Fat Flight to England.
I don’t know about the rest of you fine people, but one thing that always gets me fidgeting in my plus-sized panties is the thought of travelling. Will I fit in the seats? Will I be able to move around when I need to? Will I be looked at funny? Will someone say something? Will I be asked to leave?
When planning my trip to England, my mom did the sensable thing and talked me into flying “premium economy” for the larger seats. I’m not kidding, we measured my butt to make sure I’d have enough room. Haha!
Let me tell you: I learned quite a bit about travel and my body.
I booked an aisle seat so that I could get up easily during the nine-hour flight. When I boarded the plane, however, there was a man standing in front of my seat who claimed he was a restless traveller and asked if we could switch seats. Being the soft-hearted fool that I am, I agreed and took my place against the window.
A flight attendant asked immediately if I needed a seat belt extender. I’d never had to use one before, but said yes just in case. For the record, I did need it. For the record, I didn’t feel ashamed for needing it. And that felt totally awesome! Just a year ago or so, I’d have been mortified.
The man turned out to be kind enough, but certainly not a restless traveller as he only got out of his seat once without my prompting. I, on the other hand, had a hard time squeezing past the little table between the seats and had to sit on it and slide across to get up, tripping and stumbling, where someone with more grace or less tummy would have, I believe, faired better.
In the end, I made it. However, on the flight back home, I will not be giving up my aisle seat.
During this trip, I decided it would be interesting to compare the ideas towards fatness in England and America. Yeah, they’re not much different.
There’s a show here called “Embarassing Bodies” in which people visit Dr. Christian, Dr. Dawn, and Dr. Pixie, have them look at whatever problem they’re having (usually genital-related) and give them advice on how to fix it. Recently the series has been focused on fat. The show that I saw opened with the male doctor, Dr. Christian, saying “It’s a fact: as a nation we’re getting bigger, wider, fatter,” as the camera roughly pulls back from a close up to show the doctor standing in front of a large sphere. Next, Dr. Pixie’s voiceover warns us that fatties could “bankrupt the health service.” You know, because fatties are the ONLY people who get sick.
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bankrupt the health service.” You know, because fatties are the ONLY people who get sick.
BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!
We here this ALL the time! I just had a major check up, ALL my numbers are PERFECT! Except my scale number. I loved this article, and I say Thank You!
Yeah, I just saw the endo last Friday and her nurse was all “your blood pressure is a little high” (it was 154/64). Can you say “white coat hypertension” and checking my blood pressure with the regular cuff on my lower arm, just below my elbow? When I use my wrist blood pressure cuff at home, my blood pressure runs anywhere from 106/56 to 124/74, depending on what I’ve been doing. And the endo didn’t mention it all, so I’m guessing it’s nothing to worry about (and probably doesn’t have anything to do with my enlarged thyroid, which is why I was there, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I’m fat). But yeah, I’m fat, and I’m bankrupting the healthcare system, with my 2 visits in the last 6 months (and even if I was, so what? I paid into Medicare when I was working, so I’m entitled to use it now that I’m disabled and not able to work).
My doctor is usually pretty good but three years ago he missed out on the fact that the damn thyroxine was causing me to go into a state of artificially induced hyperthyroidism. Having been trained that all fat people become hypertensive, he said it was probably my weight and put me on a beta blocker, which caused me to have respiratory problems. The elevated thyroid levels caused me to have panic attacks so the doctor prescribed clonazepam-which, by the way, is a seizure medication and I will never take it again. I had such a bad rebound panic attack (after being a zombie for three hours) that I literally thought I was going to die. Fortunately I talked to my mother, who told me that thyroxine raised her blood pressure a good deal while she was on it.
When I went back to talk to the doctor he did listen to me, took me off the meds, and indicated on my chart that I shouldn’t take any of them in the future.
Three years later I did end up becoming hypertensive for real. This was following the death of my father after a very long period of illness and decline and occurred while doing one of the hardest things that I have ever done: finishing nursing school, the clinicals for which are mostly on the day shift, while continuing working part time on the night shift. The fucked up sleep schedule threw my body into turmoil. Plus, I turned 46 and hypertension runs in my family. My brother has been taking blood pressure medication since he was 35. And he is not a “lard ass” like me. He is reasonably athletic, a firefighter/paramedic who also works SWAT, and he works out at the gym. My fat ass took 11 years longer to have to go on blood pressure meds. So there-nyah!
The upshot of this is that you can’t tell by a person’s weight. I hope that my doctor took this lesson into account.
Sometimes, based only on the headlines I’ve read, it sounds like the UK is actually much harsher in terms of government intervention toward fatties, although that may just be a product of their sensationalized papers. Who knows.
I had the same concerns about fitting into a seat on my way there. Good thing you could afford the wider seats!
Peace,
Shannon
There’ll probably be a short update to this post as I’ve been learning a lot. The food I eat here is far different and not as healthy as I eat at home, but I am moving more because you can’t drive places as easily (especailly because Banbury is so congested)… but I am, oddly enough losing weight…