(no subject)
It's a frightening experience to have the medical community whirl you around and strip you of your situation to become a vacant piece of paperwork. By now it's a common experience for me to be told some very scary stuff only to get written off days later due to random incomprehensible decisions of bureaucracy. Secretaries whisper platitudes while leaving you to rot. It's not possible to be as sick as I am and survive without support. That, I believe, is the crux of everything. So far, as a patient, I haven't been treated as a person or given consideration as a being in need. The most basic questions haven't been asked or answered. Rational thought, preparation, and logic don't help either. I've had two and a half years to learn to strip off emotion and get down to business. I haven't had any other choice. In the end though, that doesn't help either. Being sick is a bureaucratic business. The only way to get results is to realize that your well-being as a person is unimportant to the industry. Expect to be treated as such, stop being in awe at the ease with which people dismiss and negate and forget your suffering, and you can get down to the matter at hand, which is negotiation and diplomacy and writing and waiting and money and managing pain and fear and paperwork.
Then, and this is what's important, come home and be with people who see you as a person. Come home to support and people who love you for who you are. To get help nowadays, you must strip yourself of your own humanity, but it's not possible to live like that without others who see you as you are. And that, to me, is what has mattered through everything so far.
When I was twenty years old, I unexpectedly found myself stranded on an obscure crossroad in central Cameroon. The bus I had taken to get me to Bamenda city had reached this remote end of the line and as everyone trickled out and the bus driver shut off the vehicle and walked way and I saw the sun slipping down in the sky, I realized I just might be in trouble. Not speaking the language, not knowing where I was, no buildings around, and even more unclear of the place where I was going to, I finally dropped my overstuffed suitcase in some intersection, looked at the sky and said “Help!”. This gentleman came up to me, got what information he could using sign language and my little scrap address of paper and took me to a van. He discussed something with a girl and she came over to make me feel better and together they drove me in their to another remote bus intersection several miles away. I jumped out, they waved and drove off. No charge, no chance to express my fear or my gratitude, just two random people helping a stranger when she dropped her suitcase and said help.
That experience affected me profoundly. I've gone through life believing in the innate generosity and good-will of the human spirit. That if you ever get to that point in your life when you need to drop your suitcase and say 'help', help will come. It's still true. My current state of happiness is the direct product of the compassion of friends and the kindness of strangers. It gives me faith in a way that makes me proud to be human and makes me want to learn how to give back the best that I can.
But no matter how grateful I want to be, I can't say the same thing for the medical infrastruture. No matter how I look at it, the entire industry seems to actually make money on taking advantage of people's faith or desperation. It's easy to give sick people words of encouragement in person and then send them into a bureaucratic mire when they're unsure of what to do with them. The fall-out happens far away from the offices and can be mitigated by technicalities. I'm sure not every medical place is the same, but after such a difficult time and so many different doctors, I've gathered enough brush-offs, run-arounds, pass-offs, and technical excuses to realize that my faith is ill-placed.
I'm so tired of all this mess and I'm no longer in the mood to be stoic.
So the time has come to shout.
Then, and this is what's important, come home and be with people who see you as a person. Come home to support and people who love you for who you are. To get help nowadays, you must strip yourself of your own humanity, but it's not possible to live like that without others who see you as you are. And that, to me, is what has mattered through everything so far.
When I was twenty years old, I unexpectedly found myself stranded on an obscure crossroad in central Cameroon. The bus I had taken to get me to Bamenda city had reached this remote end of the line and as everyone trickled out and the bus driver shut off the vehicle and walked way and I saw the sun slipping down in the sky, I realized I just might be in trouble. Not speaking the language, not knowing where I was, no buildings around, and even more unclear of the place where I was going to, I finally dropped my overstuffed suitcase in some intersection, looked at the sky and said “Help!”. This gentleman came up to me, got what information he could using sign language and my little scrap address of paper and took me to a van. He discussed something with a girl and she came over to make me feel better and together they drove me in their to another remote bus intersection several miles away. I jumped out, they waved and drove off. No charge, no chance to express my fear or my gratitude, just two random people helping a stranger when she dropped her suitcase and said help.
That experience affected me profoundly. I've gone through life believing in the innate generosity and good-will of the human spirit. That if you ever get to that point in your life when you need to drop your suitcase and say 'help', help will come. It's still true. My current state of happiness is the direct product of the compassion of friends and the kindness of strangers. It gives me faith in a way that makes me proud to be human and makes me want to learn how to give back the best that I can.
But no matter how grateful I want to be, I can't say the same thing for the medical infrastruture. No matter how I look at it, the entire industry seems to actually make money on taking advantage of people's faith or desperation. It's easy to give sick people words of encouragement in person and then send them into a bureaucratic mire when they're unsure of what to do with them. The fall-out happens far away from the offices and can be mitigated by technicalities. I'm sure not every medical place is the same, but after such a difficult time and so many different doctors, I've gathered enough brush-offs, run-arounds, pass-offs, and technical excuses to realize that my faith is ill-placed.
I'm so tired of all this mess and I'm no longer in the mood to be stoic.
So the time has come to shout.