What's a Physician For?

Boss Squirrel has had his share of health problems, including cancer. While I'm thankfully cancer free at the moment, I do take alot of medication, including steroids. This has made weight an issue. Oh, and I love to cook and eat. That doesn't help the weight issue, either! I've been blessed with doctors who are very honest with me - about my personal habits and condition that could give me serious problems in the not so distant future. One of them is weight - and as my primary care physician puts it, "You can't blame all of the extra weight on meds". So he constantly questions my physical activity level, my eating habits, etc. He could probably make more money by not nagging me about such things, and wait for me to drop and go back into the hospital, but he believes that part of his job is to advise me on how to avoid health crisis.

But I heard today an amazing story. An obese woman referred a doctor to the Board of Medicine in New Hampshire for disciplinary action for telling her she was obese, and should do something about it:

"Dr. Terry Bennett says he tells obese patients their weight is bad for their health and their love lives, but the lecture drove one patient to complain to the state.

"I told a fat woman she was obese," Bennett says. "I tried to get her attention. I told her, 'You need to get on a program, join a group of like-minded people and peel off the weight that is going to kill you.' "

He says he wrote a letter of apology to the woman when he found out she was offended.

Her complaint, filed about a year ago, was initially investigated by a panel of the New Hampshire Board of Medicine, which recommended that Bennett be sent a confidential letter of concern. The board rejected the suggestion in December and asked the attorney general's office to investigate."

That's absolutely amazing. I don't care what the doctor actually said, or if he insulted her. His job is to help her with her health. And the complaint has gone all the way to the New Hampshire Attorney General's office, which launched an investigation!

If I lived in New Hampshire, I'd be furious. But not at the Doctor.