Waiting for them to call my name, hoping they never do arrgh why do I get so stupidly nervous about dental exams
I’M SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT I THOUGHT MY FEMALE DENTIST WAS AN OLDER NURSE 😂
Wow they have a lot of fancy equipment here no wonder it’s a multi dentist practice –it just makes sense, they can share the equipment as well as the space
if you’re not committed to antiracism, you’re not a good doctor.
I remember when I had pneumonia I was so sick and exhausted and in pain that I couldn’t get out of bed for *days* — I eventually pushed myself to walk across campus to the doctor’s office (it took me literally 45 minutes to walk there bc I had to walk so slow) and when I got there…the doctor made it seem I was only trying to get out of writing an exam lol. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was going to be withdrawing from the class anyway bc I hadn’t had the energy to get to lectures at all that semester. She lectured me about how she sees students do this all the time and she can’t take a risk in trusting me when the only thing that was wrong with me was exhaustion. “We all have off days” is what she said lolol.
I was so humiliated at her insinuation that I eventually just nodded when she said it “didn’t seem like I had any issues” and went back home. It wasn’t until I fainted walking down the hallway like 4 feet outside my apartment that I started panicking and called someone to take me to the hospital. When I got there even the receptionists looked genuinely pale to see how hard it was for me to walk and how much it hurt to breathe or talk.
It would take *6* different antibiotics for the really advanced pneumonia to finally die out, the last of which was delivered intravenously in my arm for 10 continuous days — I still have the scar where the initial IV was and I have another mark on my wrist. I *literally* couldn’t walk or lay on my back for 8-9 weeks. I would sleep sitting up with pillows on a chair and when my breath would involuntarily deepen as I started to fall asleep I would jerk awake bc of the sharp pain my lung where the pneumonia was.
That same doctor who thought I was lying about being sick would then call me like 34 times in a row when my blood test results came to her office and the hospital sent her my chest x rays lolol, obviously worried about looking bad and having called me a liar and sending me home when I had such a serious bout of pneumonia.
In the 3rd year of my premed degree I would learn that doctors in North America — and specifically white women in nursing lol — often see south Asian women as malingerers who exaggerate their pain. In a UK study there were neonatal nurses who went so far as to say that south Asian women also lack maternal instincts, care more about their pain meds than their child and “can’t handle” child birth.
Yosif al Hasnawi — an Iraqi Canadian teen — died at the hands of two paramedics who did not believe he had been shot and claimed he was “acting” when he was actually internally bleeding. They made him walk to the ambulance with a bullet in his stomach, from which he would later die after not being transported to the hospital for 38 minutes.
Just yesterday My cousin, totally healthy, just died of a brain hemorrhage and often complained about ongoing migraines that could’ve been telltale signs of hypertension that were totally ignored by her doctor for years.
and just a day before that Kim porter who was otherwise healthy just died of pneumonia while having expressed her symptoms and pain to doctors for days — I would say that I’m shocked by this but the implications faced by brown people and racism in the healthcare system is 10x worse for black women who are often seen as liars and in it for the meds as a result of historical anti blackness and systemic rejection of black patients’ pain.
doctors are literally trained to perceive racialized people as malingerers who are trying to scam for meds or medical attention instead of people in pain. It’s 100% systemic and actually integrated into medical education.
Yeah exactly this
Medicine is no less likely than any other field to have problems with racism. But when it’s someone’s life at stake (or at minimum someone’s comfort), it is really critical that this kind of prejudice is rooted out.
Most likely everyone’s seen this notorious page from a nursing textbook, but in case you haven’t, enjoy some piping hot medical racism:
…this is ….published in 2014….i don’t know what to say
All of them are talking about how we pray the pain away or overreact to the pain… amazing
My doctor Jerry Rabinowitz was among those killed in the Pittsburgh synogogue shooting. He took care of me up until I left Pittsburgh for NYC in 2004. In the old days for HIV patients in PIttsburgh he was to one to go to. Basically before there was effective treatment for fighting HIV itself, he was known in the community for keeping us alive the longest. He often held our hands (without rubber gloves) and always hugged us as we left his office.
We made a deal about my T cells in that I didn’t want to know the numbers visit to visit because I knew I would fret with every little fluctuation and I also knew that AZT was not working for my friends. The deal was that he would just let me know at some point when the T cell numbers meant I needed to start on medications. The numbers were his job and my job was to finish my masters thesis and get a job with insurance and try not to go crazy.
I got lucky beyond words – because when he gently told me around November 1995 that it was time to begin taking medications – there was an ACTG trial for two HIV medications that saved my life. One of which I still take today.
Thank you to ACT UP for getting these drugs into a safe but effect expidited research protocol. You saved my life.
And thank you Dr. Rabinowitiz for having always been there during the most terrifying and frightening time of my life. You will be remembered by me always. You are one of my heroes just like the early ACT UP warriors- some of which I now call friend. – Michael Kerr.
Duntsch’s case is a frightening example of what happens when systems of accountability, from reporting to professional associations to civil suits, fail or are purposefully dismantled. While it’s a good thing that he was criminally prosecuted and has been sentenced to life in prison, the criminal justice system is a blunt instrument of accountability that requires overwhelming evidence and the “evidence” in this case was the trail of dead and injured patients he left while he was allowed to practice for far too long.
Fascinatingly enough, Duntsch also seem to be the product of a distinctly USAmerican fixation to work hard and achieve, and to medicate away–with cocaine and alcohol in this case–any doubts or fallout. From his fixation on playing football to the decision to be a neurosurgeon, he seems a driven, confident, and determined person just like USAmericans are told to be. He is a product of that distinctly USAmerican entrepreneurial spirit, except without the discipline, skill, or follow-through.
In the extreme and ungrounded versions of the myth of entrepreuneurship, however, it didn’t matter that his reality did not match his aspirations. All that mattered was that he believe in himself and stay positive, and the reality would catch up. He tried to do just that, leaving horrifically poor surgery outcomes in the path of his self-realization, and the systems designed to stop someone like him were inadequate to stopping him.
Duntsch is a failure, but his is more than a personal failure. This is a failure of a mindset and a system that is overflowing with can-do spirit but is dry on any sober reckoning with reality, that has no room for discipline, personal or professional, no room for setback and growth except as launching pads to even more dizzying heights of achievement. I mean this part of his supervising physician’s comments to a hospital he recommended Duntsch to?
“When asked about Dr. Duntsch’s weaknesses or areas for improvement,
the supervising physician communicated that the only weakness Duntsch
had was that he took on too many tasks for one person.”
This should have raised red flags right there, because it shows someone whose ambitions outstrips their capabilities, who is overstretched and cannot be up to his responsibilities in the long run. Making sure you have the time to meet your commitments is a responsibility, especially in a job as delicate and crucial as a doctor’s.
But no, this kind of overstretching is encouraged and lauded in his society and no one thought it was the serious fault it is. This is how even well-meaning people burn out and fall apart, with consequences that can be catastrophic in high-stakes jobs.
Duntsch is a shallow, superficially charming, destructive substance abuser, the kind of person that exists in any society. His specific way of being these things, however, was shaped and abetted by his society. He is a symptom and cutting him out, while necessary, was far from a cure.
This is a great, intersectional article with clear examples of the fat empathy gap.
Also interesting is how commenters almost immediately call the article “skinny shaming.” The mentality that empowering marginalized people by giving them a voice (and, in the case of this article, control over how they want to appear in the accompanying photographs) is somehow “shaming” the people who don’t live those experiences is a special – and way too common – kind of toxic.
Countless scientific studies have espoused the idea that a glass of red wine a day can be good for the heart, but a new, sweeping global study published in The Lancet on Friday rejects the notion that any drinking can be healthy.
No amount of alcohol is safe, according to The Global Burden of Diseases study, which analyzed levels of alcohol use and its health effects in 195 countries from 1990 to 2016.
While the study’s authors say that moderate drinking may safeguard people against heart disease, they found that the potential to develop cancer and other diseases offsets these potential benefits, as do other risks of harm. The report urges governments to revise health guidelines to suggest lower levels of consumption.
“Our results show that the safest level of drinking is none,” the report states. “This level is in conflict with most health guidelines, which espouse health benefits associated with consuming up to two drinks per day.”
100% correct medical information on tumblr for once; also consider calling 911 if you don’t know how often the person has seizures and ESPECIALLY if the seizure has lasted 5 minutes or more (which is why the watch is critical)
I have epilepsy so making sure the word is out on how to help people who do have seizures means a lot to me.
It’s so fucking funny to me that the Korean word for “pandemic” is the same word as “wildly popular.” It’s like Spanish flu is a must-have coat for this season or something.
@reynobae The word is dae-yoo-haeng (대유행), though I think in the sense of pandemic it’s kind of a technical term. Only a bunch of STEM dorks could think to call a deadly widespread epidemic by a term that describes popular trends XD
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