Denial of Service

"I was denied NHS treatment because my BMI was too high", note there's no term such as "deemed" in between "was" and "too".One of the cases featured in this article is a woman who had gallstones, gallstones. When I hear that term I think, pain. Everyone who's ever told me of their experience of them has emphasised usually right off the bat that they are excruciatingly, painful.

I didn't even know it was possible to have painless ones [it is],

Gallstones don't usually cause any symptoms. But if a gallstone blocks one of the bile ducts, it can cause sudden, severe abdominal pain, known as biliary colic.

This woman was told she couldn't be referred to hospital for further treatment on the grounds of weight.

On one occasion it went on for more than 10 hours," she says. "I was exhausted, but in too much pain to sleep, scared to move in case it made it worse, but wanting to move in order to try and find some relief."

After nine months of this, albeit, intermittently. 

We're reluctant to call this what it is, a refusal of treatment. Doctors are effectively drawing the line at weight. I don't care to get itty-bitty on this. If people think, demanding people diet, is not refusing treatment, then they clearly have no grasp of what being refused treatment means. In all humility, I can do nothing for them.

Personally, as I keep saying, I have no problem with doctors refusing treatment, but unlike others I see this as a two-way negotiation. I want what I feel is needed to make this work for me not the professionals, and that is the tools I need to make a go of actual self-management, plus provision of medical expertise that excludes any 'obesity' or "lifestyle" nonsense.

The standard treatment for gallstones is gallbladder removal – or cholecystectomy – but Karen was told she couldn't be put on the waiting list for surgery until after she'd lost weight and her BMI was below 30. Instead, she was advised to manage her symptoms by eating an extremely low-fat diet – which, she adds, did at least help her to lose weight quickly [choosing from scientifically researched methods and techniques that use her conscious mind to alter her body's function.]

I'm giving you a sense of what is required here. I have no objection whatsoever to managing myself, I've been trying to do it since I was about seven years old. What I have learnt in all that time is self management isn't shit, without tools that actually do what you require. That demands real knowledge, not made up crud like 'obese'.

Obviously, those fat people who are-sick of being their own doctors-can stick with this and fight against "medical fatphobia", fuqdat. I'd just as soon have use of more of my body's own abilities, if you don't mind.