679
doctors
(lemm.ee)
Or a mentally troubled patient. Or a black patient. Or a woman.
Yeah. I've a friend who kept getting dismissed by the doctors when they came with worries about their heart, because they were diagnosed with generalised anxiety. Apparently if you're living with anxiety you're also immune to heart problems!
Doesn't help that someone close to them died because of late medical intervention, which only happened because the person's partner insisted that they fake a fainting episode as the medical system had repeatedly dismissed them when previously asking for help with their problem. Everything was fine and dandy until they didn't pass out, then oops, too late to treat the cancer, have a nice rest of your life.
Can't even blame individual doctors though, I think it has a lot to do with understaffing and overworking. The people who matter aren't cared for and thus can't properly care for the people they are obliged to care for. It all serves the bottom line of the elite because they can pocket more money.
I've had almost exclusively military doctors for nearly two decades, and I can tell you they aren't trying to respect your feelings (not that they're dicks). If your tests come back with high cholesterol, they aren't jumping to Lipitor or some shit, they'll refer you to a nutritionist and tell you to exercise more. They have no problems telling you that your health troubles come from that weight crushing your organs and joints.
And that's as a person in the military, who has to maintain a certain level if fitness to keep my job.
Got a lot to say but I'll keep it brief-ish. Corporations love unhealthy people. They will artificially celebrate this and reinforce unhealthy lifestyles. This extends beyond weight.
Once entrapped, escape is hard. Some are passive and depressed. Some are dismissive and defensive. No matter which cycle you are in, it's unhealthy.
I think smoking is bad like I think being overweight is bad. If a doctor says alcohol is killing you, it probably is. I don't think hatred is deserved, but don't expect any validation for those choices.
The meme isn't about that, I've read stories of some doctors refusing to perform surguries to overweight people, but other doctors doing the surgery anyway.
The same way a lot of women get told stuff is just from their period by doctors.
My mother had a doctor that refused to move forward with knee surgery because she was so depressed and refused to do therapy because it hurt her knee so much to move around.
I guess I understand, why go through the trouble of surgery if she's just going to be a bummer couch potato afterwards and never change her ways?
But at least she'd be a bummer couch potato whose knee didn't threaten to give out on her whenever she tried to do laundry in the basement.
If I take my car in for new brake pads, don't refuse me service because the transmission is on its way out.
I'm a medical student and I have some direct experience with this. Sometimes, the difference between the surgeon who will do the procedure versus the surgeon that won't do the procedure is the availability of specialized facilities and equipment that they have access to. An elective surgery (i.e. not an emergency surgery) can go from routine to very high risk depending on the amount of adipose tissue the patient has.
And it's not just a matter of the fat tissue overlying the surgical site. Morbidly obese patients are much more likely to have things like sleep apnea which can make anesthesia more risky and might require more specialized equipment than a particular surgeon/hospital/anesthesiologist might have access to. The "morbid" part of "morbid obesity" also refers to the fact that people above a certain threshold of weight are much more likely to have other health conditions like heart disease that make anesthesia more risky.
This is what I came to say but wasn't smart enough to put into words. There's a lot more factors than just being overweight of why a surgery can't be performed. For a while an issue at my hospital was we were one of the few in the area that could do MRIs on larger patients. So bigger hospitals would transfer these patients to us just for an MRI because their MRI machine was too small or couldn't handle the weight.
There's a reason you have to get a pre-op physical exam for any non-emergent surgery. Figuring out if you'll wake up from the anesthesia at all is part of the calculus that determines whether the benefits of the procedure outweigh the risks.
Would a surgeon unable to do it refer the patient to one who is capable?
Sometimes. It depends why the first surgeon would be unable to do the procedure. If the problem is that the patient might not wake up from anesthesia because of problems with heart disease, lung problems, or other metabolic issues, then it doesn't really matter what the surgeon has to say about actually doing the procedure because the anesthesiologist is the one saying "no". If it's an issue of too much adipose, sometimes it would mean that the surgery would take longer than it's safe for the patient to be under anesthesia.
Another possibility is that the first surgeon operates at a facility that doesn't have access to more advanced technologies or other medical specialists in the event that something goes wrong. And there are some surgeons that are just more willing to accept the risk of a bad outcome, and I would argue that that's rarely in the patient's best interest. There are alternative options that the surgeon should discuss with the patient as part of the informed consent process, and sometimes, the alternatives to surgery are just safer than the risk of the surgery itself, even if they aren't as effective or are a long term treatment (ongoing) as opposed to a definitive treatment (cure). If the patient has a high risk of serious complications, up to and including death, then attempting the curative procedure might be more risk than it's worth compared to a long term medication that mitigates the disease.
You'll see this with pregnant patients too. For elective procedures that have safer alternatives or temporizing measures (a holdover treatment until surgery is safe), those are generally preferred to putting a pregnant patient under anesthesia because of all the cardiovascular, immunologic, and other physiologic changes that happen during pregnancy alongside potential risks to the fetus.
The reason for that is that surgeons are rated based on their success percentages meaning they'll recommend against risky surgeries.
The upside of this is that surgeons aren't operating willy-nilly on people and will make a proper risk assessment. The downside is that overweight people have an inherently higher risk of complications from surgery, so some surgeons will pass.
It's not because they think these people don't need it, it's because they think it's too risky. They're usually not wrong about that, you just need to find a surgeon willing to take the risk or, if possible, reduce the risk by losing weight.
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Look. Shitty doctors exist, but when 1/3 of the US is overweight, there are underlying issues that need addressing. I only hear horror stories when an addict, alcoholic, or overweight individual in my life is feeling insecure or defensive about a prognosis. Too many people deflect and it's enabling a much larger issues. Our basic instincts are being exploited.
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When talking about obese individuals, the fat very easily gets in the way of surgery. Compared to a healthy patient the risk of complications during surgery is much greater and really not worth chancing it (most if the time)
Similarly - if you are trans and on HRT, every problem is due to your hormones.
I am down 50+ pounds, and have another 20 to go. This is new to me, but I absolutely agree with everything you said.
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More like as soon as they leave medical school in my experience.
Also if they're dentists (suddenly teeth become "bones to smile with").
You're going to need a root canal, not because its the best procedure for the job, but because its more expensive.
I had a dentist give me an unnecessary root canal when a filling broke and they didn't even do it right. I'm still pretty salty about it. I'll always get a second opinion moving forward.
Do y'all not have separate endodontists that do root canals only? That's the norm here that dentists refer out for specialty work like oral surgery and root canals.
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I did notice my dentist's office is decorated with various posters and such that say "smile" and none of them say "chew"
Me: "I've tried everything I am physically capable of trying short of anorexia. Ive tried to walk. Ive tried lifting weights. I've even starved myself. 200 calories every other day for 3 months. Nothing works. I think I may have a legitimate medical issue"
Doctor: "Drink water and walk. Thatll be $250."
Me: 
It's important to notice that while an underlying medical issue is certainly likely in your situation, and that's hard to work against... There's no physical way you were actually ingesting 200 daily calories and didn't lose weight.
This is beyond biology, it's physical. You were either consuming way more than that, or you were actually losing weight and just didn't notice. There's no alternative.
I mean they said every other day, if one day they get 200 and the next they get 5000 they ain't losing weight...
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200 calories every other day
Forgot to mention the 8000 calories on the alternating days but I’m sure that’s fine
You would be stufied because it's impressive that your body can just grab calories out of thin air. Obese people lie about what they eat, it's really simple. That's why doctors don't take these people serios.
the thing is, people SEVERELY underestimate how many calories are in what they're eating. Ask any fat person how many calories a chocolate bar has, and they'll say something like "50?"
This. 200 calories is not very much food. That's like 1 tablespoon of peanut butter, a little over 1 banana, a little less than 3 eggs, about 30 individual almonds, or little over half an avocado.
A single Hershey's chocolate bar, mountain dew, or the smallest size of my favorite star bucks drinks are all over 200 calories too.
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quality rage bait 👏👏👏
I'm not rage baiting, its a shitpost, in the community for shitposts.
You sound distressed, you should lose some weight.
The patient is a women, in poverty, disabled, mentally ill…
Medical culture is unbelievably bigoted.
Obesity is a disease, so it should be treated as such. It’s not more of a personal failure then getting lung cancer from smoking.
Yet tobacco companies are shamed and taxed, while the sellers of addictive junk foods and sugary waters are thrivingcand marketing for children.
And at the end, people are dying, and taxpayers are paying the cost for capitalist greed.
Nobody blames the patient for getting lung cancer, they blame the patient for smoking for years knowing the risks.
Same thing with obesity related heart issues. You aren't being blamed for the heart issues, you are being blamed for eating yourself into obesity.
There's a saying: "it's not your fault, but you are the only person who can solve it".
Only you can reduce your calories, only you can stop smoking and only you can quit alcohol. That's shitty that you have to, and in an ideal world it wouldn't be like this, but it is.
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this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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