I was talking via instant message with a friend who pointed out that I haven’t blogged in months. He’s right of course and I do miss it. While I was in the gulf blogging was a way to fill way too much free time and I was recording a unique experience. It’s harder to write about what seems like day to day routine. Yet there are a lot of things about this period in my life that are unique. I’ve left the corporate work a day world to try and start my own business doing something that, in reality, I know very little about.
This article I find interesting on several levels. First, that there is a doctor in practice today who is willing to tell patients the truth. “You’re fat. If you do not lose weight your obesity will kill you.” For an epidemic proportion of Americans this is simply a truth. This was an important message delivered by an appropriate messenger. If a perfect stranger walks up and says, you’re fat I would understand taking offense. The stranger is not an appropriate messenger. But when you’re own physician, who is responsible for advising you on the state of your health and its maintenance tells you he’s only doing the job you’re paying him/her for.
Also interesting is the notion that we can file complaints when our doctors tell us things we do not want to hear. Reduced to a generic form the doctor told the woman, you have a condition which, if left untreated is going to cause deterioration of your health and even kill you. The woman’s response was to file a complaint. Hum. So, if a doctor were to tell me, sir, you have cancer and if left untreated it is going to kill you, I would be angry. Anger is one of the responses to such news. But it would never occur to me or probably any of us to file a complaint against the doctor for delivering the news.
More interesting to me is that the New Hampshire board is doing anything more than dismissing the complaint. They have asked the Attorney General to investigate. I suppose it is possible that there is more to this than is covered in this article but on the face of it, it seems that this woman and now the board are prosecuting the messenger.
In the interest and pursuit of tolerance we have come to a place where many in our society are more interested in tolerance than truth. There are no medical truths and we should be tolerant of those who have chosen to be fat. They have accepted their ‘body shape’ and so should we. I understand the notion that some people are tall and lanky while others are short and stocky. But obesity is not a ‘body shape’. Obesity is a medical condition that threatens ones health and detracts from ones quality of life. I hope the woman eventually comes to terms with the message that her doctor delivered.
Aloha