Some doctors assume the worst of their patients!

Last week we had a patient that was in her early thirties who tripped and broke her ankle, then while the poor thing was trying to hobble down the stairs to reach a phone to call for help, she fell and broke the fibia in her other leg. Sad enough but the conversation that I overheard the physicians discussing her case having was worse, "this woman suffers from SEVERE ostiopenia (literal translation; small bones, does she have a history of drug or etoh (alcohol) use? She has copious amounts of loose skin that might indicate a rapid weight loss from drug abuse or severe caloric restriction. Is depression an issue?" etc etc it went on for awhile till someone finally noticed in her history that she had a history of rny surgery 6 years ago and apparently hadn't been supplementing so her teeth and bones had been leached of all of their calcium. funny how these physicians automatically assumed that this woman was either a drug addict or laying around, inactive and starving herself out of depression before they started looking or a MEDICAL reason for her issues! In Alaska, there are still many physicians out there that are uneducated about the nutrient/physical requirements post wls. I am sure this is true else where also. What makes me even madder, but to be fair, I don't know this for certain, she probably wasn't even offered much in the way of follow up care post wls. She certainly didn't understand or take seriously the need to supplement post wls.