Bigotry

I’m on the mend. Everything came out OK or to use Bezzie’s phrase, everything passed quickly. (Not really quickly but it passed)

I went to the urologist on Tuesday as a follow-up and to see what could be done about kidney stone #2. I’ve never been to an urologist so my PCP gave me a referral. I got to the doctor and went through the exam and agreed with the doctor on what he needed me to do about KS2. He wrote out an Rx for the X-rays he needs me to get before my next appointment and told me I needed to up my water intake. All of this took no more than 10 minutes.

The last thing he said to me was that I need to lose weight. I knew it was coming. My gyno has been after me for the last two years and when my weight was down at my last appointment this past April, he didn’t acknowledge it but he didn’t bug me either.

So the Urologist told me that I need to lose weight (no shit). I said “I’m trying”. He had the NERVE to say, after seeing me for 10 minutes “You can say you’re trying but if you were trying there would be results”.

I was stunned. He has known me for 10 minutes and he dares to assume that I’m nothing but a fat slob and that I don’t know I’m fat? Not only that but he dared to assume that I am doing nothing about my weight. I may not be doing what he or my gyno want me to do (nutritionist, gastric bypass, enter your extreme solution *here*), but I am doing what I can do and what I enjoy doing. I refuse to force myself to do exercises I hate because I won’t continue doing them.

Besides, other than the KSs I’m healthy. I’ve been in and out of the doctor’s office this year getting all kinds of blood work, (among them Lyme disease – I do live in NJ & deer are all over the place) and everything has come back normal. My blood pressure is in a perfectly healthy range. My cholesterol is too.

And why do I have to justify myself? Why do I feel the need to do that? I admit that I was completely embarrassed and my self hatred was dialed up to 11. Why didn’t I just tell him that he doesn’t know a thing about me and how dare he make assumptions and shame me for no good reason?

It’s a good thing that I got angry instead of wallowing too long. I’m sure it’s because I’ve been reading Shapely Prose (thanks for the link Roberta!) I never understood why we find it OK to think fat people are slovenly, dirty, smelly, couch potatoes. I can think of a couple of popular shows that have slid in snide remarks about fat people, and one show that dealt outright with the issue of being sick and “you’re fat” as being the easy answer.

I have a lot of conflicted feelings about all this. I don’t want his bigotry to become an excuse to stay the way I am. Right now it’s making me angry and giving me a reason keep going to yoga class and walk and eat better. I hope it stays that way for me.