Disclaimer: Some of you might remember this column from a few years back when we still lived at Viceland. When we moved to VICE.com, though, it disappeared, so now we've dug it up. Enjoy.
Hey, you rapidly decaying protoplasmic sacks of calcium and shit, my name is Dr Mona Moore. Obviously, that is not my real name, but I am a real doctor. Don't feel bad for me, though, because it means I will always have a job, an apartment ten times bigger than yours, and the right to tell you what to do simply because I will always know better. Enjoy my column!BOLLOCKS TO THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH - FAT CHANCEThere comes a point in life when you realize that it’s time to diet. When you require medical equipment designed for elephants you’ve reached that stage. I once had to phone a zoological veterinary surgery to see if they had an MRI big enough for my 32-stone patient. They said no. Apparently both the legality and plausibility of hospital/zoo equipment-trading is a myth propagated by Scrubs and spread among doctors exasperated at how to penetrate layers of custardized junk-food. Anyway, they turned my 32-stoner away from the zoo. That’s tragic.
I’m not talking about love handles or a bit of flabby thigh chafe. He was so obese we had to take the doors off its hinges to get him into the room on his extra sized Big Boy bed. He insisted on sleeping naked as he sweated too much for clothes. Using a hand towel to cover his bits, he spilled over the bed with a piece of bare buttock dripping off the side like a Dali clock.
I’m not going to bombard you with statistics about how obese people die ten years younger. If people want to slowly drown in their own lipids than that’s their choice. I only object that they expect me to fix them. Doctors are all fattist, and it’s not from prejudicial sense of aesthetics—which have long since been dulled by the daily barrage of gore ickier than an Eli Roth movie—but because the clinically obese are impossible to treat. They don’t fit in the scanners, X-rays can’t penetrate their pouch giving poor quality results, and getting a drip in them is basically a case of stab and hope. They all have obstructive sleep apnea, which means the weight around their own throat can suffocate them in their sleep. Basically they could die at any moment. You tuck them up in their bouncy castle beds and leave them to have nightmares about stairs, then you come in the next morning and they have crashed in their sleep from heart failure. It is the biggest cause of preventable death, and yet I can’t prevent it.
They complain their knees hurt. No shit! Those little knobbly bones support the entire weight of the body. Imagine having to carry 400lbs everywhere with you. It’s amazing that people so allergic to exercise inflict such endless toil upon themselves. It’s hard work being obese. You lose all sorts of shit in your folds of fat. Once a colleague found a remote control, which showed up on an X-ray. The patient dug it out, gratefully pocketing it, saying, “Oh, I lost that weeks ago.” Another woman had a sprouted watermelon seed embedded in her cleavage. One lost his dentures in his left ass cheek.
Worst of all, your chances of getting laid are not only reduced by looking like shit, but it would be quite a feat to get your 40-inch wide leg over, when your dick has long since been engulfed. Another doctor had a patient come in with a rash on his lower abdomen. As they lifted up the layers, they were smacked in the face with a smell like a cesspit. Turned out after he lost his penis in the fleshy abyss three weeks previously, he had continued to urinate on himself giving him a chemical rash. Forget about heart disease, they should use that as a warning. Get fat, and your own body mass swallows your penis and turns you into a toilet.Previously - What I Know About Death