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The mail carrier brought one of my guilty pleasures to my doorstep this morning. I confess. I love Smithsonian magazine. I love it in a history loving, travel jumping way so much that I cannot resist putting my feet up and sitting down for it with a cup of tea for a half hour of preliminary browsing. Deadlines be darned, I just cannot resist.

I usually enjoy reading The Last Page. In this month’s October issue there is an article written by a doctor, tongue-in-cheek and possibly quite cheeky, regarding the secret language of doctors and nurses. I could have enjoyed it except for the opening paragraph.

The author says that the slang doctors use to keep a little levity in difficult working conditions has begun to be replaced by more politically correct terms. He felt this is a good thing since it was probably insensitive to refer to a plus-size person undergoing a pulmonary artery catheter insertion procedure as harpooning.

Well – duh – ya, think? So much for being funny.

Some information in life should be on a need-to-know basis. This one is one of these little nuggets I did not need to know and which does absolutely nothing to encourage plus-sized people to going to a doctor for regular medical treatment.

Personally, it took me a long time to find a doctor who would even consider I might be sick for other reasons than my weight. Even now, I have an innate distrust of medical people because of this reason. This little revelation did nothing to motivate me.

My message – drop the fat prejudice in the medical world, medical professionals. When you carp about people not coming to you to get healthy, this is why the joke backfires…on you and us to our mutual detriment!

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3 Comments

by Jon on October 27, 2009

Unfortunately for the doctor, he doesn’t realize that the slang being used is understood by any reasonably intelligent observer. I have been put off many times over the years by insensitive comments such as these (and not just about weight). And it is a mutual detriment. The patient needs to trust the doctor, because the doctor could in some circumstances literally be the difference between life and death. The doctor needs to be able to trust that the patient is telling the truth, and “looking down the nose” makes it hard for the patient to have enough trust to tell any part of the truth, much less the complete truth. All I can say, unfortunately, is that the patient in the end has to “suck it up”, since they are the ones that need help. Which is too bad. There is a better way.

by Sherry on October 27, 2009

I once worked with a doctor who had a phobia about over weight patients.
if you were 10 lbs or 100 lbs over weight she diagnosed you as “morbidly obese’”. Finallly one day she was berating a patient who had gained 5 lbs since her last visit when the patient, who had had enough, blurted out “Skinny people die too!!” While I understand a doctor’s concern for the health of their patients, it is necessary to show compassion and genuine concern without the snide comments about weight.

by BJMenter on October 27, 2009

Sometimes it seems to me that picking on fat people has become the only socially acceptable prejudice that the world views as OK to do outloud and to our faces.
Unfortunately when it comes to health, doctors have to be held to a higher standard of compassion, as well medical treatment. When they use their position to relieve their own stress at the expense of their patients conditions, then they merely perpetuate the problem of ill health. I for one would rather be sick, then go back to some of the doctors I’ve gone to who start on my weight when all I wanted was a splinter in my finger removed.
Thanks for your comments! I really appreciate hearing them!!