fattypatties

My Secret Passion

I'm going to let you in one of my most guarded secrets. This is going to seem silly, but I am 50 years old and this has been something I've wanted most of my life but always felt that I was not worthy. It is a big risk and I give myself a 50/50 chance of deleting this post before I am finished because when I try to describe this desire it always both scares me and it always defies description.

But I think it is time to come out of the closet. I was just diagnosed with a disease that not only kills people on a regular basis, but threatens to disable through nerve damage, amputation and blindness. This has been a big wake-up call. While I plan to do everything possible to keep my blood sugars under control and avoid these devestating results, I am fully aware that sometimes the disease wins anyway (not subscribing to the disease is the fault of the victim).

So my secret passion is visual arts. It isn't that I have avoided doing this. I've taken classes, I included the visual in almost everything I've ever done. I am a published photojournalist. I have created several logos. I have laid-out brochures and other marketing or publicity materials. I just illustrated a book that will be coming out next year. I have done graphics for websites. I have edited several short videos.

I haven't avoided the activities per se. It is that I have avoided identifying with it, calling myself an "artist."

My identity as Writer is comfortable. Writer is scary sometimes because people read you and they critique you. Publishing my memoir and my poetry were a lot tougher than writing articles or web content (or blogs) because they were closer to home, more a part of me.

But art leaves me feeling even more vulnerable. I know how to assess my performance as a writer. I have confidence in my abilities. Frankly, I know I am good. I like accolades, but I don't NEED them to know that I am good. Criticism is considered and often incorporated in what I do, but in the end I can reject it or accept it without feeling fear.

As an artist I am clueless. I am a child. And like a child, I find myself hoping for positive response and feeling devistated when it is absent. This is a feeling that I do not like. I thought I was a risk taker, but somehow, this is a risk I've ran from in the past.

But the clock is ticking and, specifically, my ability to create the visual is under seige. The threat without is overcoming the threat within. I have realized in the past month that I may not have the luxury of avoiding this part of my nature anymore. The time may be now. What I have realized most is that I don't want to die having not explored this. Maybe I'm no good at this. But I need to know. I need to commit to it and find out. I need to say the day after I go blind or lose my ability to use my hands or (maybe) after I die, "Hey, I gave it my all."

I have no idea what that means right now. But I suspect going public is an important first step.

The Problem when Consensus is Considered Evidence OR How Memes are Born and Flourish

The NY Times has an interesting review of new book that illustrates how so many people, including so-called scientific researchers, can be duped into replicating a meme. I haven't read the book, so I can't recommend it, but the article is certainly interesting.

Diabetes [ahem] Education

So I tried going to a local hospital's diabetes program last week. I lasted 2 hours before I ran screaming from the room. Okay, I walked out quietly, but boy was I pissed. Here's my letter of complaint I sent to hospital via their website:

I attended last week's Diabetes Education session on Tuesday, October 9. I left after two hours and I will not be returning. Below are my reasons.

I do not want to be charged for this service as I am wholly unsatisfied with it. If I receive a bill for this service, I will dispute it.

First, when I arrived at the facility, there were no chairs without arms even though there were several people my size or larger who probably hurt a great deal squeezing into the smaller chairs. I cannot tolerate this as I have fibromyalgia and the arms hitting trigger points on my leg that would cause me to be in pain within 20 minutes of sitting down.

When I inquired with the Nurse Educator regarding getting a chair without arms, she looked shocked that I would make such an inquiry. When I stated that I thought it was a little strange that since diabetes is correlated with higher weight, they did not make an effort to accommodate larger bodies, she responded "We won't go there." She found a chair for me, but it had posts around the seat that were about as uncomfortable as the arms would have been.

Second, I stated to the Nurse Educator during the break that I didn't know of any family history of diabetes and she basically responded that I didn't know what I was talking about, that it could be that I had of lot of undiagnosed diabetes in my family. When I responded that my older relatives generally lived to be in their 80s and 90s and therefore I doubted that they were suffering from diabetes, she rolled her eyes and huffed off.

She also congratulated another patient on losing 48 pounds in less than 3 months, telling her she was healthier. I found out during the break that the reason the woman lost the weight was due to ovarian cancer and that she was going to be going into chemotherapy in a couple of weeks. I find it revealing that weight loss is celebrated without regard to the reasons for it.

Finally, the dietician began her talk with a long discussion about how she weighs herself several times a day and that she has to watch her weight because if she "weighed 300 pounds and tried to talk about nutrition no one would believe her." Since I was among several people in the room who weighed over 300 pounds, I found this comment particularly disturbing. I have a Ph.D. in medical sociology and I don't like being told that what I look like is more important than what I know. I also would rather take nutrition advice from a fat person that from someone who clearly has her own issues with food, body and weight. I believe that weighing oneself several times a day is a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I am aware that what I eat affects my blood sugars. I am aware that having been newly diagnosed with this disease, I have a lot to learn. But I came to conclusion last week that I can learn a lot more from the Internet and my own research than I will ever learn from your staff. In fact, my guess is that to get healthy many of the people there will have to unlearn much of what they are being told.

My experience at your Diabetes Education program was that I would be paying for someone to insult me and make me feel bad about myself, and that I would be blamed for being ill.

I am too old and have lived too much to allow such insults. I certainly do not and will not pay for the insults.

What I find most distressing is that health care professionals who are work with a disease that is frequently found in larger people could be so insensitive to large patients.

I invite you to share the following article with your staff:

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20020101/81.html

If you think I'm the only one who feels this way, you are mistaken. I may be the only one raises a complaint, but that does not mean others are not feeling the same feelings I am. I felt this way for years before I learned to speak out.

Consider that most larger folks will simply drop out of the program rather than tell you about their discomfort. Or worse yet, they will feel like it is all their fault and they will do little to self-care, because of the belief supported by your environment that they do not deserve good care unless they lose weight. If they do not lose weight, or lose weight too slowly, or lose weight and still have high BGs, they will most likely abandon good cared.

If you would like to hire me to provide sensitivity training, I will be happy to give you a quote. Barring some radical shift in your programs attitude toward your patients, I do not intend to step foot in your facility again.

Let me reiterate. I will not be attending any more sessions and I will not pay any bill for these sessions.

(BTW, I am aware that the language of the article I cited is a bit, well, unenlightened, but it is still one of the best articles I know that outlines the ways that medical professionals are insensitive to the needs and experience of larger people in medical settings.)

Inches Count

I had my blood drawn the other day by a fellow fat woman. For some reason that I don't remember, she starts talking about dieting and losing weight. I tell her I do not diet anymore and that I had stayed within a 20 pound range for the past 7 years and am very happy to finally have my weight stable after years of dieting and yo-yo weight gains and losses.

She doesn't hear me. She tells me "Yes, my doctor said how many inches you lose are more important than how much weight you lose. You should not weigh yourself, but take your measurements each week to see how you are doing."

I give up on the conversation and just smile as she pokes me and takes three vials of my blood.

But the conversation has stuck with me all week.

Isn't this the ultimate in fat hatred? Inches? Just look smaller and everything will be okay. Wow, the more I think about it the more I have to mark it. It's something I've heard before. If you build up muscle, you will burn fat and weigh the same, but be healthier because the fat is gone.

First, building up muscle can add inches. Ask any body-builder. (In fact, doesn't the term "building up" suggest addition bulk?)

Second, the fat to muscle ratio is a myth. It is possible to build up considerable muscle and be very strong and have just as much fat as someone who has not built up their muscles. In fact, most fat people are stronger than most thin people because they carry weight. I've been told by several experts in exercise and physiology that this is so.

Finally, is there really any proof of this? I am guessing that if anyone has studied loss of inches as an indicator of health, they would have a hard time teasing out the spurious effects of exercise. My own experience is that while exercise might change my dimensions a little bit, whether or not I lose anything, I gain strength, stamina and flexibility when I exercise. Those things do improve my health.

So the only reason I can think of for a doctor to tell a patient to concentrate on losing inches is fat hatred, whether or not it is the doctor's intention to hate the fat. You see, weight loss is an impossible goal for most people. Doctors know this and have known it for years. They are like computers trapped in an impossible logic problem, programmed to say "lose weight" while observing that most of their patients gain it back. So, instead of rejecting their programming, they continue to convolute the advice. They tell the patient they aren't trying hard enough. They tell the patient not to worry about weight and worry instead about inches (knowing that such advice inevitably is about losing weight). When it comes to weight (and probably another of other things), doctors rarely think about what they are saying.

So here's what I say. Life is short. Life is complex. Bodies change no matter what your age. Disease is real, but not the be all and end all of life. Inevitably, I live in my own skin. Not the doctor. Not the pharmaceutical company. Not diet industry. I plan to use my time left here on this planet doing other things besides measuring my food or my body. Yeah, I'll do things like test my blood and go to the clinic and take my medicine. But I do them for me. AND I do them because I know they make me feel better.

I've learned from hard experience that measuring my body (by any means) and measuring my food have not enhanced my life one bit. Enjoying my body and enjoying my senses (like taste) have given me the best experiences ever. I plan to have a lot more of those sensations before I kick. My hope is that you do too.

Puberty

I am old enough to remember seeing silly educational films about "your changing body" that told junior high schoolers all about sudden and drastic growth of certain parts one's physical anatomy. Of course, by the time I saw these films I was already wear a "b" cup and suffering through monthly miseries so they were a little too late for this early bloomer.

The reason these silly flicks come to mind is that not since puberty has my body felt so strange. Diabetes seems to be making me a stranger to my own body. Nothing is working the way it used to work. Some things are even working better, but the changes are not subtle. They are drastic and definite and a bit disconcerting for this old lady.

I guess this is an opportunity to love my body and get to know it all over again. But I spent a lot of time learning to be comfortable in my own skin and now ever my skin is doing things its never done before. There's no alternative but to learn and accept, but it still is disorienting.