Privilege and luck play a huge role in whether you survive our healthcare system.
Bias, racism and misogyny are rampant and frequently cost people their lives.
A surgical complication almost killed me when I was 24.
Luck, privilege and a 22 year old boy saved my life.
No one’s survival should be based on luck or how much privilege they have.
People should have a reasonable expectation of safety in a hospital.
They should be treated the same regardless of their skin colour, marital status, sexual orientation or insurance status.
Sadly that’s not how things work.
I had a hysterectomy when I was 24. Doctors expected me to “sail through” recovery because I was young and fit.
Unfortunately they were wrong. My body wasn’t recovering, it was decompensating.
I had many abdominal surgeries before the hysterectomy. I knew the difference between normal post op pain and something being “wrong”.
After surgery I felt like I was dying.
My pain worsened every day.
I became more fatigued. I couldn’t eat or sleep.
But no one believed me.
The surgeon discharged me.
I returned to the ER and told them something was wrong.
They dismissed me and sent me home.
I went back multiple times and each time was treated like a nuisance.
I was gaslit and told my pain was “normal”.
No one even ran basic tests.
Even people in my life started to doubt me.
Told me I should just rest and stop bothering the folks at the ER.
I KNEW something was wrong but I was rapidly losing the ability to self advocate as I became too weak to speak or even sit up.
My 22 year old boyfriend came to check on me and instantly realized things were dire.
He called a coworker to take us back to the hospital.
He caused a scene to ensure a doctor saw me and I wasn’t sent home again.
They threatened to call the police but he refused to back down.
He was right.
I had a massive internal bleed and an infected abscess.
I was immediately evacuated to a larger hospital for emergency surgery and only given a 50/50 chance of survival.
I spent nearly a month in the hospital recovering.
I didn’t even want to go back to the ER that day.
I was thoroughly beaten down.
Being dismissed and mistreated so many times left me feeling hopeless and like I would rather die in my own bed than be disrespected in the hospital AGAIN.
No one should face these types of decisions.
No one should have to fight that hard for care.
Had my boyfriend not believed me, I would have died.
Had he told me to stop bothering ER staff, I would have died.
Had he not come to check on me that night, I would have died.
He wasn’t prepared to handle such an intense life or death situation… but he stepped up because no one else did.
He saw the danger and fought like hell to protect me.
That’s privilege.
The fact that he wasn’t arrested? Privilege and luck.
I’m grateful to him for being willing to risk his own safety to ensure I got the care I needed, but I hate that it took a man causing a scene to get the healthcare system to pay attention.
I hate that others have died simply because they didn’t have someone to fight for them.
We must do better.
We must call out the bias in medicine and ensure everyone is equally protected.
We must establish networks of community care so that no one ever has to face the ER alone.
We must tell our stories so people know they aren’t alone.
We must amplify the stories of those without platforms so their voices are heard too.
If you’ve been mistreated, know that it’s not your fault.
The system needs to change, and we will keep fighting until it does.
#ableism #racism #misogyny #chronicillness #disability #medicalmisogyny
