Romanian obese journalist writes about his experience as a fat patient source in romanian  source - google translate I found the story really interesting so I will try to translate it all here (basically fix stuff that google translate gets wrong just enough to make it understandable). Given the length of the text I will do this in more than one comment if people find this interesting. A reporter of "National Journal" was admitted to the National Institute of Endocrinology incognito "C.I. Parhon" to learn more about obesity and overall to write about this disease and about its victims. A week in the obese wing, the adipose cell inferno. This experience of the reporter, himself obese, has resulted in a sincere and ruthless testimony about "stuffed suicidals" as the obese people are called. Hello! My name is Viorel Ilisoi and I am a third degree obese person. I weigh almost sixty kilograms (120 pounds) over. It's morbid phase. Now my dream is to become overweight. I am one of the about six million Romanians that are too fat. About thirty percent. This is how many we are according to World Health Organisation. And that over twenty years will be two to three times more. A country of fatty males and females. But these statistics glide over us hanging over us like paper airplanes and we don't mind them . I never took seriously obesity than when the bike broke under me. Luckily I stopped in a street light. Then the chair broke. Luck prevented me again from hitting my head on the floor tiles. It was clear that obesity can kill in many ways. I could not even tie my own shoelaces. I say without any embarrassment that ass wiping or washing became a problem. Patients are not reluctant to talk about these intimate issues so I'm going to share all of it. As a visit to the doctor. And there are other areas of the body that I do not have access to, not even visually. I miss them. Because of that I often smell. I spend most of the time locked in the house. To avoid awkwardness. Sometimes I don't talk to anyone for a month. Only on the phone and very little messenger. You're not going to believe this, but as I almost lost the ability to speak. I articulate words harder, I find it difficult to express myself. This is called bradyarthria. That's what dr. Cristiana Stoian from "Parhon" wrote on the clinical observation sheet. She also gave me some other sad news about how dastardly all the goodies that I stuffed myself with worked against me. I liked to do that, I admit. I even made efforts, particularly financial. I was paying out the nose now. The doctor explained to me what happens with a body flooded with fat. He scared me to death. Afraid, I decided to change my life. Not to diet, because the doctor told me that there's no diets. When you diet, you lose weight. When you stop you gain back the weight. You are what you eat. So I changed my way of life. But it is already too late. Too late I got admitted to the National Institute of Endocrinology "C.I. Parhon" in Professor Constantin Dumitrache's ward with his generous complicity. He was the only that knew I was a journalist and that I was there to write a reportage. I was able to talk to patients from obese to obese I learned a lot about them and about myself. Truths that I'm not proud of. I did some tests so that I don't draw attention to my presence. Nurse Adriana Giui drew syrup from my vein. Repeatedly. She installed a sort of of vein tap, like barrels have, so that she doesn't stick me multiple times. She was a nurse, not a seamstress. And it'd hurt me. Because obese people can feel too. They called it catheter device but I did not find that word in DEX (dictionary). So Ms. Adriana opened the tap every half hour and took blood. She left me some as well. Professor Dumitrache told me laughing when she saw the ultrasound: "You have a very beautiful liver. Fat like a stuffed duck's liver. It's great to make pate out of it". And he began to list a shitload of diseases that my obesity caused me. But at least my adipose tissue is evenly distributed and I do not seem as fat. It says so in the clinical observation sheet. At least that makes me feel better. I look like those fat perfect people on the didactic poster in the professor's waiting room. The poster sits between Gustav Klimt and Salvador Dali replicas. They are very beautiful. I never took obesity seriously because it did not hurt. At school no one taught me how to eat. Kids today aren't taught that either. At least they're getting sexual education. That has to count for something. Back home I was told two beatings harm, two portions (of food) don't. And no matter how much I ate, here's always room for one more cup of milk. In villages the ideal woman was white, fatie and beautiful. Obesity only became a serious topic in the last three to four years. Just in the period in which I perfected the expanded version of myself. I was booming. When alarm bells went of in my head, it was too late. -to be continued-