by Leah Grafier of Lea Lea Love Clothing
I’ve had a very, very rough year.
It started with a constellation of increasingly alarming symptoms: excessive sweating, high blood pressure, joint pain, dizziness and a host of other things that had mostly just been lived with while other more urgent health problems took my attention and energy. I brought my concerns to my doctors, and like most plus size women, I was dismissed. The usual answers: You’re overweight. It’s stress. It’s probably your antidepressants. (But that’s a story for another day.)
Their solution? Put me on a GLP-1 medication. A Band-Aid over the real problem instead of actually investigating my complaints.
I kept pushing through, trying to trust the system. But what I got back wasn’t care… it was condescension and blame disguised as medical advice. I could have told them I was farting holographic pixie dust, and the answer would still be “lose weight”, because anything considered rare is in fact impossible, especially when you’re fat.
Now I’m lying in a hospital bed about a year later, 45 pounds lighter, facing another Crohn’s flare, possibly adding another chapter to my encyclopedic medical history. I’m not here because I chose to lose weight. I’m here because weight loss was the price of admission, the only way they’d listen about my other problems. But in fighting to be heard about those, something more serious may have gotten lost. It’s only a problem when they can no longer ignore it without being sued, right?
And let’s be clear: that weight loss? It wasn’t a victory. But when you’re on weight loss medication, who’s going to call it a red flag? Not my doctors. Not me. Just applause. Applause for possibly wasting away.
The Price of Being Dismissed
Another year of my life lost to being brushed off. A year where I couldn’t grow my business with all the effort and energy I wanted to. A year where starting the family I desperately want was pushed even further out of reach, probably two or more years now. A year where every day felt like surviving, not living.
My symptoms were dismissed because the medical industry is so obsessed with weight, they miss what’s right in front of them. If I scream loud enough, if I become just annoying enough, maybe my persistence will pay off even if I have nothing left to give to anything else. But at what cost?
And here’s the real question: was the weight loss everyone applauded really from the GLP-1, or did taking it simply hide the weight loss from nutritional deficiency and malabsorption? Maybe if we all, including me, because I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid now to, weren’t so conditioned to equate weight loss with health, my illness could have been caught sooner.
But I’ll never know.
My focus was on advocating, finally, for other parts of my body not related to Crohn’s. I was trying to survive. And now? Now I’m left mourning what I lost while everyone else celebrated.
Thinness Didn’t Save Me
Let’s be honest: the medical system’s obsession with thinness isn’t helping us, it’s harming us. It’s hurt me, my family, and anyone identifying as female, especially plus size women, more than it has ever helped.
So yes, I’ll mourn. I’ll mourn another year spent sleeping or at the doctor. Missing out on making friends and joining activities. I’ll mourn the loss of normal school or work. The loss of being carefree.
I’ll mourn the family maybe we would have started this year. The version of me that had energy, creativity, and career drive. I’ll mourn the money spent on special care not covered by insurance instead of spent on special interests. I’ll particularly mourn the libido that seemed to vanish with my strength.
I’ll make dark jokes and smile to hide the pain when doctors look shocked and say, “But you’re so young!” Because I am. I’m 28.
But even at 12, my slowly dying was praised because I lost so much weight in a mere month. No one asked what it cost.
I didn’t lose just weight like they thought though, there was an innocence and freedom cost as well.
This article, OPINION: The Year I Lost More Than Weight first appeared on The Curvy Fashionista and is written by Guest Blogger.
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