Female + Fat = Fake?
Author’s note: Confession — there was a time, in elementary school in the late 1950s when I did pretend to be sick. I hated going to school. I was becoming overweight, did not live in a nice house, wore clothes from the Five and Dime stores. I was bullied, teased, taunted and called names. It was the time when bullies were not punished — it was the victim’s job to ignore or walk away and forget about it. It was my fault –not theirs.
But things changed as I became a fat adult.
Back Pain from years of general duty nursing? You have the malingerer’s disease. Lose weight, it will go away.
I did lose weight. Pain stayed.
And sixty+ years later I sometimes still wonder if there is something really wrong with me. Or is my body still faking it.
Sleep sometimes eludes me.
I’m too tired and weak to read or to write — two of my joys in in life.
Diagnosed with Type Two Diabetes, my blood sugars run from 50–70
every morning.
How am I hypertensive with BPs of 90/60 to 112/68 almost every day?
And the pain-back pain that goes down my legs. Thanks to MRIs I’m no
longer considered a malingerer — just an old woman with severe stenosis and
