Slightly Delayed Thanksgiving
I would at this point like to give a shout-out to the book which might have helped save my life. I own the sixteenth edition; it was retired from my high school library in '98 or so, and because I was a nerdly kid who liked very large books with very small letters, I took it. It makes an excellent doorstop. It has all kinds of interesting sections about rare and nasty tropical diseases. It has a section on endocrine diseases.
And it was this particular section of the book that proved relevant when I became curious about the question "Why am I losing weight despite eating everything in sight and not particularly exercising?" So I read that particular section of the book (and also a couple about tropical diseases, just in case), and when I went to the doctor, I said "... and I have a resting heart-rate of 120-plus, and am pretty much entirely immune to cold. I'm almost certain I've got this, or maybe this, and if this has actually been a freakishly mild winter I suppose it's possible I might have one of these other things. The thing the book says to do now, is to order these particular lab results which will say pretty definitively if it's one of the first two things. After that? It gets ugly." The doctor was impressed with me. He ordered the lab results. He was impressed with the lab results.
Because of this sequence of events, I was treated for the actual condition I had, rather than for instance drug abuse, bulimia, manic-depression, acute feminine hysteria, et cetera. Usually I take this for granted, because after all I was literally a textbook case of a condition that is not exactly vanishingly rare. But every once in awhile something crops up to remind me that this assumption can be quite thoroughly unwarranted.
My freshman year of college, I picked up a brochure from Public Safety that had a list of symptoms that could have been taken from the very textbook that I had just recently been reading -- symptoms of Graves', symptoms of Cushing's, symptoms of diabetes, a couple symptoms of mental illness, and a couple symptoms of being a young adult who was no longer a child. Only problem was? The actual title of the brochure was not "How to tell if your kid might be developing a dangerous but treatable chronic illness," it was "How to tell if your kid might be using drugs." Nothing letting on that much of what they listed had a variety of causes -- just "Be a Patsy" and that's it. I was kinda pissed, but I figured "Hey, any doctor with a brain would surely look for these simple conditions before they went and assumed that lifestyle was the sole cause of the problem... right... RIGHT?!"
Yeah. Maybe not right. Because now I encounter this here blog and I find to my great dismay that there are people who are showing up to their doctors with weight gain and cessation of menstruation and are being given a diet and no tests, and people who are showing up to their doctors with weight gain, profound fatigue, depression, AND A FUCKING GOITER and being to "lose weight, fatso." I am... displeased.
But, y'know, the doctors are not entirely to blame. Judging from the forum that I moderate, the notion that certain conditions are mostly the wages of sin, and that people who have these conditions and expect to be treated for them are lazy fatasses who are looking to have someone else to do their work for them. Reality note, people: High cholesterol is a genetic condition. Almost entirely. Seriously. Diabetes? Genetic. Really.
I present to you the following: A former defensive linesman who fully lives up to the stereotype of "former defensive linesman", a fashionable older woman with an excellent figure, and a spare-looking older man who looks like a runner because he is one. Among them are the following conditions: Diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, and hypoglycemia. And the assignment to their bearer? The woman selected poor parents. She is diabetic. The runner is about to keel over from heart disease, much like all the other men in his family. The defensive lineman has the other two. Also exactly zero indication of insulin resistance (and maybe he could use some). Also also nigh unto perfect cholesterol.
And me? I'm 5'7" and 135 pounds, and quite handily meet conventional standards of attractiveness, category: nerdly. When people look at me, they don't tend to say "That person there needs to stop eating a whole chicken for breakfast" -- in fact, quite the opposite. So suddenly it occurs to me that the fact that I can go to a doctor with a medical problem and have them actually look for and endeavor to fix the medical problem? It's something I think I'd better be thankful for, because not everyone gets that.
This neo-Puritan shit needs to stop before someone gets killed. Oh wait... rather, before more people get killed.
And eat the turkey. That's what it's there for.
And it was this particular section of the book that proved relevant when I became curious about the question "Why am I losing weight despite eating everything in sight and not particularly exercising?" So I read that particular section of the book (and also a couple about tropical diseases, just in case), and when I went to the doctor, I said "... and I have a resting heart-rate of 120-plus, and am pretty much entirely immune to cold. I'm almost certain I've got this, or maybe this, and if this has actually been a freakishly mild winter I suppose it's possible I might have one of these other things. The thing the book says to do now, is to order these particular lab results which will say pretty definitively if it's one of the first two things. After that? It gets ugly." The doctor was impressed with me. He ordered the lab results. He was impressed with the lab results.
Because of this sequence of events, I was treated for the actual condition I had, rather than for instance drug abuse, bulimia, manic-depression, acute feminine hysteria, et cetera. Usually I take this for granted, because after all I was literally a textbook case of a condition that is not exactly vanishingly rare. But every once in awhile something crops up to remind me that this assumption can be quite thoroughly unwarranted.
My freshman year of college, I picked up a brochure from Public Safety that had a list of symptoms that could have been taken from the very textbook that I had just recently been reading -- symptoms of Graves', symptoms of Cushing's, symptoms of diabetes, a couple symptoms of mental illness, and a couple symptoms of being a young adult who was no longer a child. Only problem was? The actual title of the brochure was not "How to tell if your kid might be developing a dangerous but treatable chronic illness," it was "How to tell if your kid might be using drugs." Nothing letting on that much of what they listed had a variety of causes -- just "Be a Patsy" and that's it. I was kinda pissed, but I figured "Hey, any doctor with a brain would surely look for these simple conditions before they went and assumed that lifestyle was the sole cause of the problem... right... RIGHT?!"
Yeah. Maybe not right. Because now I encounter this here blog and I find to my great dismay that there are people who are showing up to their doctors with weight gain and cessation of menstruation and are being given a diet and no tests, and people who are showing up to their doctors with weight gain, profound fatigue, depression, AND A FUCKING GOITER and being to "lose weight, fatso." I am... displeased.
But, y'know, the doctors are not entirely to blame. Judging from the forum that I moderate, the notion that certain conditions are mostly the wages of sin, and that people who have these conditions and expect to be treated for them are lazy fatasses who are looking to have someone else to do their work for them. Reality note, people: High cholesterol is a genetic condition. Almost entirely. Seriously. Diabetes? Genetic. Really.
I present to you the following: A former defensive linesman who fully lives up to the stereotype of "former defensive linesman", a fashionable older woman with an excellent figure, and a spare-looking older man who looks like a runner because he is one. Among them are the following conditions: Diabetes, heart disease, glaucoma, and hypoglycemia. And the assignment to their bearer? The woman selected poor parents. She is diabetic. The runner is about to keel over from heart disease, much like all the other men in his family. The defensive lineman has the other two. Also exactly zero indication of insulin resistance (and maybe he could use some). Also also nigh unto perfect cholesterol.
And me? I'm 5'7" and 135 pounds, and quite handily meet conventional standards of attractiveness, category: nerdly. When people look at me, they don't tend to say "That person there needs to stop eating a whole chicken for breakfast" -- in fact, quite the opposite. So suddenly it occurs to me that the fact that I can go to a doctor with a medical problem and have them actually look for and endeavor to fix the medical problem? It's something I think I'd better be thankful for, because not everyone gets that.
This neo-Puritan shit needs to stop before someone gets killed. Oh wait... rather, before more people get killed.
And eat the turkey. That's what it's there for.