Facebook Publication Date: 12/28/2020 6:12

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So the story about Dr. Moore, the Black female physician who perished not a month after being diagnosed, takes an even worse turn.

Basically, Dr. Brown was punished for self-advocacy and for documenting her sub-par care.

In a hospital bed, on a gurney, she was lectured by fellow healthcare workers and labeled ‘intimidating’–this, while lying prone and writhing with pain, which at first went untreated–because, of course, every Black person, including doctors, are drug seeking and gaming the system.

While intubated. While begging for minimum standard of care. Punished for questioning her ‘caregivers’.

The hospital, while insisting they got it right on the technical aspects, will look into becoming more sensitive.

____

Show me a black person in general, and a black woman in particular, and I will show you someone who has been mistreated by the Healthcare System.

I almost died 11 Christmases ago, when a doctor at Kaiser palpated my ‘incredibly fat stomach’ and decided he couldn’t feel anything.

This after I had been shaking and sweating for a full 24 hours, feeling as though a weight was in my abdomen.

Thanks to a friend that was with me in the emergency room I insisted on more care, I was told that the x-ray department was closed for the evening, and that this didn’t rise to the level of needing a CAT scan or any other higher standard of care.

My friend pushed me, so I pushed the doctor, and in a matter of minutes I was, yes, punished for my self advocacy.

I went from a private room to right in the middle of the ER, bells and whistles and blood and screaming, they shoved what I had to drink in order to get the procedure in my hands and then left me alone for 5 hours.

No pain alleviation no; checking to see if I was okay.

Finally around 5 in the morning, about 7 hours after I showed up in the ER, a doctor came and let me know that my appendix was incredibly close to bursting and scheduled emergency surgery immediately.

Surgery I would not have gotten if I had gone home. If I had made it home in my car.

The rest of the hospitalization was uneventful. Appendix was taken out with no problem, I was there for another two days eating copious amounts of jello and pudding, and then I was sent home for three weeks.

I am saying this part because most of the time my treatment at Kaiser has been, if not Cadillac care, then definitely a well-appointed Camry.

In other words, the care has been competent.

But it only takes one lapse.

It only takes one health care worker they decide the person in front of them isn’t worth it; it only takes one acting out of implicit bias or outright racism to decide that a black woman is intimidating, and make her pay for it.

This was why, two years ago, again, about this time oh, I was incredibly reluctant to go to the hospital again. This time, it was because of an infection that was exacerbated by my diabetes.

The incredibly caring and competent doctor at Urgent Care refused to even let me drive to the ER 4 miles away.

I was placed in an ambulance, and there was absolutely no question that I was going to get the best care.

And I did.

Night and day from 9 years before.

Copious amounts of antibiotics and copious monitoring to see if I would need surgery.

Four days later I did not, but the level of care and concern from that staff towards me was notable.

So I have told you about my most recent experience meeting the best at Kaiser could offer, and sharing the good news that I did indeed get it.

But you also need to hear this.

I spent those four days at Kaiser being the absolute best, most compliant, most agreeable version of myself.

I smiled ingratiatingly, I did not question; oh, I was the perfect patient.

Because of my experience of 9 years before.

Because I knew that even though it had been a good experience the first day the second day the third day, that there could be one incidence of someone thinking that I was uppity, or intimidating, or demanding, and the tables could turn on me.

As a single woman going through that alone, I felt incredibly vulnerable, at the mercy of the transient feeling states and attitudes towards me of the staff.

That it wound up being a good experience is almost beside the point.

My stress level was through the roof, because my hyper-vigilance would not let up. My justified hyper-vigilance.

So, even though the experience from 2 years ago was a good one, there are still lessons to be learned.

Past trauma informs later events.

So a decade after my dreadful experience, even the most caring and concerned staff person would still feel my hypervigilance and weariness, and could very well take it personally and give me worse care than they might.

And things haven’t changed all that much after all, right?

Witness Dr. Moore.

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