I would like to add some context to this post.
This illness all started immediately after finals week in May of 2016. It began with nausea and other gastrointestinal problems. I was so sick and weak that I could barely get out of bed and walk the ten feet to the bathroom. I ate nothing for several days because everything, even the most bland food we could find, made me sick.
I went to a clinic. The doctor took one look at me, a fat person, and said I was obviously diabetic. She had me do a blood test and prescribed me an antacid and an anti-nausea med. Nothing helped and I spent the next week in hell. When I went back to the clinic to review the test results, she made me do ANOTHER blood test because my first one came back negative for diabetes and she just couldn’t believe it so she did another quick one. Surprise, it was still negative. She said she didn’t know what my problem was but said I needed to immediately cut out all dairy, a major source of nutrition for me for much of my life, and probably go on a paleo diet. She was so surprised that a fat person didn’t have diabetes that she wouldn’t even try to help me further.
Shockingly (sarcasm), my problems persisted. The next week I traveled from Florida to Minnesota for the summer months. I was still incredibly miserable and not eating. I began to think it was all due to my extremely irregular menstruales cycle, and once again went to a clinic. I asked the doctor if I could have PCOS and she thought it was likely. She prescribed me Yaz. She mentioned that some people who took Yaz developed blood clots but she didn’t think that would be a problem for me. She ordered more blood tests, including one a few for thyroid function, as thyroid problems run in my family.
Two days later my legs began to hurt. Two days after that they began to throb. One day after that I couldn’t walk due to pain. I had to borrow my grandmother’s walker just to be able to make it from the couch to the bathroom and the car to the clinic. It was so severe that I would lie awake at night crying. I went in to see a different doctor, who told me my pain was due to my being overweight and that I should just go home and take Tylenol. I’ve been fat my entire life, but I’ve always been able to walk. My mom begged him to at least run a blood test to check for blood clots. She pointed out that my legs were red, hot, and swollen, to which the doctor replied that it was “subtle at best”. He grudgingly agreed to order a blood test to check for blood clots, but guaranteed it would come back negative.
Two hours later his nurse called me, the doctor audibly telling her what to say, to tell me to immediately go to the emergency room. The blood test indicated major clotting and I needed to begin blood-thinning medication as soon as possible. For the next ten days I gave myself lovanox shots in the stomach.
The day after I went to the ER, I had an ultrasound that confirmed I had what I was later told were several small “superficial” blood clots in my left leg only. The reason was because I inherited the Factor V Leiden clotting gene from both my parents, making me vastly more likely than other people to develop blood clots. I will have to take blood thinners the rest of my life.
I was still experiencing stomach problems and barely eating. When my thyroid test results came back, they showed they were beginning to fall out of line. My doctor referred me to an endocrinologist in a larger city a half hour away, for whom I had to wait a month to see. I was not prescribed any thyroid medication. All that month I continued to suffer stomach problems and barely eat. I was able to eat a little more than the previous month, as I narrowed down which foods I absolutely could not tolerate and which were usually tolerable. I couldn’t eat dairy, citrus, tomato products, any oil, anything with fat, most fruits and vegetables, salty foods, anything remotely spicy, anything with vinegar, anything acidic, and most meats. I lived off minute rice, Tostitos, fat-free shortbread, an occasional turkey burger patty, small amounts of boiled chicken, and water.
The endocrinologist ordered a new round of blood tests and a nuclear scan of my thyroid. Both revealed that my thyroid was getting progressively worse. I was diagnosed with thyroiditis and prescribed nothing, being told it would even out eventually.
Two or so weeks later I began experiencing severe stomach and back pain that appeared rapidly over the course of a few days. I couldn’t sit due to the pain. My mom brought me to the emergency room and I was given fentanyl, which didn’t even work, and then morphine. Further testing revealed I had kidney stones but had appeared to pass them while in the ER. The stones were never captured so their composition and type remain unknown.
Hearing of my latest trip to the ER, my original doctor (who prescribed me the Yaz that triggered my blood clots) told me to come back in for another appointment. She told me nothing new and advised me to “be glad that we caught this when we did and not when you start having children”. I broke down and left the room. It was at this meeting where she congratulated me on starving.
I was able to get into a more prestigious clinic, where I was assigned a team of physicians who reviewed my problems. They ran dozens of new tests over the next few days ranging from blood tests to an upper endoscopy (which I endured completely unsedated because I’m immune to fentanyl, their sedative). They discovered that
1) my thyroid had almost completely ceased functioning
2) the blood clots in my legs were not several small, superficial clots, but massive ones that would have entered my major veins within a day or two and likely caused a stroke or pulmonary embolism had I not begun blood-thinners when I did.
3) my kidney stones were quite possibly due to the sudden cutting out of dairy and calcium, resulting in any body trying to produce its own calcium and instead creating calcium-based kidney stones.
4) my weight is largely due to PCOS and thyroid problems, and regular diet and exercise will never be enough for me to lose the amount of weight I need.
5) my stomach problems were caused by a sudden shock to my system that completely screwed up the function of my digestive tract, causing my liver to produce acid that created extreme irritation.
I was eventually prescribed thyroid medication, a different type of birth control to treat my PCOS, and stomach medication. My treatment at this clinic is ongoing but has slowed down considerably now that I have some form of a functioning treatment plan. Of course, my family is now even more broke and in-debt than before.
I’m telling you all of this because it corroborates my original point: society fatally hates fatness. The doctor in Florida refused to try and treat me, a fat person without a disease that fat people are commonly assumed to have, because she simply didn’t know or care what else could have been causing a fat person’s health problems. She recommended a diet that other physicians have since told me was totally inappropriate for my needs, which may have caused the development of kidney stones. The first doctor I saw in Minnesota congratulated me on losing drastic amounts of weight due to literally starvation and malnutrition. The second doctor I saw in Minnesota dismissed my sudden and debilitating leg pain as a side effect of being fat, and if I had followed his original advice, I could easily have had a stroke or pulmonary embolism. My problems were not caused by fatphobia, but it greatly exacerbated them and almost proved fatal.
Society’s obsession with weight and disdain for fat people, such as is displayed in “Insatiable” are a symptom and a further aggravator of a complete disregard for the health of those whose bodies are deemed unattractive and worthless. And that is why the show is absolute flaming garbage.
