All I want for Christmas is a doctor who treats my symptoms

Scooting this in juussssst before the deadline :D

Best beloveds!

I sit here writing to you at my desk in my new flat that I just moved into 3 days ago. My office is where Uggsie and Dicky are being held hostage right now, and is a graveyard of extra chairs and random furniture. It has been a mad mad month, and a mad mad year, but I couldn’t let it end without writing to you all (as promised).

The last time I moved house was in April 2022, from Delhi to here, and my knees were so bad I could barely stand or walk. I took muscle relaxants for 5 days over the move, and while they made the pain less, my joints were so unstable I was still terrified to move. Almost three years later, I clocked up 6800 steps on the day of the move and 4800 the day after. My feet are really sore, and I have strained a hamstring — terrifyingly the same one that began all my knee trouble back in 2020 — but I have been able to do everything I needed to do for this move and the unpacking, and I know that with a little rest, ice, and physio, my knee will be fine.

It has been a long road to get here, and it was not somewhere I thought I would ever be again. I still don’t have an official diagnosis of what went wrong with my knee, but I have deduced this: I strained a tendon in the back of my knee. It was never rested or released as it needed. I stopped working out, lost muscle strength and put on weight, which gave the other knee even more work to do. And eventually, I ended up with two knees that just could not do anything. I was told it was the inevitable osteoarthritis from my being fat, even though the X-Ray did not actually show full blown osteoarthritis, and was not that different from the X-Ray of a 38 year old. (I asked the doctor point blank, a fatso habit I have developed.)

When I started physiotherapy in Delhi, I was always in pain: while doing the exercises, before, after — it made no difference. I never got better. I always had sharp, intense, ACTIVE pain. I told myself to suck it up; I refused to admit there were things that could make me comfortable, and naturally I could not ask for them. I just had to keep pushing, keep strengthening the big muscles and eventually it would be ok.

Of course, deep inside, I didn’t believe that I would be ok. I didn’t let myself admit it, but I believed somewhere that this was my punishment for being fat, for “allowing things to get this bad.” I believed that I would live in pain forever, unable to do most of the things I needed to, let alone wanted to, and, without a partner, I was doomed to live in a care facility when I inevitably became incapable of caring for myself.

When I moved to Bangalore, the new physio told me to stop everything. Just come twice a week for 6 weeks, she said, and do not do anything else. And so I went, and she released the tendons and ligaments in my knees and the big muscles in my legs twice a week. It was EXCRUCIATING! Sometimes she used dry needling, which was much less painful. I also bought a cane and started using it for support, which meant I was able to walk a little bit more. A month into treatment, she said I could start doing rehab with a trainer. So three times a week, my trainer would come over and we would do mindless repetitive exercises with resistance bands. I think back to that time and I can’t believe how little I could move and how painful it was.

It had never occurred to me that all I needed was rest. None of the doctors or physios I saw even said, hey, the tiny muscles in your joints are really strained, they need to heal before you can try and strengthen the big ones that will eventually let you get better.

I am not back at the fitness level I had in 2020, yet. But this year I took a trip to Europe, and I walked and walked and walked. I wandered through museums and walked by the Seine. I ran (a very short distance) with my 23 kg bag to catch a train. I carried that bag up stairs. I went up and down the ladder-like stairs to my friend’s flat in Amsterdam. I stood in line for 30 minutes to get a table at a restaurant in Paris.

And I moved house, helped and supported by my amazing friends, just like last time, but I did all the standing and walking I needed to do. And, though I am hobbling today, I know I will be fine in a few days. And I cannot tell you how much that’s worth.

None of this would have happened if I had believed the doctors though. I would have refused bariatric surgery, and then rapidly become immobile from the vicious cycle of weight makes it hurt makes me not move makes me gain weight. I would have been trapped in the story they tell us about fat people and it would have ended as they predicted.

So I am deeply grateful for fat liberation, because it showed me I didn’t have to believe the story, especially when it came to my health. It taught me to trust my instincts and my body, and to always ask very clearly for what I needed — most importantly to ask if a thin person would get the same treatment.

Until next time!

Love,

Ameya

(PS: I cannot bring myself to wish anyone a happy anything as we live through a livestreamed genocide, so I will wish you safety and comfort, and the power to change this fucked up world.)