I am fat. And I am not saying this so that people will pity me, or so that people will say “You’re not fat, you’re beautiful!” Being fat and being beautiful are not mutually exclusive. And because I’m fat, I not only get comments from random strangers, but also my primary care provider, and a lot of other doctors that I have to see. However, most, if not all, of my health problems are not triggered by the fact that I am overweight. I have Bell’s palsy, astigmatism, and a multitude of other issues.

Yet none of these things are caused by my weight. Both my PCP and the ENT specialist that I saw said that if I had lost weight, it would probably help with my sleep apnea. And they’re not wrong in some ways, but my weight is not the only problem. After seeing a chest disease specialist, I learned some things that were a little shocking; I have HUGE tonsils. And not like, “Oh they’re a little big”, like they are literally so big that they are touching. This, the chest doctor told me, was what they called “kissing cousins.” In other words, they shouldn’t be, but they are anyways.

Not only do I have “kissing cousins”, but I also have a pretty normal sized neck, which is usually another thing that causes sleep apnea in people; more specifically in men, since most health care providers use men as the baseline. And that, my friends, is another fault in healthcare. More often than not, women are pushed aside when it comes to diagnoses. Everything from tumors to heart attacks are hardly diagnosed properly in women because physicians look at bodies with vaginas and the people that they belong to and try to compare it to bodies that have penises. Newsflash: They’re different, and as such, symptoms do not always present themselves in the same ways.

I am not a middle aged man with a beer gut and an Adam’s apple, but I think if I was, perhaps it would be easier to get the proper diagnoses from health care professionals. For now, I’m just destined to struggle with and fight with the people who are supposed to be helping me stay healthy. I am fat, yeah, and I am a girl; I will not apologize for either of those things. I do work on my weight as best as I can when I can, all while running around and trying to balance the rest of my responsibilities. Yes, sometimes I fall and I eat things that aren’t the best for me, but to that I say that life is too short to be eating healthy all the time. You have to let yourself live a little, while also taking care of yourself.

I am not a health care professional, and I am not trying to say that all doctor’s are wrong, however I do believe that they need to brush up on how to diagnose and treat all people.