Unbelievable, this. And yet somehow inevitable.
One hopes this traumatized fatbody is able to convince John Edwards to argue her case. Because I’d love to see him bring the jury to tears by channeling the anguished testimony of her excess adipose tissue…
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(h/t Tom Elia)
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update: SarahW fills in some background that doesn’t appear in the AP story. If what she says is correct, then perhaps there is more to the story than I’ve been led to believe…
What’s next, liberals suing shrinks for diagnosing them as psychotic?
The doctor could have protecting himself by using different language.
As in, “You may be a fat f*ck, but that’s just one man’s opinion. If you choose to believe that all the heavy breathing and sweating you do on the way to the fridge is caused by some other factor or combination of factors not involving what a big, smelly, fatassed f*cker you are, you’re free to do so.”
And people wonder why the hell medical costs are so high. Thanks for doing your part to drive up malpractice rates, lady.
TW: filled. It’s not the doctor’s fault you’re filled with chewy nougat, sweetheart.
Maybe I missed it, but it doesn’t mention a lawsuit in the article. Just a formal complaint that’s a waste of everyone’s time [my spin].
Sounds like the doctor should have been treating her for thin skin. Stupid cow.
Maybe in turn the doctor should have waited and sued the fat one for the carpal tunnel that he developed while cutting vigorously through the multi layers of fat trying to get to the over labored heart that was mal fuctioning due the excess amount of fat
What a waste of stretched flesh
Maybe it was the doctor’s recommendation to go on an exclusive Karl Rove Breakfast Burrito diet that offended her.
Every time a doctor tells me to stop smoking I just feel mildly chagrined. I had no idea I had grounds for a formal complaint.
Ok, no, really.
Yet another dodge of personal responsibility.
Po’ baby got her widdle feewings hurt.
She must have managed to avoid every single mirror, still pond and window pane in the world or her delicate and sensitive self would obviously have been too distraught to continue living.
We really need to start taking our country away from the ideology of perpetual victimology.
Umm, it’s only unbelievable because it isn’t the whole story.
By the doctor’s own admission he made personal remarks beyond the medical consequences of being overweight, which is where his right to scare and advise ended. These included making an unsolicited prediciton about the mortality of her spouse and her prospects for remarriage and her sexual attractiveness to other men.
She wasn’t complaining about being told she was fat and needed a lifestyle change to improve and protect her health. She was complaining because the doc (in thelight most favorable to him) crossed a line of propriety trying to get her to see the light…
Docs have no right to bully berate or deamean patients, even those whose conditions frustrate them, and this patient felt bulllied.
I suspect, based on the docs own admitted arrogant and improper remarks, that he may have been otherwise unprofessionally rude to his patient.
FWIW, I’m a thin person.
Penalty for this doc? A request to think over the way he talks to patients and attempt to treat them with the dignity they deserve.
Horrors.
I hadn’t heard any of that, Sarah. Those particulars don’t appear in the AP story, and FOX, who’s been reporting on the story all day, left the particulars out, as well. Some of the details you point out, if true, do seem over the line.
I do note from the AP story, though, that the doctor wrote a letter of apology to the woman.
Mrgle. A contrarian view:
1) Some doctors can be assholes about weight. Loud public comments in the waiting room, outright insults, and refusal to treat are none of them exactly unheard of.
2) The assholehood sometimes goes beyond reason, as in, for example, going to the doctor for an infected cut on your arm and having the first words out of his mouth be “Have you ever thought about losing the weight?” To the exclusion of actually treating what one came to him for, I emphasize.
3) This assholic tendency can in fact be completely counterproductive, as in it can keep fat people from going to the doctor because they don’t want to be humiliated and in tears. (Life as a fat person is difficult enough, emotionally, without having your doctor sneer at you too.)
4) The asshole nature goes beyond health issues, per se; a fat person in good cardiovascular health who does a lot of walking will get the same treatment as one of equal girth who gasps climbing a flight of stairs, because doctors generally don’t inquire into such things as exercise level before cutting loose on the patient.
5) Given all this, and given that she shows no signs of suing, I am inclined to cut the woman slack for complaining. If more people complained about this sort of thing, doctors would be less asshole-like in giving advice about exercise and diet. Which would be all to the good.
SarahW:
What reasonable people do when a person (whom they pay for a good or service) insults them is: walk away. Do not pay that person any more money. Find a new purveyer of that good or service.
That doctor could have told her she was a fat, wall-eyed, knock-kneed harridan who couldn’t get a date at a blind men’s convention even if she had hundred dollar bills stuffed in her folds…and that still wouldn’t have damn all to do with his responsibilities as a doctor.
I am not responsible for your feelings, he is not responsible for your feelings, they are not responsible for your feelings. Repeat as needed.
I second what BrendaK said and add a note of disappointment that Our Jeff recanted his correct opinion under the “weight” of SarahW’s defense of the super-sized whiner.
So the doc insulted the Fat Tub o’ Lard. Cry me a fricken river. Insults do not equal grounds for a lawsuit or complaining to medical authorities. Geez, it’s not like his “therapy” caused her to gain an added 200 pounds or something. If he had been prescribing tubs of Haagen-Dasz, intravenous injections of alfredo sauce and thrice weekly “physical therapy” at the Cheesecake Factory, then, yes, she would have grounds for complaint. Absent that, she should adopt the follinwg attitude that will help her through much of her butter-soaked life: shut yer stinkin’ pie-hole.
Next up: smokers filing complaints against their doctors for telling them they smell bad and have ugly yellow teeth. (The nerve! Neither statement has any direct bearing to a medical diagnosis!)
I hold in this opinion in my capacity as the left tittie of a member of Jumbo-sized Lardbutt-American community.
(PS: I base the above vituperative comments on unimpeachable medical research that states that the leading cause of fatness and obesity is consuming more calories than one uses.)
No, Sarah, you are incorrect. The state’s board of medicine has no business regulating whether or not doctors are rude. Only whether or not they practice medicine correctly.
My comment stands.
Well, if the doctor’s a jerk, then Capitalism should work properly, and the man will have to adjust his manner.
I imagine it gets frustrating dealing with people who have a myriad of complaints, many of the stemming from, or exacerbated by, severe obesity.
What does Michael Moore’s Right tittie have to say for itself?
FWIW. It’s unethical for a doctor to inflict emotional harm to a patient. The question is whether or not that is the case here. She apparently thinks so…and he has apologized.
Me? I think she’s just a bit too sensitive. Hopefully she’ll realize that perhaps there was a bit of truth in what the doctor said and will do better at trying to lose weight.
Me? I’m on my fifth pint of Guinness. Up yours doc! I’ll outlive my liver by 5 minutes, tyvm.
As you would expect, Michael Moore has two left titties. One’s just even farther to the left.
Did I read earlier that Moore has entered a fat clinic?
Here.
You mean sometimes reporters sometimes sacrifice facts for the sake of punching up a story?
…swoon…
PLOP!
Turing = feet, as in Dammit, Jeff; I hate getting knocked off my feet with astonishment when you blindside me like that!
I think this goes back to the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
She may have had her feelings hurt, but that doesnt’ justify a lawsuit. She should simply take her business elsewhere.
It was highly unprofessional of him, and perhaps he’ll actually consider his words carefully next time.
Except she didn’t file a lawsuit. She sent a letter to his state board, which is totally proper if she felt like she’d been abused. (Yes, I changed my view based on SarahW’s information.)
The real problem here is the board’s reaction. They should have asked him to apologize and left it at that.
Sarah’s new info made me change my mind too. Sorry about the nougat joke, whiney lady.
You people are harsh. Just this side of wrong, but still harsh. IMO, the doctor was trying to get her concerned about the dangers of her condition. He did so by throwing in a few ancilliary comments that are out of the jurisdiction of his profession, but did so out of concern for a patient’s health. It’s a fine line, and it would be hard to punish him for it. The letter of apology is probably all the patient will ever get, seeing as how the board could be sued for punishing the MD much further than that. Considering the comments from an overweight patient at the end of that AP article, I doubt the doc will lose too much business; and if he does he’ll just be losing fat people, whom he doesn’t seem to care for very much anyways.
And yet, we still don’t have the whole story.
Turns out that the doc had been trying to get our victim to lose a couple of 1/4 tons for years. He tried being sensitive. He tried talking in metered tones. He tried Voinaviching to get her to understand the dangers of obesity.
But when, in the waiting room, a 3-year-old dropped one piece of Cap’n Crunch on the floor and our poor fatty flew after it like it was a fumble in the National Championship, subsequently tearing the toddlers right ACL, the doc felt he had ratchet up the pressure.
Remember that when you’re pushing the swiss cake-roll in and licking your fingers – all in one motion.
Doctors routinely treat their patients with contempt. It comes from thinking they are the wisest beasts on the planet.
I posted over at Captain Ed’s about this.
Even if we take SarahW’s statements at face value (I’d appreciate a link), I still don’t see the justification for taking action against the doctor’s license. Even if the doctor was rude (we have nothing but her word on that), the patient should feel free to find herself another doctor. If a brusque manner were a disqualification for medical practice, we’d lose about 90% of surgeons right off the top (OK… maybe 80%).
Incidently, this will follow this doctor forever. Any time you apply for hospital privileges, another state license, or are a party/witness in a lawsuit, they ALWAYS ask about any sanctions from a medical board or licensing body.
Besides, what’s the definition of inappropriate “unsolicited” advice? The doctor made some statements to bring the patient’s attention to the problem, including some things that she may not have considered (prospects for remarriage, etc) People are amazingly myopic when it comes to their own problems, particularly ego-dystonic ones, and denial is not just a river in egypt.
This patient seems awfully thin-skinned, and IMO has really gone too far. Bottom line: her feelings were hurt, and she wants to get her “pound of flesh.”
“Sticks and stones my break my bones, but your ponderous ass might might suffocate me.”
This sounds like an unfortunate incident all the way around.
However, bear in mind that health care providers have all been seriously stressed in recent years by excessively obese patients.
A close friend nurses in an operating room and has been injured on the job repeatedly, as have a number of coworkers, when having to reposition a 350, 400, or even 500 pound patient on the operating table, or catching them when they slip.
Would you like to be one of the two or three nurses or technicians trying to move an anesthesized 450 pound patient from gurney to operating table, day in and day out?
Or deal with the complications during surgery, stressful in the best conditions, for an extremely obese patient? Especially when those patients often require replacement knees or hips as a result of carrying excessive weight.
These stresses do not excuse rudeness or unprofessional behavior by doctors and staff, but perhaps put a different perspective on the situation, not readily apparent to the lay public.
So if a doctor in his attempts to get me to quit smoking makes comments about my teeth, breath or general tobbacco stench about me should I have a right to sue for offense?
If this goes to jury in any way I hope they laugh her fat ass out of the courtroom. You do not have a right to not be offended, especially in a case where the doctor is trying everything in his power to make you see the light.
There are a lot of fat people in America. I mean really. Next time you’re out and about, take notice of the percent of people in this nation that are fat. From a political perspective, they represent the largest voting block. If only we could harness the power of the fat people!!
I mean, if you really want to win an election, throw some planks on your platform that involve, maybe, a snackfood or dessert stipend to WIC and welfare checks. Or maybe a division similar to AARP, but for fat people: AAFP. Through this organization, they could get courtesy discounts at Denny’s and Golden Corral, and lobby the government for all kinds of bullshit.
They did, Shank. It was called “The Matrix.”
Really though, fat people are segregated in America. Fat people have to use different wheelchairs, fat people barely fit in airplane and bus seats, and fat people have to shop at different clothing stores than everyone else. This CITIZEN JOURNALIST, for one, is OUTRAGED!! I SAW WE MARCH ON WASHINGTON MY BIG BONED BRETHREN!
Okay, maybe marching isn’t such a good idea. How about a sit in?
If I read you right shank, a wise party might bring back the “2 chickens in every pot” slogan, updated for the times of course. Perhaps a “2 chickens, large sack of potatos, side salad, apple pie, cookies and small diet coke for everyone” upgrade might be in order. Too wordy?
No? Okay, a sit in at; say, Dairy Queen?
The million pound march.
Defense Guy, that’s music to the consituents ears. We’ll have them eating out of our hands!
Imagine the funds that could be raised from corporate lobbyists. The entire fast food industry, a multinational juggernaut in itself, would be able to throw millions at us. Not to mention Big and Tall retailers, the snack food industry (Nabisco? Helloooooo!); I mean, this could be HUGE. OBESE even.
I’m not sure my hands are big enough. Maybe a feeding trough?
We would be the first party in the history of America that would be able to throw $500-per-plate dinners of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. We’d have enough money to put congress and the judiciary in our pockets. I’m telling you, somebody should make the power grab.
Uh, Hi there, folks.
I want to stop short of saying this woman SHOULD have filed a complaint with the board ( FWIW, she dis NOT sue) for rude treatment, althought I think it was her right and *maybe* even her duty depending on what went on in their office visit together.
Everyone likes a good outrage, I guess that’s why the papers have played up the “doc in trouble for telling patient she is fat” angle. It sure sounds stupid for a doctor to get in trouble for telling his patient to lose weight.
That’s not why he’s in trouble. Her complaint, to understate, was about his manner and remarks she felt that went beyond his duty to counsel and advise. She wrote a letter, the board made some requests of him to consider the dignity of his patients and to take some sensitivitiy training. He refused, but as Jeff already said, did aquiesce to a letter of apology to this same patient.
The bords concern ran along thse lines, based on the info they were privy to :
Bennet has a little verbal beatdown he likes to give to all the fat *girls*.
I’ve drawn my own conclusion about how appropriate this is in a medical setting, you may draw your own. However, the complaint to the board (not a lawsuit) was about something more than being told she was obese and needed to lose weight for her health.
PS. Bennet appeared on the TODAY show and spoke to Matt Lauer about the words he used to his patient. I couldn’t
find the transcript, but maybe someone else can.
And if any doc tells me to fix my monkey toes or no one will love me, I will just deck him out in the office.
You have monkey toes?? EEEEWWWWWW!!
Seriously though, if this woman did persue some kind of enforceable punishment, it would be very difficult to prosecute the MD. I mean, once you intrude on a physician’s role of advisor, you effectively cut them off at the knees. If a psychologist can’t prod info out of a patient, they can’t work to cure them. If a doctor can’t use a scare tactic here and there to goad a reluctant patient from killing themselves, what of medical ethics? Then people would be suing docs for being to lenient, and violating their responsibility to the patient.
Was Bennet wrong? No. Should he have been nicer? Apparently. Can he be punished for this? No. It was in a setting that is within his bounds as a physician who (maybe a little to vehemently) tried to change the patient’s stance on their personal health. It didn’t work. Big woop. Personally, if I was living in a way that was going to kill me (substance abuse, self-neglect, denial) I would hope my doc would try to slap some sense into me. In the end, if you want to stay fat, stay fat, but don’t shoot the messenger.
My mother-in-law’s doctor told her that she had drank a hole in her stomach and bluntly informed her that she needed to quit drinking the booziki or she would be dead. He probably added 20 years to her life.
How do I go about having this quack strung up?
fat people are gay
Eppur si fattie
(Rough translation: “And yet, it moves; and you are really really obese. As in, I can see things are orbiting you. But yet I’m rude. Which is worse?”)
— Galileo
“whatever, fatso.”
whatever happened to good ole social pressure?
…we should investigate the government to determine the fattest government workers/agencies. I bet they’re in the health department.
I bet you can count the number of fat mail carriers on one hand.
Just because a doctor says something that’s true doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to day it. If I’m complaining to my doc that my feet hurt and I have trouble getting upstairs, it’s appropriate to say, “You’ll feel a whole lot better if you lose weight. I know exercise is hard when you’re already having mobility problems but you’d be amazed at what a difference it makes.”
It would not, however, be appropriate to say, “Look, you need to lose weight and you’ll be more attractive to men, too.”
Or ask a smoker about the number of inappropriate ways doctors raise the issue of smoking. Like, when you are complaining about your feet or have a broken leg or are already dying and anyway you quit smoking 16 years ago.
(I’ll never forgive the doctor who guilted my father about his smoking after his heart attack, although he had quit nearly two decades earlier. What was he supposed to do, go back in time? I told him both of his brothers had had heart attacks even younger although they had never smoked, and asked if he meant to say that my father would have been immortal if he hadn’t smoked.)
Sometimes doctors are just assholes, you know? And someone should tell them to cut it out.
I recently saw a doctor who, after telling him I would not appreciate scare tactics, said, “You’ll go blind!†(No, not for that.) I won’t be going back to him; the woman in our story may not have that optionâ€â€she may belong to an HMO or may be on Medicaid or Medicare and have no other options. While we could get into blaming her for her situation, I would offer this observation: we live in a culture that promotes and feeds off of fear, and nowhere is this as evident as in our healthcare system. (See Selling Sickness by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassals, or Healing wihtout Fear, by me, for some examples). The good doctor was probably of that era in medicine where bedside manner was tossed out the window along with compassion and respect, which are also sorely lacking in public discourse. (Can anyone make a point these days without name-calling or four-letter words, I wonder?) The problems with fear are legion; I will offer two: fear, along with anxiety, grief, depression, actually suppresses the immune system which is often already compromised in someone seeking medical advice; even if a person responds to fear-mongering tactics with compliance, this is, in the long-run, less effective than an internal motivator. I have no idea what the doctor in this situation tried over his years of working with this woman, but perhaps he should have referred her (if possible) to someone to whom she might have responded better.
“I recently saw a doctor who, after telling him I would not appreciate scare tactics, said, “You’ll go blind!†(No, not for that.) I won’t be going back to him;”
Good. I am sure the doctor was happy with that outcome as well.
I can not tell you the number of patients I have seen blind from glaucoma, which is an easily treatable disease. These patients were seen multiple times by multiple doctors, each politely warned them and attempted to treat them. The patients can not believe such a thing is happening to them (denial is great), never get treatment, then when they are at end-stage near blindness, the say “Why didn’t one of the doctors tell me in a way that I would believe them”. Pointing out the 5 different doctors notes all stating they told the patient the same thing rarely helps. I can guarantee every one of the hundreds of blind patients I have seen (after its too late) had wished “scare tactics” had been employed at some point. And what you call “scare tactics”, some would simply call the truth.
But thats not the best part. Despite telling the patient politely the need for treatment and documenting such, there has been successful lawsuits, basically stating, the doctor “did not do enough” to convince the patient.
But thats not the reason most doctors use “scare tactics” when dealing with someone in denial. Its because they have seen hundreds and hundreds with the same (now non-treatable) blindness or near death disease, where the patient is crying and begging for help, when there is no treatment. And the teenage children crying in same room worrying about who is going to care for them.
However in this day in age, I agree with you. Caring about the patient, and trying to convince them they are going blind or going to die early, (when each of us has seen it happen hundreds and hundreds of times), is getting to dangerous. Its much easier to just document and dismiss the patient after trying several times, and let the patient be someone else’s problem. After all that is what you are advocating isn’t it?
Some follow-up press on the complaint(s) against Bennett. Bennet admitted plenty I didn’t think was appropriate, and there is more to the complaint than what he admitted; not to mention a history of previous, unrelated violation of ethics relating to his resume.
AP article
Foster onlline article
Bennet is not doing his female patients any favors with his fat-chick harangues. (I think they do cross into violation-of-the canon-of-medical-ethics territory)
FWIW, Dentists seem to have absorbed the truth that the authoritarian, scolding, humiliation method of gaining dental compliance has the opposite of the intended effect. It not only drives patients away from the practive, but created patients who avoid treatment altogether. Doctors who engage in this sort of conduct should stop it. It isn’t helpful to anyone.
Just another quack waddling along..