I just saw on TV this morning a news blurb about a woman named Carol Poe who underwent brain surgery to lose weight. The procedure is called Deep Brain Stimulation and it is supposed to get to the core of the impulses that triggers overeating and cravings and stop them dead in their tracks.
I can not imagine the courage it took for Carol to undergo such a radical procedure, but in the same breath I had to ask myself. . Does it really take a brain surgeon?
The procedure could have had dire consequences to Carol’s physical or mental abilities. Even, as in all surgeries, the possibility of death. Are people really willing to stake their lives to lose weight, I mean really?
Is being fat such a heavy burden that we will do anything, including trading our lives, to be rid of it? Have society pushed us this far? Have they taken our pride and joy of life so distantly away that we no longer care if we live or die- just get the fat off me?
I say this in no mean or disrespectful way, and blessings to Carol with a hope for a quick recovery. But I pray to my higher power that I never get so desperate to be thinner that I am willing to toss my whole life away in search of it.
Only if Carol was slated to die soon from a fat related health problem would this be acceptable to me.
Will fat kill us? Maybe so in the long run. But we could just as easily die in a auto accident or get hit by a bus. Living life fat is not a punishment or curse, it is only a fact of life.
But for doctor’s to believe it is okay to trade life harming or threatening surgeries for thinness, and to promote these surgeries, is no more than saying suicide is the way out. If you can’t be thin, then you might as well be dead. And they pass that unspoken filth into and onto the fat community.
Life lived fat or otherwise is very much worth the effort of living without drastic attempts to alter appearances.
If for life sake, these procedures are sought out and made available then maybe the risk is un-preventable.
But to have them just to be thinner. . . is total insanity!
Carol Poe
