3:45am September 24, 2014

➸ They're telling my friend she can't get routine cancer surgery...

webmuskie:

youneedacat:

1. Because she’s fat, and they’re afraid to operate on fat people. (Well, they’d be fine doing much more invasive weight-loss surgery on her, but the less invasive and much more straightforward hysterectomy, they’re scared of. That tells you everything.)

2. They spent a long time eyeing her…

I do think it would be a good idea to let Fletcher Allen, and its oncology department, know that people know about this crap.

The hospital has a contact form at https://www.fletcherallen.org/about/contact_us/

But if you prefer other ways, here are the critical cut-and-pastes:

Customer Service: (802) 847-0000 or (800) 358-1144 (toll-free)

and

To speak to someone about your experience at Fletcher Allen: contact Patient and Family Advocacy at (802) 847-3500. Or you may use our online contact forms to share a compliment or share a concern.

Gynecologic Oncology

Medical Center Campus

Main Pavilion, Level 4

111 Colchester Avenue
Burlington, VT, 05401

Phone: 802-847-5110

Fax: 802-847-0496

It has finally hit me why he was so bizarrely interested in whether I could get up and walk. I’ll bet he thought I used the chair because I was “obese” and unfit, and he was using my mobility as a proxy for fitness to undergo surgery.

Let me count the ways in which that set of assumptions is so fucked up.

Well, actually, no, lets not, because I’d like to get to sleep tonight.

Please anyone who can, contact Fletcher Allen and let them know what you think about the situation. Read my previous reblogs on the matter if you want more information. My friend’s name is Laura Tisoncik if you want them to know on whose behalf you’re contacting them.

And FYI, my friend is in a wheelchair because she has severe scoliosis (which would have killed her without an operation) with a fused spine that then developed flatback syndrome and she only has two vertebrae below the fusion, which are now dislocated and have this giant halo of arthritis around them, oh and she has either rheumatoid arthritis or lupus and has broken ligaments and tendons in more limbs than I care to think about. It has nothing, whatsoever, to do with being fat. Not that, if it did, it should make any difference. But it makes me mad when people assume she’s in a chair because she’s fat. It’s more like she’s fatter than she otherwise would be because she’s in a chair. I’ve noticed disabled people who use chairs tend to be really fat or really thin, not a lot in between.

Anyway, this is medical fatphobia and ableism, and I am not going to stand by and let my friend die. When I needed a feeding tube and the hospital kept trying to talk me into going home and dying, tumblr rallied around me, called the hospital to say “We’re watching what you do to this patient”, and I had a tube within two days.

Anyway, my friend’s name is Laura Tisoncik if you need to use it when you are complaining to the hospital. Please do for her what you did for me. She’s saved my life more times than I can count, I would do anything to save hers. Anything. She’s like my second mother – she picked up where my parents left off, in my late adolescence when my parents weren’t sure what kind of guidance they could give me. She gave me guidance instead, often at a lot of expense to her own well-being, and it’s largely thanks to her that I turned out a decent human being, among other things (including an alive human being).

Anyway, please help her if you at all can, and please think about signal boosting if you can’t make phone calls or otherwise contact them. (I can’t make phone calls, so I’ll be signal boosting the hell out of this day in and day out, you’ve been warned.)

And if anyone thinks that what’s happening to her is justified, keep your thoughts to yourself, this is a human being we’re talking about, a human being who’s entitled to the same cancer treatment everyone else gets. She just got diagnosed with endometrial cancer, have some fucking respect.