If a person is overweight, often that's the only thing a doctor will focus on. Your knees hurt? It's because you're fat! Your skin is breaking out? It's because you're fat! You have a cavity in a tooth? It's because you're fat! You're getting headaches? It's because you're fat!

For many people, this eventually discourages them from going to see the doctor, even when they have a possibly-serious health problem.

Like my mother.

She'd spent a lifetime being told by doctors that all her problems were because she was fat. So when she felt a lump in her breast, she latched on to the (false) conventional wisdom that "if it hurts, it's not malignant."

By the time she saw a doctor about it, it was stage 4 and had metastasized to her lymph nodes.

She died at age 53.

She was the smartest, funniest, most loving, toughest, most dynamic woman I've ever known. I miss her terribly every day.

And she died as a result of fat prejudice.

Yeah, I take this personally.