I’m going through a divorce. As part of dealing with it all I took a short term contract as a travel nurse for the summer in Boston (Seattle is home). I felt like getting away from the situation and having time & space to clear my head would be the best thing for me. As such, no one here knows I used to weigh nearly 300lbs. A couple nurses and I were at the desk one night shift and one was talking about her patient, whose stats are just about where I was before starting this process. The nurse said something along the lines of “I wonder why she doesn’t look in to one of those surgeries”. The other nurse loudly scoffed and said “Then we’ll just see her in here for problems due to alcohol or drug addiction instead of food addiction”. It was said loudly, unkindly, and with clear bias. I was stunned and walked away. Of course she has no idea of my past. On my way home I thought of so many things I should have/could have said to that nurse to advocate and stand up for that patient, but was caught up in my own feelings of shame about my past weight problem. Ugh. Just when I think I’m doing really well and moving past that, I’m reminded of all the struggles and stigma there is about being overweight.

it's so weird for me to hear conversations now about people's weight since I rarely heard those when I was morbidly obese. Now, people don't know my past, so...I occasionally hear unkind remarks. I don't know how to handle those, honestly. I've just been ignoring them, but I'm not sure that's the right "response".

It is weird! People clearly were “careful” around me with their discussions. I guess I’m general I didn’t realize how fat phobic people are (I mean, on some level I realized it, but didn’t know if was done so openly). In some ways I feel like pulling out an old picture of me to show them, in other ways the anonymity of my current fit appearing status is nice.

Fat is the last safe prejudice...people are stupid casual about insensitive fat remarks. And yep, as thinner people now...we get an earful of that from people who would have filtered around us when we were heavier. It's messed up and sad. I've heard some awful remarks about fat people from people I would have otherwise said were typically very kind. It's shocking and disheartening.

4 hours ago, kristieshannon said:

“I wonder why she doesn’t look in to one of those surgeries”. The other nurse loudly scoffed and said “Then we’ll just see her in here for problems due to alcohol or drug addiction instead of food addiction”.

The problem with how unkindly this was said...is that it's probably a truthful observation clinically. Cross over or transfer addiction is very real.

Most bariatric clinics don't meaningfully address this component of obesity. They don't provide enough support to address the core issues of how folks ended up obese to begin with. They want to cure the symptom (the obese body) without understanding the whole illness.

In my opinion, that's a huge mistake.

4 hours ago, kristieshannon said:

It is weird! People clearly were “careful” around me with their discussions. I guess I’m general I didn’t realize how fat phobic people are (I mean, on some level I realized it, but didn’t know if was done so openly). In some ways I feel like pulling out an old picture of me to show them, in other ways the anonymity of my current fit appearing status is nice.

I may be in the minority here, but I pulled out my “before” picture pretty often for a period a while ago. Sometimes it was vanity thing, sometimes it was a motivational thing, but alot of times is done as a passive-agressive Eff You to catty-cats like your nurse acquaintance. Pre-covid the biggest offenders where the gamut of beauty service technicians.

It really IS funny (or sad?) how no one seemed to talk about weight in front of me when I was obese (except maybe my mom, lol), i realized a long time ago there were alot of conversations i was not a part of, and was probably the subject of at these types of places (and likely other places as well)! Not exactly eye opening, it is/was what it is/was.

In fairness of the catty-cats, they probably talked about everyone outside of their unfortunate lives. Im sure i’m being left of conversations about being old, ?

Edited June 30, 20215 yr by ms.sss