Size is NOT a Sure Health Indicator

Rant inspired by this post on Fierce Fatties, where some numbnutz health care "professional" made the statement that fat people were going to break the National Health System in Britain.

My doctor is usually pretty good but three years ago he missed out on the fact that the damn thyroxine was causing me to go into a state of artificially induced hyperthyroidism. Having been trained that all fat people become hypertensive, he said it was probably my weight and put me on a beta blocker, which caused me to have respiratory problems. The elevated thyroid levels caused me to have panic attacks so the doctor prescribed clonazepam--which, by the way, is a seizure medication and I will never take it again. I had such a bad rebound panic attack (after being a zombie for three hours) that I literally thought I was going to die. Fortunately I talked to my mother, who told me that thyroxine raised her blood pressure a good deal while she was on it.

When I went back to talk to the doctor he did listen to me, took me off the meds, and indicated on my chart that I shouldn't take any of them in the future.

Three years later I did end up becoming hypertensive for real. This was following the death of my father after a very long period of illness and decline and occurred while doing one of the hardest things that I have ever done: finishing nursing school, the clinicals for which are mostly on the day shift, while continuing working part time on the night shift. The fucked up sleep schedule threw my body into turmoil. Plus, I turned 46 and hypertension runs in my family. My brother has been taking blood pressure medication since he was 35. And he is not a "lard ass" like me. He is reasonably athletic, a firefighter/paramedic who also works SWAT, and he works out at the gym. My fat ass took 11 years longer to have to go on blood pressure meds. So there--nyah!

The upshot of this is that you can't tell by a person's weight. I hope that my doctor took this lesson into account.