These days, I snicker a little when I hear doctors say it's a privilege to take care of people. If it's a privilege to submit to this shitty schedule, that crazy attending, and those revolting bagels, I sneer, I don't want to know about the punishment. But in clinic the other day, I actually understood what they meant. All it took was a fat kid.
She was 13 years old and quiet in a sweet kind of way, and she weighed 250 pounds. "I've been fat all my life," she said, "and I just want to lose weight." On the parental questionnaire, her mother had written only, "I am concerned about my daughter's overweight." Not about her failing grades, not about her having a boyfriend for the first time. Only about her weight.
I was a fat kid, too. In my family, this was also a Big Goddamn Deal. For most of my adolescence, all I wanted was for someone to sit me down and say, "Your body isn't what makes you worth loving," but it didn't come-not for years. And now, suddenly, here is the me at 13 sitting in front of the me at 30, asking for help.
I gave her help-a few small, practical changes to make, and an appointment to follow up after a month-and found myself thinking, my God, this really is a privilege. It is a privilege to sit in a room and talk about being fat and not be the one crying. It is a privilege, whether it's right or wrong, for the younger me to find a little bit of healing in whatever the older me offers to a patient. It is a privilege to say both to her and to myself, "Your body isn't what makes you worth loving."