Episode 012: Dreading Doctors Appointments

Going to the doctor can be uncomfortable and dreadful, especially if you’re considered overweight. Today, I’m getting extremely vulnerable, sharing about my own experience and how advocating for yourself is often ignored. While I don’t have the steps for you to take to ensure you never have another uncomfortable visit, I want you to know you’re not alone.

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The Process of Getting Referrals (2:01)

HAYES Method (4:18)

How a Sinus Infection Created a Bad Experience at the Doctor (5:09)

Being Misdiagnosed in My Early 20’s (9:29)

Losing Weight Due to Sickness (12:05)

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies and living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host, Carly someplace. This podcast is brought to you by someplace images, boudoir for everybody, you can see the full show notes at some place for everybody.com. Now, let’s change some self perspectives.

Hey, y’all, it’s Carly and I O this episode, I am here to talk about something real, real, real heavy. So I started the conversation the other day about going to the doctor’s office. And this may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people. But I mean, if we take a step back, maybe this to a lot more people health care in America is very fickle thing, we’ll just leave it a thought I’ll take the politics out of it. And we’ll just say that it’s an extremely interesting process. healthcare in America is 10 times harder, if you are fat. So I exist in a fat body, and I’m okay with that. I’m perfectly fine with that. I’m a very active person, I go out I do a lot. When I’m shooting boudoir sessions. Those are highly high. Athletic. Honestly, they’re like a very intense yoga session in which I’m shooting and working and talking at the same time, as well as guiding a client and showing them how to do all of these very uncomfortable poses. It’s very intense, I stretch a lot for it, I can do a full backbend. Like there’s a lot of things that I can do with my body that most people look at my body and look at the size of my body and don’t think that I can accomplish. And I think that those judgments carry over in so many different ways. And so the conversation that I started having the other day, was about going to the doctor’s office and needing a referral. So I have an IUD for my birth control. And I’m coming up on it needing to get it replaced. So this and maybe that’s TMI for some people. But but this is a whole thing, I have to go to a primary care physician, I’ve bounced back and forth between living in California and living in Nevada for the last like three or four years. And five years, I guess, the hard thing about that is that I technically don’t have a primary care physician anymore. I have or I’ve had one assigned to me there, nobody who knows me whatsoever. But in doing this, I if I need to go to a specialist, like being able to go to an OBGYN, or a women’s wellness clinic or anything like that, in order to get my IUD replaced, I have to go to the doctor and have them poke and prod me and essentially tell me that I’m morbidly obese, which is what I get every single time I go into the doctor’s office, have them weigh me which I don’t own a scale, I don’t own a scale, because I don’t think that my weight is the thing that truly should be balancing my happiness. And if I have a scale in my house, I will obsess. And I don’t know if you guys can relate to that. But I will obsess if I have a scale on my house, because I will want to weigh myself every day. And I will beat myself up over what the number is, no matter what the number is, that’s the thing. It’s not just if it’s over a certain amount, or if it’s under a certain amount or anything like that, no matter what that number is I’m going to beat myself up in some way, shape or form. And that is so incredibly unhealthy. So I don’t have a scale in my house. And I want to keep it that way. And I think that going to the doctor’s office and having the experience of going into the doctor’s office and essentially having them be like oh, well, we need to test your cholesterol and your blood pressure and all of these other things without ever asking any questions of my activity level or what I do or just anything. It’s so overwhelming to go to the doctor’s office, and it is even more overwhelming if you are fat. And I haven’t found a primary care physician or honestly a doctor at all that in my area are that I’ve ever really seen that believes in Health at Every Size. So the haze method H H E S Health at Every Size is huge. It’s a it’s a big thing that doctors can believe that you can be healthy at any size and you can and I’m a healthy human. I probably do a few things that I shouldn’t do. And I probably drink a few more whiskies than I should. But like I’m a healthy Cuban, it shouldn’t be traumatizing for me to go to the doctor’s office to get a referral so that I can get a new IUD and keep my birth control up to date. It is something that has been just weighing on my mind because I’m dreading it. I’m dreading going to a new primary care physician and having them tell me, you’re morbidly obese. And the last time that I had an experience with a doctor like this, I went in for a sinus infection, which I usually get in, like mid July.

It seems to be the same every single year. So I get a sinus infection mid July, and I went in, I couldn’t sleep at that point, because my ears hurt so bad. To the point where I potentially even had an ear infection. I was in so much pain in gIass, like nasal congestion, everything like this, she looked me up and down. And she goes, I’m very concerned about your weight. And I looked at her and I said, I have a sinus infection or something similar. I’m not here to talk about my weight. Well, I’m concerned about your weight. And I need you to go and run all of these tests because I’m concerned. And then she looks at me and says, you know you’re morbidly obese. And this is a problem. And, and I said, I’m not here to discuss my weight. I’m here, because I have an earache, because I can’t sleep because my ears hurt so bad. Please tell me how my weight is affecting that. Because it’s not it’s not affecting my sinuses. My sinuses have been terrible my entire life. I have viewers allergies of pretty much anybody I know. And it’s just an ongoing thing that I’m used to. And mind you, this doctor didn’t ask me do you work out she didn’t ask me my activity level. She didn’t ask me anything. She didn’t know anything about me. Other than the fact that I had a number on the scale. And then according to BMI, which is bullshit bowl fucking shit, that I was morbidly obese, and then I’m going to die. I do a lot of things that a lot of people can’t do with their bodies. And I eat healthy, and I eat well, and I eat when I’m hungry, and I stop when I’m full. And I eat well balanced meals. I love brussel sprouts, and I love artichokes. And I love asparagus. And I would eat vegetables all day, if I could just eat those three vegetables. I like more than that. But it is none of that matters. None of that should matter. What matters here is that going to the doctor’s office is traumatizing. And here’s the hard part. I don’t even really have any like tips about this. I don’t have any tips. I don’t have any advice. I don’t have any pointers to say you should do this because this is traumatizing for me too. And this is scary for me too. And I am truly dreading it. And it’s just making it so hard for me to convince myself to go and get my new IUD to get a referral to get my new IUD. And I’m just at a loss, I met such a loss as to how discriminatory it is the whole health system. Because anytime that I go to the doctor, anytime that most of my friends who exist in fat bodies go to the doctor, they tell us that we can fix whatever our problem is, with our weight, if we just lost weight, if we did all of this other stuff. And that’s not true. If we’re healthy, and we just have more fat on our bodies. It’s untrue. So you’ve heard me tease you about that big sleepover that we’re planning for the women of the someplace for everybody conference, right? It’s hopping someplace for everybody conferences happening in Miami, Florida, October 6 through ninth in 2020. To grab your ticket today at some place for everybody.com. To connect with a supportive community focus on personal healing and self love and hear from astonishing lineup of speakers. We can’t wait to see you at this women only conference. So don’t forget to grab your ticket and learn more about the conference at some place for everybody calm.

And I guess I’m really just here to talk about this to unpack it a little bit for myself and and know that if you’re feeling this, you’re not alone. And it sucks. And again, I don’t have any pointers. I know. It’s been said that you can ask to not be weighed, or if they only need it specifically or for them to not tell you how much you weigh in different things like that. And I think that that’s one small step in the right direction, just just one tiny, tiny little step in the right direction. But that’s not everything that’s not being discriminated against. That’s not the fact that when I was super sick in my early 20s, that I was still getting these questions and this is after I had lost a dramatic amount of weight. And I don’t necessarily like to talk about my actual weight. I don’t like to talk about weight in general or like what I weigh or what somebody weighs. Because again, I really just think it’s such a it’s a number it has nothing to do with your personality, your character who you are as a person and who who you’re going to become none of that has anything to do with what you weigh. You can have different bonuses And then people you can have different muscle density, even people and be the exact same size etc. And you’re not going to be the same weight. That’s how ridiculous it is it’s so ridiculous, so prefacing with that, that I don’t really enjoy talking about the specific numbers. And I think that’s because I want everybody to know that I don’t look at them as a number on the scale. And I don’t want to look at myself as a number on the scale. Hence the reason I don’t on a scale. However, when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. And like, I let me rephrase that actually, I was not diagnosed with ulcerative colitis until I was 25. Because they pretty much told me that they wouldn’t listen to what was going on with my body. And they being a collection of doctors, mostly male, mostly older. Um, and it was so incredibly frustrating to be so sick. So, so, so sick, and not have anybody listened to me. And listen to what I was actually saying. I was consistently told, Well, you might just be pregnant, you might just be pregnant. At this point in my life, I was in a relationship with a woman and I was sleeping only with that woman. And so therefore, as a woman, and you know, biology, yeah, I wasn’t pregnant. I, throughout the course of trying to get my diagnosis, I believe that they, specifically the doctors that I was seeing when I was in Georgia, where I probably took more than 10 pregnancy tests in a few month period in which I kept it pretty much saying, I can guarantee you that I’m not pregnant, and nobody wanted to listen. And it’s things like that, too. Like, what the fuck you just you can’t listen to me. You can’t I can guarantee you that there is no sperm involved here. Like, where? Where do you get the idea that I’m lying to you. And just like this complete disregard for what I was saying and what I was feeling. So I ended up in the hospital a couple different times, I was extremely sick, I was in a lot of pain all the time. And

I lost a lot of weight, I lost a lot of weight. In a very short period of time, I lost over 30 pounds in a month, which is not healthy. And everybody compliments complimented me on how I looked. Everybody complimented me Oh, you look amazing. You just, you know, what are you doing? Oh, I’m incredibly sick. That’s what I’m doing. I’m not losing weight, intentionally, I’m not losing weight to fit in to be smaller to do any of these things. I’m losing weight because I can’t keep food in my body. And when I can, it’s turning into a bloody mess on the other end, maybe that’s TMI. But Hello ulcerative colitis, look it up. It’s not fun. And that’s what I have. And it’s so incredibly hard to look at that to look at all different types of situations and see that I have had this track record of nobody looking at what I’m actually saying, or listening to what I’m actually saying, I will dive deeper into my diagnosis with ulcerative colitis, and how that was and how that changed me. But again, as we start this new year, and there are so many things around us saying, be a new you this year or lose weight and there we’re just constantly being barraged with diet, culture, everything, so much of it is bullshit. Your weight does not determine your health. It does not determine your health. I have friends who are significantly smaller than I am who are significantly, significantly more unhealthy than I am. It’s just that’s just how it is. And I’m so tired. I’m so tired of having this discrimination, just because I’m bigger. Just because I’m fat. Just because BMI which is bullshit says that I’m morbidly obese. So, yeah, health exists at Every Size. You shouldn’t have to live in this fear in this panic to go to the doctor’s office. Like I said, don’t have any solutions. Don’t have any tips. But I want you to know you’re not alone. You’re not alone in any way, shape, or form. In the meantime, as you go forward, until we get these doctor’s appointments done with be kind to everybody. Be kind to yourself. Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show? If you’re looking for a community to love on you and support you and your self love Journey comm Join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at some place for everybody calm until we meet again be kind to yourself.