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A Tale of Advocacy: Two Knees and a Surgeon

by Theresa Jarosz Alberti

I was so angry at my surgeon. He’d finally agreed to operate on me, but his initial refusal to give me total knee replacement surgery had resulted in more than a year of excruciating pain and disability. Facing the upcoming surgery, I knew I needed to let go of my negative feelings before he sliced me open. It was time to focus on positive energy so that I’d be in the best frame of mind to heal.

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No Body is Disposable! Fat and Disability Communities Join Powers to Close the Camps

by Dawn Haney and Max Airborne

In this poignant and timely piece, Dawn Haney and Max Airborne of Fat Rose describe how disability and fat liberation politics are inextricably connected to migrant rights. They describe how fat and disabled people have taken a stand against the detention centers at the USA’s southern border, in the #NoBodyIsDisposable movement, and explain how ASDAH members can deepen their social justice work by taking action on this critical issue.

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No Body is Disposable!

All Bodies are Valued, Indispensable, and Cherished!

Your Body is Integral. It is necessary to make things whole.

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This is the world we fight to live in, one where all bodies are cared for, including our own. This is part of the ASDAH vision.

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Never too much: Reflections on accessibility and fatness

by Gabrielle Hruska

In the summer of 2017, I woke up one Wednesday morning, unable to walk. The pain was so intense in my right hip and ankle, and my left knee. Unbearable pain, with absolutely no recognizable reason. I went to Urgent Care, the doctor there thought maybe I had Lyme Disease, she advised me to take antibiotics, and to see my regular doctor BEFORE THE WEEKEND. By the next morning, I was unable to take the pain and went to the Emergency Room. In Radiology, they thought I had been in a car accident. After 4 days in the hospital, it was determined that I had Reactive Arthritis. Reactive Arthritis is really rare, and was described to me, as precipitated by a “perfect storm” in the body. Some kind of infection combined with food poisoning, and after the food poisoning passes, your body can go into Reactive Arthritis. I did not test positive for any kind of infection, nor did I have food poisoning… I have no idea why this happened. It takes anywhere from 6 months to a year to recover from Reactive Arthritis, and my Rheumatologist says I will always be susceptible to a flare up. I spent the entire summer using a walker. I fought desperately against the supposition that “Of course this happened, you are fat.”

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Healthcare Providers Get Our Marching Orders for the War on Fat People

by Deb Burgard, PhD

My brilliant friend Jessica Wilson has taught me so much. She is fond of asking, “What is the problem we are trying to solve?”

The question is burning in my mind after reading a recently released Washington DC think tank publication called “Provider Competencies for the Prevention and Management of Obesity”

Go take a look at this 8-page document that attempts to dictate how healthcare providers should carry out its vision, complete with a whopping 8 citations.

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Fat Studies: May the Next Generation of Fat Kids Be Free of Self-Hatred

by Mikalina Kirkpatrick

I am a Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies (WGSS) major at Portland State University in Oregon. I concluded my junior year with a 2016 Spring term of Fat Studies immersion. I was the teaching assistant for an online class called Gender and Body Image and I took an online senior capstone class called Embracing Size Diversity. I then decided to round out the term with a last-minute eight hour bus ride to Vancouver, BC to attend the fourth annual International Weight Stigma Conference.

After a lifetime of fat phobic schooling, this was 10 weeks of incredible, unusual, validating, and empowering education. If education has the potential to reshape the world, it’s really exciting to think about the next generation of gym teachers, nurses, teachers and others who work with kids going through this kind of educational experience.

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