A step closer to the goal

This Tumblr post is the first time someone has explained to me *why* I couldn’t feed them before those instances.

every single time i have had to say, "i understand that if he had food or water, he could aspirate it into his lungs under anesthesia. i am not lying to you." THEN someone would make a little note and i would stop being repeatedly asked.

not a single time was that risk explained to me. the only reason it came up was because i already knew. i still don't understand why it isn't standard pre-op counseling or pre-op check information, when me as a parent acknowledging the actual risk also put THE MEDICAL STAFF at ease because i conveyed that i had informed understanding as reason to not lie about giving my kid food.

every fat person you know for the most part probably has a story like this, of medical neglect. many of the stories i've heard personally are when the complaint or the doctor wasn't related at all, like being told to lose weight at the ear nose and throat doctor or at the dentist. it's straight up just bias. it's such a thing that in the show Shrill it's portrayed, when Aidy Bryant goes to the gynecologist and her doctor suggests she get gastric bypass.

the studies on health and fatness are simply not that black and white and there is basically no research that shows that more than an incredibly tiny minority of people can lose weight and keep it off for more than like 2 years. bodies have set points that they gravitate towards, it's not a personal failure. this also is how the weight loss industry succeeds so well - repeat customers.

some of the harm associated with fatness is also due to weight cycling, which is very hard on your body and is even worse if you get off a GLP1, which according to a recent study causes weight to be regained at a rate that is 4x faster than without taking a GLP1.

you don't have to hate yourself. you don't have to hate other people for their body type either. it makes me so sad to see the thinspo tag going around again in 2026 a lot like it was back in the day.

some resources to learn more here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/feeling-fat-may-be-worse-for-you-than-being-fat-idUSTON079061/

So I walked around on it for another five years, despite apparently having bone-on-bone grinding as it wore away at the cartilage because it was misaligned, and sometimes my leg would just refuse to bear weight entirely.

So I needed to have a more serious, invasive surgery to FUSE MY ANKLE JOINT because there was no cartilage left because that first doctor didn't want to operate on a fat lady.

taking hormones is a horrible invasive procedure that you do because you are a sick freak who hates normal people

this was a comment on a video of a male medical student talking about going into his obgyn rotation and how hes not offended when people dont allow him to sit in on their obgyn appointments to get clinical experience. and I HATE this mindset.

there is nothing sexual or perverted about being an OBGYN. that is a medical doctor for a specific part of a person's body. yes, those parts are used in sex and reproduction. but like any other part of the human body, it can have medical problems that need to be fixed. to say that anyone, regardless of gender, must have some perverted desire in order to become a specialized doctor is so disgusting. do we think that female doctors who specialize in male urology and reproductive health are just horny women who want to look at penis all day?

and if you are personally uncomfortable with having a male obgyn, that's perfectly fine. the video that this comment was left on was specifically about a male medical student saying "your comfort and safety always comes first, no one is offended by you saying you don't want me in the room while you have an exam" which is true!! but to then say "he shouldn't be in that practice anyway. predator." is so fucking nasty. he hasn't done anything wrong. these medical visits should always be built on the strictest form of informed consent. youre judging him for being a student in a very necessary medical field. there are a lot of great women obgyns, i just had my hysterectomy from one, but I don't think that only women should be allowed to be obgyns and male obgyns should not be shamed.

"Testosterone can foster friendly, prosocial behavior in males, a new animal study finds. The Proceedings of the Royal Society B published the research on Mongolian gerbils conducted by neuroscientists at Emory University. 

“For what we believe is the first time, we’ve demonstrated that testosterone can directly promote nonsexual, prosocial behavior, in addition to aggression, in the same individual,” says Aubrey Kelly, Emory assistant professor of psychology and first author of the study. “It’s surprising because normally we think of testosterone as increasing sexual behaviors and aggression. But we’ve shown that it can have more nuanced effects, depending on the social context.” 

The work also revealed how testosterone influences the neural activity of oxytocin cells — the so-called “love hormone” associated with social bonding. 

Testing new questions 

The majority of human studies show that testosterone enhances aggressive behavior. Kelly and Thompson wondered if maybe testosterone might, in lockstep with being able to increase aggression toward intruders, also generally dampen prosocial behaviors. However, they also hypothesized that it might do something more radical — actually enhance positive social responses in contexts in which acting prosocially is appropriate. 

To test this question, the Kelly lab conducted experiments on Mongolian gerbils, rodents that form lasting pair bonds and raise their pups together. While males can become aggressive during mating and in defense of their territory, they also exhibit cuddling behavior after a female becomes pregnant, and they demonstrate protective behavior toward their pups. 

In one experiment, a male gerbil was introduced to a female gerbil. After they formed a pair bond and the female became pregnant, the males displayed the usual cuddling behaviors toward their partners. The researchers then gave the male subjects an injection of testosterone. They expected that the resulting acute rise in a male’s testosterone level would lessen his cuddling behaviors if testosterone generally acts as an antisocial molecule. 

“Instead, we were surprised that a male gerbil became even more cuddly and prosocial with his partner,” Kelly says. “He became like ‘super partner.’” ...

‘A complicated dashboard’ 

The current study also looked at how testosterone and oxytocin interact biologically. The results showed that the male subjects receiving injections of testosterone exhibited more oxytocin activity in their brains during interactions with a partner compared to males that did not receive the injections. 

“We know that systems of oxytocin and testosterone overlap in the brain but we don’t really understand why,” Kelly says. “Taken together, our results suggest that one of the reasons for this overlap may be so they can work together to promote prosocial behavior.” 

Rather than just flipping an “on” or “off” button to modulate behaviors, hormones seem to play a more nuanced role, Kelly says. “It‘s like a complicated dashboard where one dial may need to move up a bit while another one moves down.”"

-via Emory News Center, Emory University, August 15, 2022

So I've done my first aid + CPR a few times. And every single time I try and bring up scenarios for fat folks

Specifically like 'what if someone is too large for me to wrap my arms around then to do the heimleich'

And its incredibly rare I get a decent answer.

How absolutely insane is it that me, as a fat person, is asking how to have MY life saved or to save ANOTHER life, is an impossible feat if someone is fat.

Most of the time they tell me to 'just try anyways uwu'

The heimleich is scientifically as effective as slapping someone VERY hard on the back. The only reason it's so well taught is the man that invented it did a lot of great PR for himself. It's also a bit easier for smaller framed people to get the necessary force in, because people are often extremely scared to hurt people, even in life threatening situations.

With larger bodied people, whether they be fat, tall, muscular, etc. If you cannot get your arms around them, literally just slap the shit out of their shoulders. You want hard, open palmed slaps right in the center of the shoulders or slightly below.

If they are too tall for you to reach that high, guide them to lean over the back of a chair, and then slap slap slap slap slap.

It's been proven to be just as effective through many studies. It just doesn't have a trademarked name and a dramatic effect in film.

If you have to do CPR on a larger bodied person, again, fat, body builder, tall and broad, whoever, the trick to finding where you want to put your hands if going to be to take your hand and shove it in their armpit. No seriously. Put your hand in their armpit, then drag it in a straight line towards yourself until you're in the center of the chest, then put your other hand beneath that one. This is where you push. Then you are going to move the arm closest to you out of the way so you can get closer to them, and get the leverage you need to press down for compressions. The more of your body weight that is over your hands, the better the compression will be. Act like you are trying desperately to pack the last of your clothes in a suitcase, and just slam down hard on their chest.

They will make *horrible* noises. You might even break ribs.

But a broken rib is better than being dead.

Personified Chinese Herbs(TCM) by 咕遛弯儿

The medicinal herbs, in order of appearance, are as follows: Chenpi 陈皮(Dried Tangerine Peel) | Related herbs: Qingpi 青皮(Green Tangerine Peel), Zhishi枳实 (Immature Bitter Orange), Foshougan佛手柑 (Buddha's Hand) Fuling茯苓 (Poria/China Root) Wu Weizi五味子 (Schisandra Berry) Sangshen桑葚 (Mulberry Fruit) Ganjiang干姜 (Dried Ginger) Shengjiang生姜 (Fresh Ginger) Fangfeng防风 (Saposhnikovia Root / Ledebouriella Root) Egg White鸡蛋清 WangBuLiuXing王不留行 (King's Departure/Cowherb Seed / Vaccaria Seed) DingXiang丁香 (Clove) Yuzhu玉竹 (Fragrant Solomonseal Rhizome / Polygonatum odoratum)

this one has been passed around recently from the mayo clinic and that actually makes me so happy because how many of transfeminine people are aware of what their options even look like?

Instead of the lip-smacking, sandwich-topping mnemonic for malignancies that metastasize to bone BLTKP, if you use the more sedate "lead kettle," you can group the cancers with the kinds of mets they make in bone (mostly the spine):

Prostate--blastic lesions

Breast--mixed lesions

(Pb = lead)

Lung--lytic

Kidney--lytic

Thyroid--lytic

Source: Owen Kang and Juan Diego Soares Zambon et al., "Tumors that metastasize to bone (mnemonic)," Radiopaedia.

You've probably heard that the malignancies most likely to metastasize to bone can be remembered with the mnemonic "Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, and a Kosher Pickle," which stands for "breast, lung, thyroid, kidney, and prostate." It's catchy, because it fits an existing English phrase for yummy sandwich or burger toppings. But did you know there's another mnemonic that includes some information about what kind of mets the cancers make? Stay tuned tomorrow…

A malignant bone process is more likely to be 1 or more metastasis than a primary bone cancer, and more bone mets are (osteo)lytic than osteoblastic (or sclerotic). Lytic bone lesions arise when tumor cells from a primary tumor in a different part of the body are deposited in the vascular beds of the bone matrix and grow with the help of parathyroid hormone-related peptide (PTHrP) stimulating osteoclasts to chew up existing bone. Sclerotic bone mets lead to more bone deposition through an uncertain mechanism. Both are seen better on CT or MRI than on plain xrays; sclerotic lesions are seen better than lytic ones on nuclear medicine scans (bone scintigraphy or PET-CT).

Pro-Tip: A single primary malignancy can lead to mixed lytic and sclerotic lesions.

Lytic lesion: Puyó Vera D, Renal cell carcinoma with metastases to the bony pelvis. Case study, Radiopaedia.org (Accessed on 20 Oct 2025) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-29355