Heavy Frustrations

A while back, I talked to my doctor about dealing with an issue. Said issue causes me pain, discomfort, and mobility problems. It's something that has been a factor in my life for a while now and I want it gone. The doctor understands this and wants it gone as well.  The problem is, the issue has to be handled with surgery. Surgery can only happen after an MRI of the area is done. And I can't fit into any of the MRI machines in my area. None of them. Not the closed ones. Not the open ones. None.

When I tried to deal with this issue before, I was told I needed to lose down to 500 lbs before it could happen. At the time, that felt kind of daunting, but I did it. It took longer than expected, because I lost my focus for a while, but eventually, I did it. I was so proud of myself.

The pride didn't last for every long. The people who owned the machine they THOUGHT might be able to handle me at that size were no longer in business. Everyone else uses smaller machines that can only handle people if they are under 16 inches wide when they lay down. I'm not. And the issue will keep me from being that wide for a long, long time.

I got really depressed and discouraged when I found this out. I stopped for a while. I stopped everything. Eating well. Meds. Exercise. All of it just stopped because I was somewhat overwhelmed with this idea that no matter what I did or how hard I tried, I would always be in this place I was still too far gone to be helped. It was a really devastating feeling.

I started doing some research and found out that I'm not alone. In fact, most of the time when people try to find help with MRIs, they face a lot of trouble. I'm actually  lucky that I'm not like the poor woman talked about in this article, who was told to go to the zoo.  That would have been beyond humiliating and I don't think I would have recovered as quickly as I did just from polite rejection.

But here's the thing:

We know that people in our culture are getting more obese.
We know that these obese people face medical issues.
We know that our current equipment can't hold them.

So, which is more logical? Telling someone who needs help RIGHT NOW that they need to lose 200 lbs before you can help them or developing equipment that can handle them RIGHT NOW? Helping them in the moment could make a considerable difference in their lives. It could make a considerable difference in mine.