When Sarah Barak, standing here outside her Seattle home, needed an operation for her injured thumb, her surgeon gave her unsolicited advice to lose weight. People with larger bodies often report that when they go to the doctor, their problems are ignored or written off as an inevitable result of their weight. (Megan Farmer/KUOW)
About five years ago, Sarah Barak badly tore a ligament in her thumb and needed surgery to get it reattached.
But when she went in for the operation, she got some unsolicited advice: The surgeon said she should lose weight, suggesting that her size and her injured thumb were connected.
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