"Made Me Feel Uncomfortable When Discussing My Health Issues"

I had an appointment at outpatients in the QEUH children’s area for rheumatology to discuss my joint pain and other related health issues. It is already a lot of travelling to get to the hospital, and when I finally thought I was going to get an answer to why I was constantly in so much pain, I was basically told that it was just my weight because I’m morbidly obese on the BMI chart and that I had to use different types of pens and I was told to do exercises because that would apparently help with my pain, it has currently not helped may I add.

I was quite upset after this appointment because I have issues with my body image and the way the doctor had worded things when discussing my weight made me feel uncomfortable and I felt like I was being told that all my health issues were just because of my weight. The doctor also said that I didn’t have hyper mobility despite me already being previously diagnosed with hyper mobility.

The next thing mentioned was my screen time, obviously a lot of teenagers/people my age spend a lot of time on their phones, but so do adults and I have never heard of an adult being asked this question when it is not relevant, so why ask younger people this? I understand that everyone is different, especially with health issues, but it was like the doctor was implying that I was a typical lazy teenager, which is obviously a stereotype and sounds a bit like discrimination against young and overweight people. I just feel like this could’ve been worded better.

Before discussing my weight, the doctor asked if I would like to see the chart for the BMI which I replied no because I was already told that I was considered Morbidly Obese, so I didn’t see why I should look at a chart and make myself feel worse about my image of myself, but the doctor then proceeded to show me the chart anyway and I felt ignored. I would hope that a doctor would actually listen to me and understand if I don’t want to be shown something that I didn’t need to see as I am the patient.

I was also corrected on how I feel physically, which personally felt a bit weird. I mentioned being in pain in a specific area, I knew it was joint pain, but I was then corrected by the doctor when they said that it was my muscle that was sore and they said that my pain was mostly just my muscles and not my joints. I should know the difference between a joint and a muscle and where my pain is as it is my body.

I have had issues with anxiety, as well as body issues, and this appointment did not help me in any way, it just made me feel ignored, discriminated against and uncomfortable. It also set back some progress I have made about feeling better about myself and my body image, after the appointment I started thinking negatively about my body and also began thinking about extreme ways to lose weight, which can lead to eating disorders.

I feel like their could’ve been a better way of wording things that were said during the appointment and I just want to bring awareness to this issue as myself and many other teenagers can easily develop eating disorders if the wrong thing is said by someone we think is telling us the right thing, a doctor being the main example.