kyburg | Entries tagged with get stuffed

For those of you who voted 'kitty' yesterday, this fluff's for you:

For the rest, color me amazed. NOBODY said no. Not one.

Hooookay, then.

*kid gloves taken off, burned and ashes scattered*

I'm going to start this off then, with some caveats. The only thing that's going to look like a cut is a link to the original stories. And this is going to be a long one - if that upsets you, hit the scroll button now.

If I'm going to talk about this - I'm not going to hide it. If dealing with the concept of weight/body image bothers you to the point of despair? I don't know that you're going to enjoy this.

Just talking about it mind. A post

cadhla did some years ago comes to mind - and gives me a bit of pause before plowing ahead. This one. I'd go check it first, you have any qualms about whether or not I've been handed 24K clues on the subject or not.

Now I'm going ask you to put that to the side. Because -

THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE PRETTY.

Thought you'd wonder. At first blush? Sure looks like it.

...Then on November 29 of last year, a few weeks ago, he suffered chest pains. Wanting to live and knowing what to do, he called emergency services. The operator stayed on the phone with him as he waited for the ambulance to arrive. He collapsed and the operater listened to every sound hoping to hear his door open and help arrive. Well, she did hear everything, and what she heard astonished her.

The two ambulance attendants saw this big, fat, disabled guy, living in a messy home. They stood talking about him and decided that he wasn't worth saving. So they stood there and let him die, deciding to tell everyone that he was dead when they arrived. One more cripple out of the way, one more unnecessary life done away with. One more of us gone.

The operator immediately handed in the tape. Charges and investigations ... blah, blah, blah ...

Fact Checked - and damning in the bargain.

Fat, a poor housekeeper...and a gimp. Oh, and unmarried and childless in the bargain. Didn't even have parents to grieve his loss anymore.

*looks at pictures* I could have put that right in a couple of hours, mind. I've mentioned being 'proud' is pretty expensive, right? And he was social - he wasn't a shut-in, or housebound. But nobody deserves the fate he received - let's be clear on that. He had some reasonable expectations of the culture around him - and it failed him. Why?

Let's talk about burnout for a moment. No, really. I'm pretty sure some care providers are gonna go to jail for this - and really, losing their jobs is going to do them a favor. That's clear as a busted nose to me - these guys have seen so many of him they've lost it completely. It's burnout - in a form nobody would accept.

This is where it's gone beyond an occupational hazard and killed someone - and left everyone aghast about how it could happen.

I'm going to try - and I can only try - to give you a perspective on what it is to be the person tasked with saving your life...and can't. Because you weight more than 400 pounds.

And in particular, I'll talk from recent experience - and that's listening to the rad techs. And the rad tech students.

There isn't a story much more heartbreaking than the one about a nineteen year old that could have lost her leg after tripping over a laundry basket, and likely will have years of recovery ahead of her - it was a very near thing. Bad fall? No. She fell, sure, but wedged herself between the wall and the dryer...and it took 45 minutes to extricate her by the fire department, (after someone found her, mind) because she weighed over 380 pounds. She had dislocated her knee so badly the arteries and veins were pinched shut. She was so top heavy she couldn't free herself.

Forty five minutes - you can't free yourself - and according to Jim, she was on as much morphine as it was safe to give, and it wasn't touching the pain she was in.

Please lose the weight.

And she was one of the small ones.

Type II diabetics (and I've heard the term 'metabolic disease' as well) are a complete package - and the social Darwinists like to point out that in some populations (most of them of color), this is an evolutionary change to survive famine, and hence a normal process to weed out those that won't survive our current way of life. Adapt or die. (I'd wish these people sex, but why.)

They gain weight easily - scary easily. And getting it off again? Nearly impossible...and once they're on medication to either max out what insulin production they do have, or insulin replacement entirely? Even more so - losing weight being entirely insulin-dependent is something not for the faint of heart. You'll see the inside of an ER often, either in shock or acidosis. Promise. But the alternative is even worse.

When these people end up inpatient over 500 pounds, they are the sickest people you ever saw. They're losing limbs to amputations, having heart attacks and losing their minds having strokes. They're on dialysis. Their joints are shot, they're in constant pain and maybe even addicted to prescription medications. Physically? Decades older than their healthy peers. They die by small increments, huge leaps and in pieces.

The worst part is that every year, they get bigger - and the technology can't keep up. Most of them are bed-bound. Most of the beds are rated for about 300 pounds. (Check your bathroom scale, you haven't seen this yet. You'd think nothing was more than 300 pounds.) Up to recently, the only scale I ever saw that could measure more than that was one you rolled a wheelchair onto. That probably should have tipped me off.

You've heard the recent upgrade to "It's A Small World" at Disneyland was to deepen the tracks so the boats would stop bottoming out, right? Jim works less than 15 minutes away.

We're not talking about people who carry more than 50 pounds more. Or even 150 pounds more. Those folks get just as sick - for the same reasons - but two people can move them, if they can't move themselves. Diagnostics can be done. The bigger ones?

They break beds. They can't be moved without extreme measures. They suffocate under their own weight. X-ray machines shut down, overheating when they try to do exams on them - and the films aren't usable. Anything more would be dangerous to them - and what can be used? Doesn't work.

And they are often surrounded by family members, desperate to do anything they can for them - dearly loved - and all of them are as large or larger. Everyone of them a client at some point, of the facility. To them, and it's easy to imagine why - big is inevitable. Why fight it?

Please lose the weight.

This stuff doesn't roll off. They stay with you.

When the students graduate, if I get a chance to talk to them...I congratulate them on gaining their majority with an education, their clinical and their dedication to caring for their patients.

And then I ask them to consider what it is going to take to stay in the business of caring for others, not just to enter it. Because they don't tell you the patients are going to break your heart, infuriate you and be absolutely deaf to your fears for them. There are no classes on how to deal with burnout.

Or even how to recognize it.

You'll blow off steam with your colleagues. You'll have to - and somewhere in the mix, you all come to consensus that the really big ones can't be helped. Consciously or unconsciously...and even the patients seem to agree with you. They come in complaining of ailments, want you to help them - and it's plain as plain it's their own fault!

One day, you suggest they lose the weight, they take it wrong and report you. You can't insult patients, after all. You stop caring, after passing that warning point of getting overly involved in your patients problems - burnout is here, and you might not even notice it.

Then you start blaming them for being an inconvenience and taking up valuable time that could be spent on patients that will recover because they aren't so damn FAT.

Patients start getting labelled 'noncompliant' even before treatment begins.

And there are so many, they start to blur. You stop seeing faces.

It's so easy. Just lose the weight. Anyone can do it. It would be so easy.

And then it's all their fault.

I'm not going to go into the character assissination that already goes on towards people of size. You want a really good clue, go to YouTube, search up 'Fat Rant' and let the lady tell you all about it.

I'm not even going to say THAT'S what happened here.

We need to grieve for others besides Barry Baker. And know that the grief exists and not sublimate it.

And then I run into this thing:

Welcome to the world of confirming you're okay in the world. I speak of feeling your affluence.

Right around the waist.

I looked at that - step by step instructions and all, and thought about it. As a party food for more than twenty people? Pretty spiffy - I'm thinking of slicing that bad boy and serving it with slices of sourdough bread. Some beer to go with.

About 1/4" slice per.

Who thought that having the whole thing to yourself would be better? Or even more appropriate?

I mean, every ad I've seen for fast food is BIGGER, CHEAPER and YUMMMMMMMMMIER lately. (There's some $1 value menus going right now that are double burgers - 1/2 lb of beef - come on down!)

There's one that would feed both Jim and I for $4 right now. Seriously. And it's marketed as a meal for one person. Any 'reasonable' person would agree. It only has one soda, after all.

*headdesks*

There's been a lot of talk lately about obesity being a disease of poverty. As in - you're too broke to have anything pleasant to do but eat. You can't travel, you can't go outside, who in their right mind would stop watching television, playing games or reading books if they don't have a job? And food is EASY to come by - compared to housing or transportation, those other things that self-determination and employment demand.

I mean - get a 12 pk of soda, pound that and then recycle the cans? There's another burger, fries, and a soda for you - maybe even a couple of deep-fried tacos. There are a bunch of food banks. Not so much a decent place to work or sleep.

And fast food is cheeeeap. You get so many strokes for showing up, it's incredible.

Things aren't so bad. Have a coke and a smile. You DESERVE that cookie. And you really CAN eat the whole thing!

There's a lovely book on my shelf at home called What to Eat by Marion Nestle. It echoes my college nutrition class so eerily, decades after I took it - it's not funny.

Food isn't just big business here. It is - pun intended - HUGE.

It's nothing less than creepy the way our culture adores the people who eat to excess...and then hates them when the predictable outcome occurs.

And then makes money hand over fist selling them diet aids that don't do dick. Books. Relabeled crap that tastes like shit, probably isn't at all good for you - but it doesn't have any carbs/fat/sugar/name it this week!

Food is also one of those things that doesn't keep like - say - gold or artwork. So if you don't sell it quickly, you'll lose money and in a big way.

So we're told to eat fast - and have some more!

Don't forget how social eating is as well. GOOD TIMES.

Just don't gain weight. Well, gain TOO much. Ya gotta eat, after all.

*raises hand* I have a great-grandmother who died in her bed, over 700 lbs. If I am to believe what her daughter told my mother. And my grandmother was paranoid about her size. And no, she wasn't small, either.

Mom did Weight Watchers when I was a teenager. I did it a couple of years ago now and lost a total of 50 lbs from my high point. (I'm a bit up from the holidays, somewhere between 5 and 10 lbs more. I'm back on plan, and it'll come right back off - trust me.)

It's portion control. It's knowing how much is enough, and leaving the table afterward. Yes, that takes a whole system, meetings and support networks. It does.

Please lose the weight.

EAT EAT EAT YAY!

I have a sister who probably is over 250 lbs. I have a niece who could be her and I, put together. Cousins, ditto.

I lost the weight because my doctor threatened me with drugs for the rest of my life. It was never about the pretty - because let's be blunt. I'm not, and being thin won't make me pretty.

It will make me invisible to public scorn, however.

It's cheaper. And not in the grocery bill department. I don't need a lot of medical care, prescription drugs, adaptive equipment...hell, even my furniture doesn't wear out that fast.

I wish we rewarded people as well when they were of normal size. You just don't register on most of the radar.

And I wish we paid more attention to what being so obese does to the culture and systems that provide care around us - attention, not insults and disgust. Not indifference until someones dies of it.

It's not your fault. It's your responsiblity. It's your choice. You didn't know.

The only way out is through.

Please lose the weight.

And don't get fooled again.

Current Mood: contemplative

For those of you who voted 'kitty' yesterday, this fluff's for you:

Current Mood: contemplative

For those of you who voted 'kitty' yesterday, this fluff's for you:

Current Mood: contemplative

I'm fully aware it's September 11th. I've turned off the news more times today than I should have to - the blatant stupid is completely...unnecessary.

Plenty of people have said it better than I, shorter than I would have and got it to press long before I woke up. Best example is

filkertom's - which you can read here. G'head. I'll wait.

Because what I found bobbling around the New York Times after reading Alex the parrot died (awwww), was this lovely tidbit of just the brand of stupid I keep talking about.

Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources. In some prisons, the chaplains have recently dismantled libraries that had thousands of texts collected over decades, bought by the prisons, or donated by churches and religious groups.

Some inmates are outraged. Two of them, a Christian and an Orthodox Jew, in a federal prison camp in upstate New York, filed a class-action lawsuit last month claiming the bureau’s actions violate their rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, “discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

Ms. Billingsley said, “We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”

But prison chaplains, and groups that minister to prisoners, say that an administration that put stock in religion-based approaches to social problems has effectively blocked prisoners’ access to religious and spiritual materials — all in the name of preventing terrorism.

Go read this carefully. Then go check an assumption or two. As in, did any of the hijackers ever spend time in American prisons?

The identities of the bureau’s experts have not been made public, Ms. Billingsley said, but they include chaplains and scholars in seminaries and at the American Academy of Religion. Academy staff members said their organization had met with prison chaplains in the past but was not consulted on this effort, though it is possible that scholars who are academy members were involved.

Oh, it's the public's money paying for this, bunky. I'd have to say the public deserves to know who's deciding what's kosher and what's not.

The lists have not been made public by the bureau, but were made available to The Times by a critic of the bureau’s project. In some cases, the lists indicate their authors’ preferences. For example, more than 80 of the 120 titles on the list for Judaism are from the same Orthodox publishing house. A Catholic scholar and an evangelical Christian scholar who looked over some of the lists were baffled at the selections.

Timothy Larsen, who holds the Carolyn and Fred McManis Chair of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, an evangelical school, looked over lists for “Other Christian” and “General Spirituality.”

“There are some well-chosen things in here,” Professor Larsen said. “I’m particularly glad that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is there. If I was in prison I would want to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” But he continued, “There’s a lot about it that’s weird.” The lists “show a bias toward evangelical popularism and Calvinism,” he said, and lacked materials from early church fathers, liberal theologians and major Protestant denominations.

The Rev. Richard P. McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame (who edited “The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,” which did make the list), said the Catholic list had some glaring omissions, few spiritual classics and many authors he had never heard of.

“I would be completely sympathetic with Catholic chaplains in federal prisons if they’re complaining that this list is inhibiting,” he said, “because I know they have useful books that are not on this list.”

Go take a look.

And this is just New York. Think of the places you don't hear about.

(I really wasn't going to say a thing today. Honest. I guess it's just not in my nature to sit back and do nothing. Thanks,

technoshaman.)