Our daughter moved into her own place, and my husband and I have been making her room over into a guest room. The bed wasn’t as cushy as I’d like, so I put one of those memory foam mattress toppers onto it. This thing was a Costco special – fully three inches thick and, for a queen-sized bed, weighing about 20 pounds. As I wrestled it from its packaging and turned and twisted to distribute it over the mattress, I pulled something in my back and ended up in bed lying on a bag of ice for a couple of days.

About 17 years ago, I had a similar incident. I was sitting on the couch, sneezed, felt my back pop, and was immediately in agony. Back then, I went to my regular doctor. He prodded my butt, announced that I hadn’t done any permanent damage, told me it was probably due to my weight, and gave me nasal spray for my allergies.

I couldn’t stand for long. I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t lie down. In order to bend over, I had to keep my right leg straight and extend it behind me. The only time I wasn’t in agony was when I was walking slowly, but I had an office job and two small children and so couldn’t do that all day. So I gritted my teeth, ate ibuprofen like candy, and bore with the pain.

I went to another doctor, and she said the same thing – “You’re too fat.” No offers to give me anything to alleviate my pain, no recommendations for ice or heat or stretching or goat sacrifices. Just an opinion about a tangential fact.

The frustrating thing wasn’t that I went to at least one more doctor who also told me it was weight-related. By that time, I had become resigned to living a life in pain and being unable to get medical help. The frustrating thing was that, as an office worker, I had a limited amount of sick time, and, since I was new at this particular job, no vacation time. Taking half a day off to see a doctor who didn’t even try to help, and having to cough up a $20 copay for the privilege, was a classic example of adding insult to injury.

This time around, I went straight to a chiropractor*. We talked extensively about my medical history. He asked me to stand and looked at me from many angles. He had me lie on my back, front, each side. He poked, pressed, probed and asked “How is that?” Finally, he did some adjustments and some deep tissue work, and I walked out of there feeling much, much better.

The entire time I was there, I fully expected him to say something like “I can work on you, but I’m not sure how effective it’s going to be, considering your weight.” Or “We can try to fix your back, but your best bet would be to lose weight.” When I went into the exam room and looked at the table, I thought There’s no way I’m fitting on that table without my hips hanging off the sides. When he took me into another room with a table specifically for lower-back stretching, I had a flash of fear that I would be too heavy for the table to work.

None of that happened.

This guy was polite, professional, competent, helpful. When I sat or lay on the tables, they didn’t even squeak, let alone groan with strain. I walked out of there feeling like I had been thoroughly listened to by a person invested in my well-being, and it felt a little surreal. Is this how it is for thin people all the time? And if it is, do you understand what a gift it is?

So now I’m angry on behalf of past me, who endured two years of unspeakable pain because the medical establishment couldn’t be bothered to look past an appearance they found displeasing to do their jobs, and I’m angry on behalf of everyone who is still suffering because of the judgement of medical professionals.

*The first time this happened, it was a chiropractor who finally figured out what happened. I blew a disc in my spine, and in the two years I couldn’t get treatment, the vertebrae on either side of it had fused, very slowly killing the nerve between them. Which is less pleasant than it sounds.