I suffered a horrible ankle break during rugby practice. My fibula broke off, my tibia cracked, i mean really,really bad (so bad that as my awesome doctor said “would be a career ender if you played professionally”). Because it was an away game in Philly (I usually get seen at Walter Reed - I live in College Park, MD), and if I didn’t get operated in quickly, there was a possibility of losing function in my leg, I opted to get the surgery done in Philly.

The day after the surgery was the worse. The pain was so bad, I was crying (and I have a pretty high pain tolerance). The nurses refused to give me more narcotics. Instead they gave me Motrin which did fuck-all for a broken ankle plus 6 hours in the OR. I would literally beg for medicine and they told me I had to wait longer. Those two days was a daze.

Later, I was reading the discharge papers and it turned out that because I have sleep apnea and a high BMI (I’m 5'2 and 210 lb, a small fat, pretty healthy, and VERY dense with lots of muscle) that they were denying me medication because I was at “high risk” from adverse effects.

An arbitrary formula designed by a Belgian statistician in the 1700’s was granted the same damn “risk factor” number as sleep apnea, which IS actually something to worry about, but is not caused by my weight (that’s a whole other fat discrimination issue - I have had it since I was a child, and when I was much thinner, I just didn’t have health insurance). An arbitrary formulatold doctors I didn’t deserve pain management.



Thin privilege is not being denied pain relief. Thin privilege is receiving that quality care that the hospital’s mission statement says they provide. Thin privilege is ACTUALLY being treated with respect like the hospital says they do.

Mod note: I am absolutely certain our trolls will declare that of course the doctors were right because OMG SLEEP APNEA. But there are ways to deal with sleep apnea. A fucking CPAP machine, for starters. Fucking intubation, if necessary. Fat is no excuse for leaving a patient in excruciating pain.