My sister is approximately a size 18, smaller than me. She hasn’t had health insurance for a while, but the area does have a sliding scale clinic that she’s been using the past 2-3 years.

I’m sorry this is kind of long.

She’s always been prone to injuring her ankles, usually sprains. But her ankle had been bothering her more and more. So, of course, she asks her doctor about it. “Lose weight and it’ll stop hurting.” This year, it locked up. She couldn’t move her right ankle at all. The doctors there insisted it was a cyst but gave her a reference for an x-ray at the hospital. It turns out one of her ligaments is stretched to the point that it doesn’t properly pull her bones back together. Her leg bone and heel bone were stuck together because she has no cartilage between those bones. She has to schedule surgery for that this summer as it’s the only way to repair it.

She’d been having digestive problems and pain throughout her torso on occasion. Now, a little family history: my mother, my paternal grandmother, my maternal grandfather and I have all had to have our gallbladders out. I only had mine done last summer; I know the symptoms because I was miserable for 6 months before I got a diagnosis. Her doctor just told her to “Eat a low fat, low sodium diet and we’ll revisit it”. She refused to even allow her to get an ultrasound that she specifically asked for(on my advice). Well, my sister’s birthday present this year was having her gallbladder removed after an attack last Thursday. The ER found several stones in her gallbladder and admitted her for surgery the next morning. She gets to pay for that out of pocket.

Her doctors refused to believe that her problems could be caused by anything other than her weight or perceived diet.

Thin privilege is being able to get a simple test done to make sure you don’t have a more serious health problem.