Even for a self confident woman, there are times ......

All the women in this group have been through times of anguish, despair, fear, rejection, emotional abuse, discrimination in all its forms. I'm glad to say that we've all "come through" these times, and we sit happily and healthily (in the main) quite aware of our sense of self, and confident in how we feel and how we look. We've accepted our bodies.

So it came as a bolt out of the blue the other day when one of our team went in for a cataract operation earlier this week. She has been on the "waiting list" for more than 4 years, so she was somewhat excited about the whole thing.

All the preliminary tests had been carried out, including measurements for the eyes a few months ago. Those tests also included height, weight and other matters relating to any allergies, and a list of medications that she is on. The usual procedure in fact. She was told all she had to do was "front up" at the day surgery section at the hospital at a certain time on a certain day, and the operation would be performed.

Simple.

Oh, yes? No.

Because when she had undressed and given a hospital gown, processed through confirmation of details,re-weighed and her height confirmed, the nurse came out with the words, "sorry, we can't operate on you, your BMI is too high". How can this be, when she had even lost some weight between the initial visit and the day for admission?

Well, it seems the hospital had put in place "considerations" to reduce the BMI acceptable for any sort of operation a month ago. Without notifying scheduled patients for our out-patient procedures, this means that there would be many patients attending the hospital only to be told that their operations cannot be performed.

In this case, it wasn't the surgeon who refused to operate, and after all it was a local anaesthetic not a general one, but the hospital staff.

So this means the patient now has to be put onto a waiting list of another city hospital who MAY accept a higher BMI - what this means in anyone's guess.

So it is a little understandable that this patient felt disappointed. Because in amongst everything else, she was rudely reminded that "size" is still a no-no and that acceptance which is taking a long, long time, is most probably a long way off. (And we're not naturally pessimistic - usually!)

But as an aside, this means that this particular hospital (and there must be thousands that have similar policies) will not do cataract operations, colonoscopies or other procedures which up until this time were considered to fall within the acceptable operations performed on a regular basis if the BMI is above a certain figure. We wonder what the policy is with women are BELOW the acceptable BMI, because there's a lot of talk at the moment about women who are considered to be malnourished with BMI's in the vicinity of 15, but who the medias and the fashion industry think are "ideal".

Another aside too, we've since learned that the Victorian Government have decided to withdraw many of their subsidies for visiting specialists from Melbourne to outer country hospitals, which means patients will have to travel into Melbourne (one train a day), probably stay overnight (more expense), have a procedure, and then return. The costs and time involved will be high. Especially when it comes to the elderly.