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I lost my left ovary to medical fatphobia. 

I got my first period when I was 12. I was at my grandma’s in Florida, and when I walked into the room to tell my family it had finally happened, my grandma clasped her hands and thanked God: “Everything works!” 

Her excitement didn’t last long. My period became vastly irregular, which is to be expected when you are first starting puberty, but three years in? There was cause for concern. 

It was the same answer every time. You have a headache? Lose weight. Your stomach hurts? Lose weight. You broke your ankle? Lose weight. Your period is irregular? Lose weight. No tests, no further questions — fat gave them the only explanation they needed. 

* * * * *

I got sick of it. If losing weight would magically fix all my problems, then fine! I’d lose some damn weight. 

I went to a weight-loss camp in Bulgaria the summer I turned 16. I’d been there once before, the summer I turned 9 — they gave me a watermelon as a birthday cake — and had lost 14 pounds. (Don’t worry, I gained it all back and then some). It wasn’t technically a “fat camp,” it was a “wellness clinic.” But no matter what it was called, I was starving: the first stage was a strict diet of only fruit and tea for three weeks, and the second stage slowly reincorporated vegetables (I didn’t make it far into the second stage). They focused on holistic remedies, so there were massages, yoga, and even detoxifying foot baths in addition to the diet.

It was easy to stick to the diet, since we literally had no other options. On a rare supervised trip to the city, I bought a piece of corn as a snack, which apparently wasn’t allowed because obviously corn is fattening which is why they feed it to pigs, it was stupid that I didn’t realize that and undid all of my progress, and obviously I had to start over and definitely wasn’t allowed to go to town anymore.

It wasn’t technically a “fat camp,” it was a “wellness clinic.” But no matter what it was called, I was starving.

Still, it wasn’t the worst time. We were in the mountains. I made some friends and watched a lot of Teen Wolf —Bulgarian Netflix puts American Netflix to shame. I got massages to open up acupuncture points and had a bunch of tests done, including an EKG and an ultrasound of my ovaries. 

Plot twist: there was a huge cyst on my left ovary.

The clinic confirmed that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome. Who would have guessed that the fat girl with a lot of hair and an irregular period — three of the main signs — would have PCOS? Me. It was me. I guessed. It was such a simple, non-invasive test; the second they saw my ovary, the diagnosis was clear. But nobody had ever bothered to look. 

For all their weird fruit diet rules, the clinic had one thing going for it — they specialized in understanding fat bodies. Fatness is rarely as simple as just overeating, and they knew where to look. 

* * * * *

The cyst was 15 centimeters in diameter when I left Bulgaria. I scheduled an appointment to get tested in the US. Months go by before I’m able to have another ultrasound, and the cyst is now 19 centimeters. Not. Good. It’s too big to go away on its own, and suddenly we were discussing surgery. 

After that, things began to move quickly; my doctor was worried that the smaller cyst could be cancerous. 

Rather than cut me straight down the middle, the doctors had to cut off the bottom of my apron belly to access the cysts, a procedure called a panniculectomy. Since this was considered a “cosmetic procedure,” it had to be done by a plastic surgeon. She did not like me or my fat. Any time I asked questions, she spoke over me to my parents. She rarely even looked at me, and the only thing she’d say was that if I didn’t change my diet, my stomach would grow back. She repeated that over and over as if it were a threat. She also decided that because I was fat, the risk of infection was too high to simply close the incision, so she’d leave an opening on both ends. To clarify, I was cut open from hip to hip, and instead of being sewn up post-surgery I was left with two fist-sized holes in my body for drains, the most excruciating pain I’d ever experienced. 

The cysts were not cancerous and could be removed. Unfortunately, since it took so long for the doctors to even realize I had cysts, they had done so much damage to my left ovary that it couldn’t be saved. I entered surgery thinking I’d have my cysts removed. I woke up missing an ovary. “If we had only gotten to it sooner,” they said. 

I had done everything right. I spoke up. I said something was wrong. They didn’t listen, because I was just the fat girl who wouldn’t lose weight. I wasn’t a patient; I was a fat patient. I wasn’t a person, but an epidemic —  the face of obesity and nothing more. They decided that my weight was the sole proprietor of my problems, and if I couldn’t fix them that was my fault. This could have been avoided. If they saw me as a full person, but they didn’t. They didn’t listen, they didn’t care, and because of that, I lost my left ovary days before my 17th birthday.