FEMALE, FAT AND FORTY-ISH

Hands up any woman who has heard the phrase "female, fat and forty". It seems to be a diagnostic tool not found in any medical book but quite simply only found in the heads of medical people who  judge on appearances and don't take the time to really get to know you and find out what is really wrong.

Luckily I am blessed with a female GP who is not one of these people. Lucky because when you are born with a genetic condition, it takes time and patience to sometimes get to the root of a problem.

Lately the phrase seems to have reared its ugly head once more in my life. Yet again a specialist almost missed something important because he made a judgement based on my appearance and not what I was saying.

In my head the conversation went something like this :" You have pain in your right chest? That's because its carrying around your heavy boobs. They're fake? Oh well no wonder then. You're breathless? Of course you are, you're overweight and really if women talked less they wouldn't be so breathless. Listen sweetheart, you're female, you're fat and you're forty. Lose weight and you'll be fine.

Okay, okay the only way I am getting this hypochondriac out of my office is to give her a test. She obviously will just keep coming back. Let's try a cat scan shall we but I'm not expecting to find anything cos there was nothing in 2010!"

Grr why doesn't he realise that lumps can grow over night.? Anyway cat scan revealed more information and I couldn't resist being a smarty pants." So it WAS worth doing it again? (smirk, smirk)". " WELL WE DIDN'T DO A CAT SCAN LAST TIME" Oh well that's obviously my fault. I need this man so at this stage I retreat gracefully.

Not saying I don't need to lose weight cos I do, but there are enough skinny, trim people having heart attacks and cancer to point out that weight alone is not a cause.

This is not the first time this has happened. One time a doctor humoured me by trying to freeze off a wart from my scalp. I told him it wasn't a wart but what would I know? He drowned it in nitrogen but nothing much happened. Later I had to get my plastic surgeon to remove what was a low level sarcoma.

Or there was the time my husband took me into emergency with excruciating back pain. A foreign doctor examined me and told me to loosa da weight and back ache she will be gone madam.Two years later, after ongoing pain an appendix bulging with lumps was removed.

So here's the deal. Today I am announcing to the world that being female is a blessing, being fat is not but being forty-ish is. And for now two out of three blessings will do me.