Tact anyone?

Yesterday was the very last time I had to be at UCLA for testing before the Big Show on the 19th. Kelly and I had to be there at 7am to get blood drawn, so we drove up there Sunday night and got a hotel room. At 6:15 Monday morning the alarm went off and we both glared at it. We shuffled off to the hospital and finally got to the lab about 7:10. They made us wait almost an hour to get blood drawn, and then we were sent upstairs to meet with the nephrologists who will be doing our surgery. We both met with her surgeon, who looked like a nerdy version of Bob Saget. He didn’t really have much to say to me, since I’m not his patient. Then we met with the director of the transplant program. The best thing I can say about him is that he could use a little lesson in tact.

Now, I might come off as a bit of a hypocrite here, as I’ve had my tactless moments, but I can honestly say that 99% of the time I DO make an effort to exercise tact when I speak, even if I don’t when I think. The director was looking over my charts, noted my height and weight, and asked me if I’d lost any weight since the last time I was there. I answered honestly, no, but I have lost inches. He says to me "Well, you’re a little bit of a fat girl, and <something about losing weight>" I was so shocked that I missed the second half of the sentence. Look, I’m overweight. I’ve openly admitted that from the beginning. But where the hell does he get off telling me I’m a "little bit of a fat girl?" I really wanted to come back with "Well, my surgeon says I’m ‘skinny on the inside’, so fuck off," but I didn’t think that would go over well. The last thing I wanted was to have to go out to the waiting room and tell Kelly the surgery was off because I mouthed off to the transplant director. So I sat there cursing him in my head while he explained that he wants me to lose weight even after surgery because overweight people have a higher risk of kidney disease. Fine. That makes sense. But for pity’s sake, don’t call me fat.

It took me a while to get over that (and while writing this more than 36 hours later, it appears I’m not quite over it). I realize now that he probably (I hope) didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did. I told everyone at work about it, because I thought that if we joked about it, the hurt I felt would go away. Didn’t seem to work much. It shouldn’t bother me. I’m trying very hard not to let it bother me. But the guy just came right out and said I was fat. Jackass.