the whole mess, Debby Ryan.

In the interest of disclosure, I am a person who developed an eating disorder when I was twelve. I spent the next thirty-three years of my life yo-yo dieting and berating myself whenever my diets "failed." As happens with most people who diet, the weight I lost came back with friends. I had to stop dieting so I wouldn't end up heavier.  It certainly didn't help that I have a zombie endocrine system: dead thyroid, cystic ovaries, screwy pituitary. I wasn't at all surprised when diabetes joined the crowd. After all, the rest of my damn endocrine system is dead or mutated, why not my pancreas too?

It doesn't help that whenever I go to the damn doctor, these so-called "smart" people somehow can't catch on to the fact that with an endocrine system like mine, I'm highly unlikely to be thin. But do they focus on my underlying health problems, the reason I'm coming to see them? Oh hell no! They focus on the number on the damn scale. They suggest stomach amputation (weight loss surgery). They do not listen when I tell them that I do not want to discuss my weight, no, I am not "indulging in treats," I am FOOD INSECURE, you damn nincompoops. I wouldn't see you at all if it wasn't for the fact that I need medication to, oh, I don't know, survive. Every time I see one of these jerks, I end up in an E.D. spiral for a week or more, starving myself, even though by now I know full well that doesn't work and, with diabetes, I certainly shouldn't be doing it.

Also, my body does not come off like a costume with some thin, conventionally attractive princess stepping out. Newp, it's all me. I've learned to live with it, learned to accept it, only to have jerks with "M.D." after their name tell me I shouldn't accept it.

Then a crap show like this comes along.

Oh, by the way, I also have type 2 bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and OCD. I can't tolerate most psych medications, they make me manic and psychotic. I take a low dose of lithium. Everything else is supplements like 5-HTP. I've learned to cope with the condition, mostly without help from anyone because, like most doctors, most counselors are crap. Thing is, I don't have to see them to resolve a physical condition that will kill me within a month if I don't inject insulin, so I don't see them. 

The medical profession pretty much sucks, if you ask me. People like me have to fight to get what we need, and we can't even get a little respect, basic human treatment.

So, when "Insatiable" comes along and ridicules the problems I've had to learn to live with? Somehow, I don't think it's one bit funny, and I am going to do whatever I can to take it down.

I hope there is no season 2. I hope this ship sinks like a stone and takes all the fools involved down with it.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Racist, Classist, and Sexist Roots of Weight Loss Culture

Medical Community Logic

So, as I have written about a few times in the past month, I had some recent bad experience with my doctor and I've been trying to decide what to do.

I have an eating disorder. Technically EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified) but it most closely resembles bulimia even though I don't physically purge at this point.

I have diabetes (along with other endocrine malfunctions) and so the guilt gets heaped on me double with my eating disorder. I have it under better control than I used to, but I'm food insecure, so sometimes when I'm having to ration food, the E.D. part of my brain starts praising me for not eating, repeating the old "hunger hurts but starvation works" mantra. Eventually, I stop feeling the physical hunger and become kind of detached from reality. When I eventually eat, it is generally not something approved by the American Diabetes Association. It might not even be in particularly large quantities, at least not for a person who doesn't have diabetes, but since I'm supposed to curb my carbs, it ends up spiking my blood sugar and elevating my A1C.

I wanted to freaking punch my doctor when my last blood test came back with slightly elevated triglycerides and she had the audacity to ask me if I had been "indulging in treats." I've told her I'm food insecure. I snapped at her that given that I'm food insecure, as I've already told her, any damn food is an "indulgence." No, I'm not sitting in front of the soap operas gorging on bonbons, which is, for whatever reason, what we fat ladies are always supposed to eat. I doubt I've ever eaten a dozen bonbons in my entire 53 (mostly fat) years on this planet.

I'm so numbed out by a lifetime of disappointment and abuse that I literally can't cry anymore. These days when something bad happens I say "well, here we go again" and I withdraw. Anger tends to be the only thing that prevents me from doing myself in. That and the fact that my son still needs me.

Honestly, I'm disappointed as fuck that with as progressive a state as Colorado is supposed to be, I have found exactly zero doctors in the Denver/Boulder area with a Health at Every Size approach. The doctor that I'm currently seeing (and I'm probably going to go back to my previous doctor) does not provide, as she claims, a "safe space" for larger people. Oh, on the first visit she acted like she's going to treat me with a semblance of humanity, but by the third visit, out came the old "my patients who have had weight loss surgery are all doing very well" hype. Yeah, providing a bench so bigger people don't have to squeeze into a small chair with arms does not make you size friendly. 

Well, Lady, after a month of stewing over this shit, I've come to the conclusion that it is not this fat broad's fault that you suck at taking a larger person's blood pressure. My old doc may have been half-assed, but his staff was top tier. Even though my current doctor is very thorough, I can't stand her attitude. I think I'm better off with the half-assed dude. He only made me want to punch him about half the time.

I feel guilty about firing this doctor because if it weren't for her, I'd never have found out that I have a uterus full of fibroids and polyps, and it needs to come out because it increases my risk of uterine cancer. I wouldn't have mentioned the post-menopausal bleeding to my old doctor, mostly because I'm not comfortable discussing that kind of crap with men. Unfortunately, the doctor who will probably be performing the hysterectomy is a man, but the procedure he uses involves less invasive methods and therefore less healing time, which is an excellent selling point.

I don't know if I should tell my current doctor why I'm not returning, or if I should just ghost. I really don't much want to talk to her again. I doubt she'll learn anything from what I have to say anyway. She could have been a great fit, if only she'd actually lived up to her promise of providing a safe space for larger people and not been a lying liar shilling for weight loss surgeons.

The pressure on women to appear youthful, thin, and pretty throughout our entire lives is based on extremely sexist ideals, and even supposedly progressive women buy into these ideals without question. We are supposed to be a certain kind of pretty to please men. 

Younger women tend to be more compliant than mature women, so women are supposed to aspire to look young, even if we were born during the Roosevelt administration. As it happens, I was born during the Johnson administration. So, expecting me to look like I'm an eighteen-year-old ingenue is unrealistic and offensive as fuck to boot. But, this leads me to my next point.

A smaller, more slender body type tends to be associated with youth and, therefore, vulnerability and compliance. Women are supposed to aspire to appear delicate and fragile rather than sturdy. As well, women tend to gain weight after giving birth. Mothers tend to give more attention to their children than to their husband. A woman who is focusing her attention on nurturing children rather than pleasing her lord and master is not to be desired. So, even if a woman has ten children (i.e. Catherine Dickens*), she is to aspire to have a maiden's body.

A larger body type has come to be associated with gluttony. Thus, a large woman is seen as focusing on feeding her own appetites rather than accommodating the desires of men.  

(*Charles Dickens, amazing writer though he may have been, was more than a  bit of a shit when it came to his wife, Catherine, whom he denigrated for having become fat in the course of their marriage, in which she gave birth to ten children. Dickens' eleventh child was the product of his affair with Ellen Ternan.)

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The push for a chiseled, athletic body type in both men and women also has roots in the ideals of the Aryan Superman stereotype, such as in this image from the cover of a 1938 publication. Encouragement of an often impossibly slender and youthful kind of beauty by any means necessary is a holdover from the Nazi idea of a perfected (white) race. I am certain that weight loss surgery would be lauded by Dr. Mengele himself.

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Conversely, this image of a middle-aged Jewish man with pronounced jowls and a double chin is touted as undesirable and to be eradicated.

Ageism is also inherent in the push to retain youthful slenderness throughout the entirety of one's life.

The medical community should be ashamed of themselves. Their intolerance keeps larger people from seeking care until their situation becomes catastrophic. The fact that only fat people who are sick tend to seek medical care allows the medical community to perpetuate the lie that fat = sick. Further, to treat an ill and frightened person who has come seeking help with shame and scorn is the opposite of doing no harm.

In modern times, poor people are more likely to be heavy than those in the upper class. Poor people tend to be unable to afford medical care and thus are only seen when their situation has become catastrophic, allowing doctors to argue that they have brought their misfortune upon themselves by not seeking preventative care.

The medical community likes to claim that weight loss surgery (stomach amputation) is a low-risk procedure. It is not. Here is some food for thought regarding weight loss surgery, courtesy of Big Fat Science. Few other elective procedures come with this much risk attached.

The medical community is not infallible. They also used to believe that trepanning and thalidomide were miraculous medical interventions, and look how well those turned out.

The medical community needs to embrace the Hippocratic Oath to "first do no harm," even if this means accepting that most of their patients will never be perfect. They need to treat all of their patients with compassion and respect, even the patient who is so addicted to nicotine that she can't stop herself from smoking although she has emphysema or has had part of a lung removed. (Both people I knew, as it happens.) 

Even the alcoholic who can't stop drinking although he has cirrhosis of the liver. 

Even the drug addict. 

Even the fat person who actually does eat enormous amounts of food. Most fat people do not, in fact, eat more than thin or mid-size people. I've known a few thin people who could easily eat more than I do. 

Even the diabetic who eats nothing but simple carbs. 

People's behavior is more complex than just flipping a switch. There are psychological as well as physical components. And with fat people, trying to control their weight through deprivation dieting generally leads to--you guessed it--weight regain and then some. This post on starvation syndrome is worth a look.

Diets don't work, mutilation of a healthy digestive system is unconscionable, and people are the size they are for a variety of reasons. We need to reject the sexist, racist, classist, and ageist notion that Number Twelve should look Just Like You. 

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Hell No to your Weight Loss Surgery Bullshit

This was a reply to a thread over at This Is Thin Privilege regarding Netflix' "Insatiable" shit show as compared to what real fat people experience every day in a world that wants us thin or dead and doesn't much care which.

Doctors suck so much. My endocrine system is a dumpster fire. I have hypothyroidism, type 2 diabetes, PCOS, and some features of Cushing’s Syndrome, although I don’t have the stereotypical Cushing’s body, which is heavy on top with thin legs. My weight is evenly distributed. 

I’m only trained as low tier medical personnel, (licensed practical nurse), but you don’t need any medical training at all to know that doctors are full of shit. Knowing that every one of the health problems I described comes with weight gain and difficulty losing weight (in fairness, diabetes can go either way. Some people who develop type 2 diabetes start suddenly losing weight.) you would think they’d realize that hey, this person being fat is not a huge surprise. Let’s concentrate on treating their actual health issues instead of harassing them about their unsurprisingly fat body. But, nooooooo. If you think that’s what they’d do, you’d be wrong.

For twelve years, I went to a doctor who would give me the old “every health problem you have could be solved by losing weight” schpiel. I found a new doctor, and, initially, she seemed wonderful. I had issues addressed that weren’t being addressed previously. But then one day I came in for my quarterly appointment, and she asked if she could get my weight. As we had discussed during my initial appointment with her that I don’t want to be weighed, I gave a curt “no.” The appointment went downhill from there.

This woman does not have a large adult cuff and so can’t get an accurate blood pressure reading on me. I told her I’d let her know if my blood pressure was ever outside of the acceptable range (I take my own.) My triglycerides were slightly elevated (not surprising for someone with diabetes) so she was trying to push me to take a statin drug. I refused. This is a really hardcore medication, not something I want to take if not absolutely necessary. Then she tried to push this medication on me which has all kinds of digestive side effects. No thanks! I got off Metformin because it was making me queasy and I never knew if I just needed to pass gas, or if I was literally going to poop my pants. I don’t want to have to carry around a spare pair of pants, oddly enough, and I don’t want to have to wear Depends, oddly enough.

Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. She told me that her patients who have had WLS are doing “very well.” I said, “yep, you doctors want us fat people thin or dead, and you don’t much care which.” She is a more effective doctor than my old doctor. I’ve had issues addressed that he never would have addressed. But he never in all his “lose weight, blah blah blah” rhetoric mentioned weight loss surgery. In fact, when I shut him down about the weight loss stuff, he’d just shrug and say “okay.” Plus, he had medical assistants who knew how to take a blood pressure. I don’t have the spoons to search for another doctor, so it’s a choice between overall more effective but a WLS cheerleader, or kind of half-assed but at least he isn’t pushing WLS.

Anyway, I resonate with what all of you are saying, and I hope this “Insatiable” mess fails so fucking hard. “Hurr hurr hurr fat people amirite” is not humor, and if you think it’s funny, you really need to check your shit. Fat bodies are not costumes. Millions of people live in fat bodies every day. I don’t give a flying fuck if anyone finds my fat body attractive or not. You still have to treat people whom you don’t find fuckable with basic common decency. Using fat people as the butt of jokes is not basic common decency in any way, shape, or form. Fuck this “Insatiable” shit, and fuck all the crap-ass fatphobic doctors out there who take a huge dump all over their “do no harm” oath whenever it comes to the happiness and well-being of fat people.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Medical Industry and the Pharmaceutical Industry: Gruesome Twosome

This is a response to a post on the Art and Psychiatry blog about the negative effects of SSRI's.

Prozac made me so emotionally numb that one day I sat there staring at my arm, considering cutting it to see if I could still feel.

Zoloft made me psychotic. It felt like my brain had grown tiny hands and was trying to pick its way out of my head.

Effexor made me manic and psychotic. I jumped up on a counter and started preaching. I scared the hell out of my then thirteen-year-old son.

I have type 2 bipolar disorder. Type 2 does not present with full manias or psychotic features. I have only experienced these issues while on SSRI’s or certain prescription pain killers.

I get that psych medications help some people. For some of us, however, the cure is worse than the problem. It has always seemed to me that the psychiatric industry and, indeed, the medical industry as a whole, are in bed with the pharmaceutical companies and are more than happy to prescribe dangerous drugs to desperate people.

Not psych meds, but I got into it with my primary care doctor the other day. I have a dumpster fire of an endocrine system, including type 2 diabetes. My A1C is very good. My cholesterol is okay, but my triglycerides were a bit high, which is fairly common with diabetes. She wanted to put me on this medication that had the potential for some nasty gastrointestinal effects. I said “no thanks.” I got off Metformin because it was making me feel lousy and because, to be honest, there were times when I didn’t know if I just had to cut one, or if I was straight up going to poop my pants. I’ve been doing fine on Levemir (a long-acting insulin) twice a day.

So my doctor goes on to ask if I’d been “indulging in treats,” and I lost it. I told her that I am trying to survive on $12,000 a year, that I do not get food benefits (I’ve never gotten a straight explanation as to why) and that I “indulge” in whatever food I can get my grubby paws on. I don’t have the luxury of being picky. So she tried to make me go to this diabetes education class. Before I became disabled, I was a nurse, and I’ve been diabetic for five years. I bloody well know how to count carbs and test my fucking blood sugar.

Then, to add insult to injury, she suggests weight loss surgery. She knows that I have struggled with eating disorders in the past. From the start, I told her that I will not discuss dieting, let alone weight loss surgery. When you have an endocrine system like mine, unless you become extremely ill, you’re going to be fat. I told her that I have struggled to not hate myself for years, and that I wasn’t going to let her undo my efforts. I was way past done at that point. I am not going to have a perfectly good stomach amputated and run the risk of lovely complications such as dumping syndrome, explosive diarrhea, and increase risk of death so she can crow about having turned Miss Piggy into a svelte swan.

Addicts, people with other mental illness, and big people get treated like trash by the medical system. We’re treated like we’re weak and stupid. If we refuse to take medications that have had harmful side effects for us, we’re labeled uncooperative.

People with unusual diseases (and even some not so unusual diseases) get accused of lying or told that their symptoms are all in their head.

I swear that medical school makes people lose brain cells. After my father had a major hemorrhagic stroke, the cardiologist tried to put him on warfarin for A-fib. My mother, a retired nurse, put her foot down and said “no.” After the stroke, my father had a couple bad falls, and the bruising spread well beyond the normal range and healed slowly. Warfarin would probably have killed him.

For my own part, I’m disgusted because I’m going to have to look for another doctor. I can’t trust this one anymore. I might just go back to my old doctor. He kind of pissed me off, and he’d do the old “if you’d just lose five pounds, miracles will happen and unicorns will come fart rainbows through your window” bit, but he never once suggested weight loss surgery.

As for mental health professionals, they’re the last people I’ll turn to if I’m having a psychiatric crisis. Honestly, I think some of those fuckers are more screwed up in the head than I am.

I appreciate your blog. I didn’t mean to go off on a huge tangent, but once I started relating my own experiences, I couldn’t stop, because sadly there are so many of them.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Long-Term Effects of Yo-Yo Dieting and Size Shaming

https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/is-there-a-connection-between-fat-and-cancer

So, Boys and Girls, you want to know what compounded my resistance to having examinations of my plumbing, besides having PTSD surrounding sexual assault?
That's right, size shaming.
If I hadn't had to worry about size shaming, I might not have waited nearly 30 years between exams.
I might have been less reluctant to talk to my doctor about what was going on with me.
So, you see what size shaming does in a medical context?
That's right. It makes larger people reluctant to see a doctor, or, even if they see one for certain things, they are less likely to be open about things that might involve exposing their fat body, because, oddly enough, people don't enjoy being shamed, ,particularly when they are vulnerable.
Size shaming doesn't work.
A "size normative" approach doesn't work.
Health at every size works.
If doctors are smart enough to get through ten years of rigorous schooling, why are they not smart enough to understand this?
My doctor cited the risks for endometrial cancer (which I may be in the early stages of, it hasn't been confirmed yet) as being a woman (duh), between the ages of 50 and 60, being white, and obesity. I asked her not to use the "o" word, and she has been respectful regarding that request. She made the mistake of thinking it was a "better" way of saying "fat," which I informed her it isn't. I may cuss like the proverbial longshoreman, but I think "obese" is a much nastier word than any f bomb I may drop.
Well, let's look at this. I can't much turn back the clock, so stopping myself from being between 50 and 60 is right out. I suppose I could get a really dark tan, but the likelihood is I'd end up looking burned rather than tan. Oh, and then there's that nasty fat. I could just get rid of that.
Not so much. Been there done that. Many, many, many times.
I developed bulimia when I was 12 years old and also started yo-yo dieting.
Funny enough, when I stopped dieting (at age 45), my weight finally stabilized.
The last time I dieted was when I tried Atkins again after I was diagnosed with diabetes. I did lose weight, but I don't think it had much to do with Atkins, which just ended up making me sick to my stomach from the Erythritol used to sweeten their shakes and bars. I think it had more to do with controlling my blood sugar in other ways. Because, shocker, insulin resistance can cause weight gain and make weight loss difficult.
 I really wasn't looking to lose weight in any case, and I felt a lot better when I stopped doing Atkins.
I'm a living, breathing example of how yo-yo dieting destroys a person's metabolism.
I'm so stressed it isn't even funny. I also have a familial history of cardiovascular problems, which, in my case, is compounded by having diabetes. Yet if I were to drop dead of a heart attack, the stresses from having to work a minimum wage job to never make ends meet and my familial history wouldn't be cited. Nope, it would all be because I'm fatty fat fat.
It makes me so angry that I could spit nails.
Wouldn't it be nice if no-one felt compelled to fall into the yo-yo dieting cycle, which benefits no-one but the multi-billion dollar diet industry, ever again.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

"If you are a fat person facing medical fatphobia and doctors who would rather risk your life to make most of you disappear, than help you live your best life in a fat body, life ISN’T supposed to be like this. It’s NOT supposed to be this hard. Your body is never the problem, fatphobia always is."

-- Ragen Chastain --

The Cheese Grates It: How To Shut Out Your Patient

I'm thinking about talking to the doctor about the lovely conversation I had with the nurse. He's better than a lot of doctors I've had as far as not telling me I need to lose weight, but things like this let me know that he still has that old mindset that big person = lazy person.

All of my life I've worked very hard to counter the belief that I'm lazy. Once I got into my teens, I was constantly tired. I was always more alert and awake later in the day. Hence why I work nights. I was always being told by family members that I needed to get outside and do something. Then at night, I couldn't sleep. I'm a bit discouraged that things have changed so little where doctors don't bother to try and tie factors together, they just tell the patient that healthy patients do X, y, and Z, and therefore, all patients need to do X, Y and Z, or they are not compliant and are bad patients (and bad people.)

I realized many years later that during my teens, my thyroid gland was dying, and that was sapping my energy. My bipolar disorder onset when I hit puberty, but I didn't know it until I was close to 40, because I have type 2 bipolar, which isn't as obvious. I also developed fibromyalgia, but that wouldn't be diagnosed until after I had my son.

At this point, hardcore exercise is out of the question for me. My knees, ankles and back are shot from all the years of doing physical work. This is why I liked working out in the therapy pool. There is a rec center near my son's place with a therapy pool, but there are weeks (like this one) when I have so little time that I'd probably never get there. Maybe now that the temperatures are warmer I could try to walk around the damn mobile home park a lap or two. I don't know.

Trouble is, doctors want to turn every patient into the Perfect Patient. Well, the Perfect Patient probably doesn't go to the doctor very often, because everything's perfect. I know I wouldn't go to the doctor very often if I didn't have to take these damn medications and have my damn blood levels monitored for my damn stupid thyroid and worthless ass pancreas.

A good doctor doesn't assume, they ask, and then they listen, and they don't lecture. Lecturing pushes the patient away. The likelihood is, the patient knows they aren't being entirely compliant. Maybe they can't, maybe they won't. You have to treat each person like an individual, not like a number.

When working 50 and 60 hours a week, I'm not going to be counting every single carbohydrate gram that goes in my mouth. I'm going to eat something to stop me from being hungry. I'm compliant about taking the Metformin. I'm not compliant about getting X amount of exercise every day outside of work, and I would wager a guess that Bitch, if you were working four, five, and sometimes six twelve hours a week, plus having to drive 40 miles one way at least one of those days, plus having to help out a key person in your life who really needs the help at this point, and most of the time getting less than 5 hours of sleep (often more like 3), yo ass would not be that great about getting extra exercise either.

I know I could do better about watching the amount of carbohydrates I ingest. I've also been drinking a lot more caffeine during the last couple of years, which also has a tendency to raise blood sugar. Under optimal circumstances, I would be doing "better" with this. Maybe if I were a better, stronger, happier person I would also be doing better.

However, when the so called treatment leaves you feeling bad about yourself, like nothing you do is any good, then the medical personnel are doing something wrong.

Say to me "hey, Cie, do you know of a reason why your A1C levels might be higher than last year?"

I would say to you "Yeah, Doc, there's this," and I would tell you what I just said above. I would also say that I'm trying to be more mindful about it again, because I am.

Then the doctor would say "we'll increase your metformin levels. Let's recheck your blood in six months. By the way, how much do you exercise?" (Rather than assuming that I don't based on my body type.)

I would tell the doctor what I said above. Then maybe the doctor would say "well, try to increase your activity level where you can. I can see that you're extremely busy."

See how much better that conversation would be?

I still haven't 100% decided whether I'm going to say something. I go back and forth about changing doctors, because this doctor is far from the worst I've encountered. Finding a doctor that treats a patient rather than a chart, particularly when you are a horrible, horrible fatty like me, is difficult to impossible.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~