This is a response to Ragen's post about how obese patients are treated in settings such as hospitals or rehabs.
As a (fat) health care worker, I have worked with all sorts of people, most of them elderly but some who were just in the LTC facility for rehab. One of the patients at one point was a very big and tall woman who weighed 400 pounds. She had broken her tibia. She could help us to turn and position her and she was alert, awake, and oriented to person, place, and time. She was cooperative. I had no trouble at all taking care of her.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, while doing my clinicals for nursing, there was a patient not much over five feet tall who weighed approximately the same. She was catatonic. She couldn't help at all. Yes, she was extremely difficult to turn and clean. I have to say that I was pleased that everyone who helped care for her always spoke to her in a gentle tone and no-one berated her for her size. It did take four of us to take care of her.
On the other hand, I cared for a man who had both legs amputated and was in kidney failure. He was a small man but very hard to move because his skin was so fragile. He developed bed sores constantly no matter what we did. It took two of us to manage with him and he was very difficult to deal with because of the fact that the pain made him scream whenever we touched him.
I tell you this: people aren't in the hospital because they're healthy and while size can make it difficult to care for a patient, smaller patients can be difficult to care for too, and sometimes more so. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness in this vulnerable situation.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, while doing my clinicals for nursing, there was a patient not much over five feet tall who weighed approximately the same. She was catatonic. She couldn't help at all. Yes, she was extremely difficult to turn and clean. I have to say that I was pleased that everyone who helped care for her always spoke to her in a gentle tone and no-one berated her for her size. It did take four of us to take care of her.
On the other hand, I cared for a man who had both legs amputated and was in kidney failure. He was a small man but very hard to move because his skin was so fragile. He developed bed sores constantly no matter what we did. It took two of us to manage with him and he was very difficult to deal with because of the fact that the pain made him scream whenever we touched him.
I tell you this: people aren't in the hospital because they're healthy and while size can make it difficult to care for a patient, smaller patients can be difficult to care for too, and sometimes more so. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness in this vulnerable situation.
Amen to that!
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