brownglucose:

930am:

science-fiction-is-real:

fatherangel:

ittybittykittykisses:

coverartistlol626:

It’s 2015. If doctors don’t know how to operate on fat bodies. Then they shouldn’t be doctors. We have enough resources an equipment to deal with “obese” patients. There is no need for the medical community to continue fat shaming. 

Let’s talk a little bit more in depth about how obesity affects surgical procedures.

In most serious, intensive surgeries, you’re probably going to be under anesthesia, right? And you’re probably going to have medications to take afterwards. Stuff like this filtered through the kidneys and liver.

Obese patients have much higher rates of renal hypertension, which affects the kidneys, and morbidly obese patients have a 90% likelihood of having abnormalities in their liver.

That all adds up to a really bad time, and drugs being filtered out of the system quicker and therefore not working as intended. And you really want your anesthesia to work right when people are cutting into you.

In addition to this, some weight-based drugs are affected by fatty tissue, and some are not, so this can cause problems in determining the proper dosage.

Obese patients are at a higher risk for deep-vein thrombosis – this is when a blood clot forms in a deep vein, like in the leg. Surgery is recognized as a risk factor for DVT, and so obese patients undergoing surgery are doubly at risk.

Finding veins in the patient is also made difficult – it’s the difference between finding the edge piece in a 1000 piece puzzle, vs finding it in a 100 piece puzzle.

It’s harder to monitor blood pressure in obese patients as well, as standard cuffs may not work due to there being too much fatty tissue between the blood vessel and the cuff.

When you’re performing surgery, you have to pull back the flesh and muscle to get to where you’re trying to operate on – the more you have to pull back, the more difficult this becomes.

This image shows how much more you’re having to work through when doing an operation on an obese person:

So no, it’s not a matter of doctors being bad at their job. Surgery by itself is a difficult and risk-laden process – adding obesity on top of that adds an uneccessary layer of additional risk and complexity.

Sources:

Palmer M, Schaffner F. Effect of weight reduction on hepatic abnormalities in overweight patients. Gastroenterology 1990; 99: 1408–13.

Albert S, Borovicka J, Thurnheer M, et al. Pre- and post-operative transaminase changes within the scope of gastric banding in morbid obesity. Schweiz Rundsch Med Prax 2001; 90: 1459–64.

Gholam PM, Kotler DP, Flancbaum LJ. Liver pathology in morbidly obese patients undergoing Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. Obes Surg 2002; 12: 49–51.

Ramsey-Stewart G. Hepatic steatosis and morbid obesity. Obes Surg 1993; 3: 157–9.

Clain DJ, Lefkowitch JH. Fatty liver disease in morbid obesity. Gastroenterol Clin North Am 1987; 16: 239–52.

Marik P, Varon J. The obese patient in the ICU. Chest 1998; 113: 492–8.

Ribstein J, duCailar G, Mimran A. Combined renal effects of overweight and hypertension. Hypertension 1995; 26: 610–5.

Braekkan SK, Siegerink B, Lijfering WM, Hansen JB, Cannegieter SC, Rosendaal FR. Role of obesity in the etiology of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism: current epidemiological insights. Semin Thromb Hemost 2013

Allman-Farinelli MA. Obesity and venous thrombosis: a review. Semin Thromb Hemost 2011; 37:903-7.

This is very true. When I had open heart surgery, there were various complications as well as problems with the anesthesia because of how fat I was. Thanks be to God my surgeon was top notch. But the fact of the matter is that if I was a thinner patient, the surgery would have been far less traumatic. In fact, if I had not put on so much weight, my aortic valve would have lasted me longer. So, yeah, biological and scientific realities are at stake when you carry too much weight.

I have seen some communities on tumblr try to push a “body positive” self esteem agenda by dismissing health risks of obesity as fat bias.

Yes.  You can be beautiful no matter what your body looks like.

No.  You cannot always be healthy regardless of what your body looks like, and while self confidence is important, taking care of yourself and addressing health problems-including being overweight- is important.

Thanks for someone being honest and real about the risks of obesity and the medical field

This is a very important post! 

(via sleepypomegranate-deactivated20)

If The Signs Were Words…

astrawrlogy:

Aries: verb
To win first place; to achieve a smooth victory against all odds

Taurus: noun
The sedate, whirling rings within an exceptionally old tree’s trunk

Gemini: verb
To speak as quickly & fluidly as a hummingbird’s wings

Cancer: noun
The lingering traces of a thunderstorm – water droplets on flowers, cold breezes, mud, fog, and dark clouds drifting away over the horizon

Leo: verb
To acknowledge one’s own magnificence; to compare thyself to a summer’s day shamelessly and with Shakespearean dignity

Virgo: noun
Fragile trails of sunlight breaking through the clouds of an overcast sky

Libra: verb
To photograph every beautiful thing one sees; to attempt to capture one’s entire life within the camera lens for a fear of wasting it

Scorpio: noun
A painting of the dark oceanic abyss, so real that you could drown in it

Sagittarius: verb
To drive down a barren road with no acknowledgement of the speed limit

Capricorn: noun
The condition or quality of standing alone in one’s vast power

Aquarius: verb
To begin to understand naturally, without epiphany, guidance, or deliberate effort; to take a lifetime to learn a life lesson

Pisces: noun
The inherent dream & duty of a Messiah

eshusplayground:

jean-luc-gohard:

fyeahlilbit3point0:

The new Shaggy design looks like he’s about to come gentrify my neighborhood and open a vegan mustard shop after he’s done fighting crime.

I was annoyed for the first few seconds after I saw that design and then I was just like, “Well, what’s the equivalent to hippies today?”

Seriously. A bunch of mostly white people moving into poor neighborhoods in big cities, being fake-deep, smoking a lot of weed, hooking up, supporting civil rights issues when it’s cool and then ditching them when it’s not the hot thing of the moment, shitty haircuts and beards, obsessed with ostentatious anticapitalism as social capital, all about music festivals. Shaggy would live in the McKibben Lofts or some shit.

*spits tea at mention of McKibben Lofts*

(via wabbitwanderer95)