with regard to the post about doctors and blood pressure cuffs...i'm pretty sure that pumping it tighter on an arm with more tissue between the skin and the arteries is necessary. i used to work as a patient care technician in an emergency department, and i did notice that even though i made sure to use the correct cuff size, larger patients tended to experience more pain from the blood pressure cuff because it needed to be tighter to get a good reading. It’s absolutely wrong that people should

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epiratequeen-deactivated2016053

(2/2) be discriminated against because of their body composition and walk away with injuries from one of the single most routine tests medicine has to offer, but I don’t think nurses are to blame for this one.

Gee. You might have a point, if it weren’t for the fact that a) not everyone who takes my damn blood pressure pumps it up that much, and it doesn’t always hurt, so it must actually be possible to do it withouthurting; and b) why the fuck should we give a group of people who we already know regularly discriminate against us any kind of benefit of the doubt on this? If it’s a particular nurse who doesn’t ever treat fat people badly in any other way, but consistently pumps the cuff too tight, then maybe there’s some reason she has for doing it that way. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Medical professionals as a group regularly discriminate against fat people. There is no reason to think that this is not generally one way that they do, especially since we know it doesn’t have to be that painful and doesn’t have to cause bruises.

So I’m calling bullshit.

-MG