Episode 67
They Called My Mom Fat. It Absolutely Wasn't That
My mother has had a serious health issue for six months.
Nobody treated it.
It was in her chart. Six studies confirmed it. Ten doctors saw her this year, and every one of them told her to lose weight.
Here’s the thing. She wasn’t eating. Not “eating less” — not eating, for days at a time, and still gaining weight in places she had never gained weight before. Sleeping all day. Couldn’t walk the way she used to. Couldn’t breathe.
And every appointment ended the same way. Lose weight. Exercise more. You’re getting older.
She could have died. And it would not have been her body’s fault. It would have been someone’s.
I work in healthcare. I know what to look for, I speak the jargon, I know which doors to knock on and whose favour to call in. It still took six months and a twenty-dollar device from Walmart.
So what happens to the woman who doesn’t know any of that?
This one is angry. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
And then Alison brings a Small Talk from Brianna, who wants to know whether her big, loud, takes-up-the-whole-room ADHD joy was ever actually the problem — or whether the problem was just people who couldn’t hold it. That one I had an answer for immediately.
🎧 Different, Not Broken — honest, funny, occasionally furious conversations about neurodivergence, mental health, healthcare and being a person - https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/
📞 Leave me a voicemail (small talk, brags, fights): https://differentnotbrokenpodcast.com/voicemail
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Transcript
Get her to the hospital. And the first doctor who came in
Speaker:said, do you know you have a big old murmur? Which is
Speaker:literally how he said it. And she was like, what? No. And he's like,
Speaker:yeah, you have a heart murmur. And she's like, what? And
Speaker:then he said, this sounds like heart failure to me. Like,
Speaker:how long have you been treated for heart failure? And she said, I haven't been
Speaker:treated for heart failure. This doctor sat with
Speaker:my mother and talked through every single complaint she had, emergent
Speaker:or otherwise, she talked through every
Speaker:concern we had. We talked through every bad experience. We talked through all the
Speaker:things that, that I felt were being mismanaged, that I felt weren't being
Speaker:managed. She explained stuff to me that nobody has explained to me.
Speaker:Boop. Hi everybody, I'm Lauren Howard.
Speaker:Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our
Speaker:podcast on exactly that, that there are a lot of people in this world walking
Speaker:around feeling broken, and the reality is you're just different. And that's fine.
Speaker:Before I get into this, I just wanna say, I work in healthcare. I see
Speaker:good healthcare every day. I see exceptional healthcare every
Speaker:day. I work with incredible doctors. I work with clinicians who
Speaker:blow me away with their intelligence and their skill. I tease them all the time
Speaker:because that's like, of course I do, that's just me. But I love
Speaker:the doctors I work with. I love the nurse practitioners I work with. I'm fortunate
Speaker:that I get to work with them every day, and I see amazing healthcare being
Speaker:delivered literally every day.
Speaker:And so I know it's out there. I know it's possible. I know
Speaker:there are people who benefit from it. But I also know
Speaker:that some of the things I've seen lately, and I say this as a
Speaker:person who knows healthcare inside and out, who knows what to look
Speaker:for, who speaks medical jargon, who can keep up in conversations
Speaker:about medical issues. I say this as
Speaker:a person who is not new to this. The
Speaker:shit care that has come out of people
Speaker:who know better recently just has
Speaker:me so frustrated. And
Speaker:anybody who knows me knows that if I end up in a situation where something's
Speaker:completely broken, I want to fix it. My brain immediately goes to, how
Speaker:could we have done this better? How could this have been communicated better? What
Speaker:product is missing to fix this problem? And the
Speaker:totality of the number of things that had to go wrong
Speaker:to end up here or to end up with what happened is so
Speaker:huge. It is an entire system
Speaker:that I can't fix by myself. I don't even know that 1,000 of us working
Speaker:hard could fix it. I don't know that a million of us working hard could
Speaker:fix it. Our healthcare system is so
Speaker:mired in its own nonsense. That I don't know
Speaker:how to fix it. I think some of it will be improved
Speaker:by people aging out, like just doctors
Speaker:retiring who need to retire. But then that
Speaker:sounds like a solution, right? We're gonna get these providers who have
Speaker:kind of antiquated ways of thinking out of our processes,
Speaker:but we don't have doctors to replace them. Our primary care shortage is
Speaker:so huge. Our specialist shortage is huge. But people are going into
Speaker:medical school specialized now, or into residency specialized now.
Speaker:We don't have as much option to put people into primary care
Speaker:or general practice or internal medicine to become primary care. It's just
Speaker:not the way our system works anymore. And so the primary care deficit that we
Speaker:already have is huge. And then the one that follows as we go through the
Speaker:retirements of the next 10 years, worse. It sounds
Speaker:great that people are gonna retire. We're settling for insufficient care,
Speaker:but is insufficient care better than no care? I don't have an answer for that,
Speaker:but it is like a, a huge question that keeps coming up.
Speaker:Anyway, anybody who has been around me in any
Speaker:way in the last several months knows that my mom
Speaker:has been sick and there's been a number of hospitalizations and she's back in the
Speaker:hospital again, which sucks, but I don't like when she's in the
Speaker:hospital. But I am less anxious when
Speaker:she's in the hospital because it means there's somebody with her. It means that she's
Speaker:not home alone. I don't have to worry about having somebody with her all the
Speaker:time. And also it means she's getting medical care that she needs. They don't keep
Speaker:you in the hospital academically. If you're in the hospital, you need to be in
Speaker:the hospital. So she's there, but I'm really angry about the
Speaker:reason that she's there. I'm glad she's there now and I'm glad they're addressing it
Speaker:now, but her experience is so
Speaker:typical, so common of what
Speaker:we have seen so many times with
Speaker:women in healthcare, just women getting healthcare. And
Speaker:it truly took a bunch of women to
Speaker:straighten it out or to at least get her on the right path. I am
Speaker:not the most observant person. Minor changes in
Speaker:people's like looks, I don't usually notice.
Speaker:I certainly don't usually call them out, but 6 months ago,
Speaker:I noticed that my mom just didn't look right. She looked different. She was
Speaker:carrying weight in places where she had never carried weight before. It looked like she
Speaker:had gained a bunch of weight. I wasn't sure why. It didn't make any sense
Speaker:to me because that has not been a problem in recent years.
Speaker:And it was enough that I was concerned. I wasn't concerned that she had gained
Speaker:weight. People gain weight. I was concerned that she had gained weight in places where
Speaker:she had never gained weight before. And she looked different.
Speaker:And so I started calling all of her doctors, and I think
Speaker:I've talked about this before. It's been a long process of like fighting to get
Speaker:tests done, asking a bunch of questions, literally
Speaker:calling her doctors anytime they would get on the phone with me and saying,
Speaker:there's a problem here. Can someone intervene? What are we missing? What are we doing?
Speaker:Taking her to new doctors. She's probably seen 10 or 12 doctors this year
Speaker:alone. And trying to figure out why, getting tests run. I had to call
Speaker:in favors to get tests run because, like,
Speaker:one of her doctors literally told me that what the diagnosis that
Speaker:I thought could be a problem, and I wasn't saying she had it, I was
Speaker:just saying, can we test for this? One of the diagnoses that I
Speaker:thought she had was really hard to diagnose, so running the labs doesn't do much.
Speaker:And I was like, it's hard to diagnose, so you just don't, you just don't
Speaker:run the labs? That doesn't, don't you want the labs anyway? Yeah.
Speaker:What? That doesn't make sense. And so it's been stuff like that over and
Speaker:over. And she's been complaining of weight gain. She's been complaining of
Speaker:fatigue. She tells me she just falls asleep all the time, which is, I, I
Speaker:mean, like, I can count on one hand the number of times that I remember
Speaker:my mom napping growing up. It was never a thing that happened. And she would
Speaker:just fall asleep. She was sleeping later. She had very little exercise
Speaker:tolerance. She had very little motivation to do things, and she had
Speaker:zero appetite, wasn't eating at all, and still gaining weight.
Speaker:And I sat with her with multiple doctor's appointments
Speaker:where she kept telling them, and I would pipe in and tell them, because sometimes
Speaker:she, like, in front of her doctor, she'll downplay things. I don't know why,
Speaker:because that's not usually her vibe. Her vibe is usually
Speaker:upplay things, so all the eyeballs go on me. But sometimes with her
Speaker:doctor, she just doesn't tell them enough about what's going on. And so even I
Speaker:would say like, no, I'm watching, this is happening. And I
Speaker:can't tell you how many times people told her to just lose weight.
Speaker:And I kept saying, okay, but she's not eating. She's
Speaker:eating so little and she has GI issues
Speaker:and you're telling her to just lose weight, but she's not eating. Well, she needs
Speaker:to exercise more. Okay, but she's short of breath. She has
Speaker:really low exercise tolerance. She can't even walk like she used to.
Speaker:Well, she's getting older. Okay, but this is not a 5-year decline. This is a
Speaker:6-month decline. What is going on here? She needs to lose weight.
Speaker:That was literally the outcome almost every time we had this conversation. I went to
Speaker:my trip over the weekend or last week, had a great time, came back,
Speaker:brought my mom lunch a day after I got back and could tell
Speaker:like her, she sounded like a freight train when she was breathing. And I said,
Speaker:are you having trouble breathing? And she said, yeah, I talked to my doctor
Speaker:on Friday. You know, you're bringing me on Monday. Yeah. But I feel like I
Speaker:can't breathe. And I said, why are you sitting at home alone when you can't
Speaker:breathe? Like, why didn't we go to the hospital? She's like, well, I don't wanna
Speaker:go to the hospital. And I was like, well, that's a stupid reason. So I
Speaker:ordered a pulse ox machine that, listen, I'll be honest, Walmart
Speaker:delivery is clutch. I don't love Walmart, but I just go on my phone
Speaker:and tap 2 buttons and literally 19 minutes later I had a
Speaker:pulse ox in my hand and I put it on her finger. Wow. Her
Speaker:saturation was at 80. Anything below 90 is like a red flag.
Speaker:Big problem. Go to the hospital. I called her doctor and he
Speaker:said all the right things. He said, well, yeah, I talked to her about this
Speaker:on Friday. It sounded like she was having trouble breathing. She said she
Speaker:didn't have a pulse ox. And I'm thinking, you didn't tell her to
Speaker:go get one? You didn't tell her to just, hey, do you have any
Speaker:delivery apps that can deliver a pulse ox to you?
Speaker:In a couple minutes, since that's a thing we do in
Speaker:2026. Did you just let her sit here without
Speaker:checking her oxygen level? Okay, cool. You have a
Speaker:patient who called you and told you that she's short of breath and you said,
Speaker:try some medicine and I'll see you on Monday without actually
Speaker:checking whether she was hypoxic. Okay, whatever. I
Speaker:said, yeah, all right, I'm taking her to the emergency room. I took her over
Speaker:to the emergency room. She fought me a little bit, but for the most part,
Speaker:she just like has to have the outburst. And then once the outburst is done,
Speaker:she just does what she's told. She got in the car. I took her, get
Speaker:her to the hospital, and the first doctor who came in
Speaker:said, do you know you have a big old murmur? Which is
Speaker:literally how he said it. And she was like, what? No. And he is like,
Speaker:yeah, you have a heart murmur. And she's like, what? And
Speaker:then he said, this sounds like heart failure to me. Like,
Speaker:how long have you been treated for heart failure? And she said, I haven't been
Speaker:treated for heart failure. And he was like, what? Yeah. It's in your chart.
Speaker:She's like, I don't have heart failure. And he goes, I don't know, this kind
Speaker:of sounds like heart failure. And she's like, nobody's ever diagnosed me with heart
Speaker:failure. So he runs some tests, he leaves. We just happened to get there
Speaker:right as shift change was happening. So this new doctor comes in,
Speaker:and if I could sum her up in 2 words,
Speaker:it would be fucking delight. I want her
Speaker:to come be my friend. I want her to come hang out with me.
Speaker:I want her to tell me all of the inside tea about all of the
Speaker:hospital systems in our area, cuz I know she knows it. She kind of
Speaker:told me she does. She needs to be my friend.
Speaker:Emergency room doctors, their jobs are to treat 'em and street 'em. Like, you are
Speaker:not supposed to be doing a complete medical history. You are not supposed to be
Speaker:making referrals to 7,000 different providers unless it's the emergent issue
Speaker:or the urgent issue. You should be working
Speaker:with the immediate problem in front of you and either sending them home or admitting
Speaker:them to a hospital. That's their job. This doctor sat with my
Speaker:mother and talked through every single complaint she had,
Speaker:emergent or otherwise. She talked through every
Speaker:concern we had. We talked through every bad experience. We talked through all the
Speaker:things that, that I felt were being mismanaged, that I felt weren't being
Speaker:managed. She explained stuff to me that nobody has explained to me.
Speaker:My mom has no appetite. She hasn't eaten. She really doesn't eat at
Speaker:all for days and days on end and then is gaining weight. And
Speaker:she said, this sounds like heart failure. And also you have what's called a
Speaker:pleural effusion, which is fluid around the lungs. And if that's
Speaker:pressing on your stomach, it's making you feel full,
Speaker:and that's why you can't eat. And she went, oh,
Speaker:why are you the first person to explain this to me? She was like, I
Speaker:don't know. And I asked her, I said, is the pleural effusion new? She said,
Speaker:no, it was on the imaging before. I said, so they just didn't
Speaker:do anything about it? And she was like, there's, there's sometimes the right thing to
Speaker:do is to watch it, but then sometimes the right thing to do is to
Speaker:try to get the fluid off. And we definitely need to get the fluid off.
Speaker:She said, and sometimes the right thing to do is to drain it, but I
Speaker:don't know that they're gonna drain it. So I said to her, so you're
Speaker:saying she has heart failure? And she said, yeah, I mean, she's had
Speaker:6 studies that confirm heart failure, and
Speaker:she was diagnosed with it 6 months ago. And I was like,
Speaker:wait, she has never been referred to a cardiologist? I'm here for
Speaker:all of this. She's never been referred to a cardiologist. She certainly is not
Speaker:on any medication for it because she already takes 18 medications.
Speaker:So somebody diagnosed her with heart failure and then nobody treated it? And
Speaker:she was trying to be politically savvy and she was like, well, I can't really
Speaker:speak to that, but it does look like she was diagnosed with heart failure and
Speaker:it does look like it needs to be treated. And I looked at her in
Speaker:the face and I said, I just want to be clear about this. She has
Speaker:been complaining of weight gain, severe
Speaker:fatigue, physical symptoms, poor
Speaker:appetite, inability to eat, low exercise
Speaker:tolerance. And you're telling me instead of diagnosing or treating
Speaker:the heart failure that had already been diagnosed, they just called her
Speaker:fat? And she didn't really have much to say to that. And not because— I
Speaker:could tell she wanted to, but she was like, we know what to do now.
Speaker:She's like, we— I'm confident we know what to do now. And I was like,
Speaker:I'm confident too, because heart failure is super treatable. But she's been saying
Speaker:this for 6 months, and her— even her doctors who know her
Speaker:exceptionally well And who have been her doctors for decades
Speaker:just told her to lose weight. And the reality is that her heart is literally
Speaker:failing. And I have not been quiet about this. I have been a squeaky wheel
Speaker:about this nonstop since it became apparent to me. Women could
Speaker:walk into a doctor's office with their arm
Speaker:literally falling off, and the doctor would say, have
Speaker:you tried diet and exercise? It's really bad.
Speaker:And I say that as somebody, one, who knows what to look for, two,
Speaker:who has been fighting back against that for several months now just on behalf of
Speaker:my mom, not even globally fighting against it, which I also do,
Speaker:but three, like, knows how to find more resources. How
Speaker:many people out there are going to their doctor— and I know that it's a
Speaker:lot— how many people out there are going to their doctor with legitimate complaints and
Speaker:just being told that if you diet and exercise, everything will be fine? You're just
Speaker:anxious. You're just being neurotic. She has
Speaker:actual heart failure. She could have died.
Speaker:She already couldn't breathe. She was already not getting oxygen
Speaker:because of this thing that everybody Spider-Man memed their way out of
Speaker:treating. They all thought that somebody else was doing it.
Speaker:Nobody was doing it. We are failing people in our
Speaker:healthcare system in ways that I sit upright in the
Speaker:middle of the night trying to figure out how to fix, and I just don't
Speaker:freaking know how. This person, she has 10 doctors.
Speaker:She has easily seen 10 doctors this year, and
Speaker:everybody passed the buck to somebody else, and nobody referred her to a cardiologist.
Speaker:How does that happen? And if it's happening to her, how many other
Speaker:people is it happening to? Because I know it's happening to a lot. We have
Speaker:to do better. She could have died. She could have died, and it would have
Speaker:been someone's fault. It would not have been her body's fault. It would have been
Speaker:someone's fault. It's just not acceptable. I promise
Speaker:that women are more than just fat. It's not surprising, but there was a
Speaker:moment about it that was, like, really devastating, because yesterday is when it
Speaker:all came together for me. And of course, shit's coming together now
Speaker:that there are 2 women doctors who are running the show. There's good data that
Speaker:shows that women doctors have better outcomes and have lower mortality
Speaker:rates than male doctors by, like, a stretch of a lot. It's not a small
Speaker:margin. So 2 women doctors are finally kicking
Speaker:asses and taking names and getting things straightened out. But she
Speaker:was giving me some of the updates from some of the doctors that she talked
Speaker:to and what they said and what they were doing. And yes, it definitely is
Speaker:heart failure. And I finally text her later in the day because this felt like
Speaker:somebody punched me in the stomach. And I said, do you understand that what they're
Speaker:saying is you've had heart failure for
Speaker:6 months? Or longer, but we just thought you were fat?
Speaker:That's basically what they're saying. That's what is happening. I'm not usually the
Speaker:reactive one. I'm usually the one that's like, okay, let's get all the information and
Speaker:we'll make an assessment. And I was like, I'm gonna fight somebody.
Speaker:And my mom, who usually is the reactive one, like she is literally like a
Speaker:ticking time bomb all the time, was like, well, I'm just glad
Speaker:that they're figuring it out now. And I was like, do you have heart
Speaker:failure and dementia? Like, where— what just happened? She doesn't have dementia,
Speaker:but she was like, I'm just glad they're figuring it out. And I was like,
Speaker:who is this Zen person who has replaced my
Speaker:borderline violent mother? I don't understand what's happening. I'm
Speaker:so angry about it. But that, that was actually what— and I said to her,
Speaker:I was like, I'm actually really angry about this. And she was like, don't be
Speaker:mad, it's a waste of your energy to be mad. I'm like, that, that has
Speaker:never been your philosophy before. You have never met a mad that you did not
Speaker:have time for. So I don't know what's happening here. But I said back
Speaker:to her, I was like, you just don't want me to go hit your primary
Speaker:care with my car. And she goes, I also do not want you to do
Speaker:that. You don't want me to fight with your internist. She's like, I do
Speaker:not want you to fight with my internist. That is correct. Yeah. Welcome
Speaker:to the American healthcare system. And now
Speaker:we'll go to Alison, who has
Speaker:this week's Small Talk. All right. We've got a Small Talk from
Speaker:Brianna. And Brianna asks, what does joy
Speaker:feel like for you with ADHD? Because for
Speaker:me, it's massive and loud and it takes up the whole room and people
Speaker:have always told me I'm too much or so extra. Lately,
Speaker:I've been wondering if the joy was never the problem, if
Speaker:maybe the problem was just people who couldn't hold it. What do you
Speaker:think? First, I wanna say I've never actually been diagnosed with ADHD. I've never
Speaker:been treated for it. I think. My brain probably has
Speaker:read a lot of those tendencies, but I think
Speaker:regardless what construct is around where you think your joy comes
Speaker:from, like, it doesn't matter where it comes from, it's your joy. People who think
Speaker:your joy is too much don't deserve your joy. We live in a world that
Speaker:has way too little joy, way too little.
Speaker:If you turn on the news, it is constant and unrelenting
Speaker:doom and gloom about people who just give zero shits about other
Speaker:people. About people who have no
Speaker:soul, who are bleeding us
Speaker:dry of everything good about our society,
Speaker:who operate with no humanity. And joy is humanity
Speaker:at its most basic. And so if you have joy to
Speaker:share, share it. And if those people don't like it, let them
Speaker:go be miserable curmudgeons somewhere else. And let's find somebody
Speaker:who loves your joy as much as you do. You are not too much. They're
Speaker:not enough. You can't have too much joy unless
Speaker:you're like celebrating something awful. Don't
Speaker:celebrate something awful. If little things in life bring you intense
Speaker:amounts of joy, I am so jealous. I would love to
Speaker:have that problem, and you should not darken that
Speaker:light for anybody. Find new people. Don't
Speaker:tamp down your joy. You have been born with a gift and a way
Speaker:of approaching the world that is
Speaker:special and magical and joyful. Those people can get bent.
Speaker:That's usually my advice. At the end of the day, that's usually my advice. Get
Speaker:bent. Those people can get bent. Maybe instead of Small Talk, we
Speaker:should call this, like, The Ways That L2 Tells People to Get Bent.
Speaker:But those people can get bent. Please go get bent. Be as
Speaker:joyful as you have the capacity for and share it widely because
Speaker:other people deserve your Enjoy and get bent. Thanks for being here,
Speaker:guys. Have a good day. Love you mean it.
Speaker:I don't know why that's so satisfying to say, but it really is.
