fattypatties

More on New Hampshire Doctor:

N.H. Doctor in Hot Seat Again Over Remarks

Patient alleges Bennett's obesity advice included remark with racial overtones

It sort of bugs me that the news media changed its tune a bit when there were "racial overtones" involved. I think treating a fat person that way should have been sufficient to warrant a little less sympathy for the doctor and a little more for the patient.

But I guess that's just me.

My Long Love/Hate Relationship with New Orleans

New Orleans is a city built in the wrong place. Jean de Bienville nearly 300 years ago insisted on mastering the marshy lands, setting up a settlement in a place that was literally wiped out every spring as the waters in the crescent of the Mississippi River swelled.

Bienville snookered many French into selling everything they had to move to "fertile cresecent city" by neglecting to mention the yearly flooding. Over the years, New Orleanians have insisted on loving and hating the river.

I lived in New Orleans from 1979 to 1987 and I can tell you that the big storm subject came up every hurricane season. I was living in New Orleans during Elana in 1985.

Here's the thing. Even when hurricanes are not coming, living in New Orleans was stressful. It is hot as hell for 6 months out of the year. It is humid as hell as well. It is over 1 million people in a 12 square mile area, living on top of each other (remember rat over-population experiments).

I can remember the incredible relief I would feel when leaving the city. Heading east on I10, I would feel a burden lifted just getting to the Slidell side of the lake.

New Orleans was a scary place to live. I was a victim of crime on numerous occasions. My friends were victims as well. I carried "mug money" in my shoe for 7 years so that if I was ever confronted, I would have at least $10 on me so as not to be knifed or shot. I lived 2 doors down from a man who killed two people by knifing them 30 times in the back seat of a car while making their daughter drive. No one could explain why he did it. But it was grumesome even by New Orleans standards. You understand. The guy convincted of this crime turned out to be my neighbor.

During the 1980s, 3 people a day were murdered on average. So gun-toting gangs running around the streets doesn't exactly surprise me. I'm not sure if it is really anything different than last week, just more visible. People do strange things in the heat and chaos.

But I absolutely loved living in New Orleans and I cried when we moved. Yep, I know I've painted a bleak picture. But the culture, the ambience, the river, the history and the people were a neverending fascination for me. I loved living there because something was always going on. I loved living there because I was always learning something new about the place.

You know, it was like being in love with the bad boy. You know he is an outlaw and really could end up being the death of you, but my oh my is the sex good!

I have to admit that watching the videos for the past few days have shaken me. I recognize a lot of the buildings. It is shocking to see the damage. I've also driven the beach in Mississippi many times. I remember seeing the after effects of Frederick and Elana along the coast. Trees snapped off like toothpicks. Katrina is much, much worse.

But I think the thing that has shaken me most about all this is that I hate being right. Carl and I have an ongoing discussion about the power elite in the US (and really, more accurately globally). He worries that they are "getting away with it" because so much of their behavior remainds unchecked and unmarked. I respond, "we are one natural disaster away from the infrastructure falling apart. It will catch up with us some day."

I truly hope this isn't that day, but as I listened to talk radio today and watched as gas prices soared and listened to empty promises from the current administration and thought about how everyone has known that this storm could happen and how it really wasn't the worst case scenario and how the money spent on the war in Iraq made it impossible to shore up the levies and how most of my life I've heard about how our dependency upon oil would someday make us vunerable and well, it just starts adding up after a while, doesn't it?

In the meantime, people suffer. I cannot imagine having to do this.

I am so afraid that it is going to get worse before it gets better.

I don't want to be right.

But I am afraid I am.

My eternal optimism is that maybe these things can be a wake up call. We cannot continue to pretend that all our problems can be solved by might. We cannot continue to keep our brightest minds in intellectual ghettoes while powerful people just continue to exploit.

We need these bright minds when things like Katrina hit. Actually, we need them before things like Katrina hit.

A lot of people are trying to ascribe meaning to the devastation of New Orleans. It is an outlaw town, often proud of its "badness." It didn't surprise me that the Sodom and Gomorrah references and allusions surfaced.

I don't think New Orleans is being punished. I don't think the casinoes on the Gulf Coast have invited the wrath of some greater being.

But I do believe that the ability to prepare for this disaster, to respond to this disaster and to recover from this disaster is severely limited by the dumbing down of America and by the dreadful ways in which this country has positioned itself in the global community. We may all pay a price for the corruption of power. Not as great a price as the citizens of southern Lousiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but one look at the rise of gas prices (which btw, have been rising rapidly for weeks) and one can understand that the piper may be calling.

The Physician Role and Patient Compliance

A New Hampshire physician is in trouble because he told a fat woman that her husband would die before her and that she would be a lonely widow because men don't like fat women. This story has hit several major media outlets, including CNN, which had Marilyn Wann on last night as the counterpoint (that they could look "fair" while giving the good doctor a chance to clear his name.)

The thing that has struck me most vividly about this controversy is how mundane the conversation between the doctor and the patient really is. Someone has asked would he have this conversation with an alcoholic, a drug addict or a person who is to thin. My answer would "most likely."

I've been the only sociologist at a table of health care professionals on several occasions in my career and while physician rarely were present (physicians don't seem to like to be on health care task forces), many at the table were deeply steeped in the medical model.

When I brought up questions of social stigma, most of the people at the table had two reactions:

1. Using the stigma to motivate patients is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

2. Solving stigma is a perfectly impossible thing to do.

They see social stigmas as always going to be around and as highly motivating when getting a patient to comply with medical advice.

Any stigmatized population (most of my research addressed questions of aging) will hear ridiculous claims about their social standings in order to motivate them to do what the health care worker believes is in their best interest.

In the same way that many fat people do not want to go to a doctor because this kind of inane advice is given, many older persons will put off going to a doctor because they don't want to hear about their inevitable decline. The putting off, of course, contributes to the decline, which only reinforces the fear.

BUT THE FEAR IS LEGITIMATE. And that is the thing most health care professionals at the task forces overlooked. Doctors do threaten to take away freedom and livelihood in the name of health care.

The most shocking thing about this particular case is that it is being regarded as some sort of exception. I think this doctor probably doesn't know what hit him because I think this doctor was taught through example and explicit instruction that it is his job to get the patient to comply with his orders. He is probably saying to himself, "Didn't I do what was right?"

As usual the media is missing the bigger picture. Something fundamental needs to change in the physician/patient relationship in this economy.

Respect for the patient is one thing. Declaration of patient's rights has been a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done. Infantalizing patients is not a method that should be supported.

I, for one, am happy to see the medical board take this woman's complaint seriously, but I would love to see a larger debate about physician/patient interactions and the need to de-glorify the physician.

Doctors certainly play an important role in this relationship, but ultimate respect of the body of the patient and the desire to "do not harm" seem to be higher principles to which we should aspire than the "doctor is always right."

Fat people are right in the middle of this issue, no doubt. the stigma place on fat is rooted in the so-called medical knowledge of "obesity." But it is a larger issue than obesity.

Medical authority must be questioned and few reporters feel competent to do so. This makes for a big mess in health care that costs people not only their dignity but their lives.

Overwhelmed

I'm exhausted. I can't seem to get ahead. So much is going on right now and nothing seems to get done. One step forward, two steps back. I feel like the universe is testing my metal and I'm not really sure I'm going to pass.

Newest problem--my brother's car may be dead. This is important because I care about my brother and because his car represented my second car while he is at work. Now three of us are trying to coordinate schedules around one very hot (yes, the ac is still not fixed) van.

We are also down to one (and a half -- a 8 year old laptop that works when it feels like it and never really sends us a schedule on when it will be up or down) computer.

Between the heat, the breakdowns of every piece of equipment we own and theft, we are struggling.

The good news is that the galleys have been proofread and sent back to the publisher. Wow, we wrote a book and it is looking more like a book all the time. Plus, we've made two sales! Thanks Stef & Katie!

BTW, I'm ready for the good stuff. Bring it on Gaia!

In a Good Mood

It is a loopy Monday and I'm in a good mood for once. So I guess it shows -- just took this quiz I found on Naked Knitting:


You're Bettie Page!


What Classic Pin-Up Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


Somehow, this feels like me today.

Ask Your University and/or Public Library to Order
Taking Up Space

This is an inexpensive way to help us get the book out into the atmosphere and we appreciate any effort you make on this part:

The retail price for the book is $25. Libraries can order the book at a discount by contacting Pearlsong Press by email: sales@pearlsong.com), fax: 1-615-352-4222, or phone: 1-615-356-5188 or 1-866-4-A-PEARL.

After publication, libraries may also order the book through their usual purchase channels (book wholesalers or distributors such as Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and Broadart).

Title: Taking Up Space: How Eating Well and Exercising Regularly Changed My Life
Author: Pattie Thomas, Ph.D. with Carl Wilkerson, M.B.A.
Format: original trade paperback
Date: October 2005
ISBN: 1-59719-002-0

Most libraries order books based upon patron requests, so all you have to do is put in a request and they will probably order it.

Thanks a bunch.

Taking Up Space: How Eating Well & Exercising Regularly Changed My Life

by Pattie Thomas, Ph.D. with Carl Wilkerson, MBA
Foreword by Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth

The book is on the final stretch. We're reviewing the galleys!

If you are interested in securing a copy as soon as possible, Pearlsong Press, Inc. is offering an order in advance deal with free shipping! (If you don't live in Tennessee, this will also save you sales tax.)

We're getting extremely excited about the debut. I feel like I'm in the final trimester and the baby is a kickin'.

My Favorite Quote of the Day, from The Tick:

"'Well, once again my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences,...but the other head of science is bad! Oh beware the other head of science, Arthur, it bites!' "

SPOOOOONNNN!!!!!

(thanks Carl)

R.I.P. - Atkins Nutritionals

Low-Carb Pioneer Atkins Files Chapter 11 - Forbes.com

The most interesting thing about getting older.

Perspective.

Diets come. Diets go.

Who would have guessed a fatty like me could outlive them all?