The Medical Industry is Oppressive

Let me tell you a story.

When I was little, I always loved watching medical dramas. In fact, that’s how I decided on my profession: I wanted to be a doctor and save people’s lives! I always knew, even in elementary school, that this is what I wanted to do. However, in early high school, I was in for a nasty surprise. One of my favorite shows aired a brand new episode featuring a patient who had a complication involving hemophilia. When he started bleeding, it was hard to make him stop. This experience of watching blood on TV was very shocking and traumatic for me (and it contributed to my PTSD, but that’s another story). As an act of protest, I even stopped watching the show for a week (but I couldn’t stay away for long because I love my TV :P ).

After talking about that stupefying scene with other fans of the show online, I discovered they weren’t nearly as stunned by it as I was. In fact, they all seemed to enjoy it! Those monsters! Well, that was the moment when I started feeling like something was wrong with me. Like I was an outcast, an outsider! I googled and googled, and I could not find any answers. That is, of course, until I asked a few of my friends on tumblr, and they knew exactly what my condition was! They told me that, in contrast to the man in the show who had hemophilia, I had a rare condition called hemophobia, and they even showed me the tumblr tag for it! I was so excited to find more people like me!

The jarring visage of that man’s fictional blood did haunt my dreams, but it wasn’t the only horrific experience I was destined for. My next triggering moment came in my high school Biology class, when our mean bully of a teacher told us we had to cut up a dead frog. Of course, I froze up. As one traumatic flashback from my past was triggered by an experience in the present, I could not bring myself to even move as I watched my lab mates slice open the poor creature.

The grade I got on that lab project was a D, because my teacher was horrible and insensitive to hemophobiac students, and she even wrote on my lab report that if I wanted to be a doctor I needed to “man up” (toxic masculinity) and “get over” my “silly tantrum”. I talked to my school’s guidance office, though, and they made the teacher give me a better grade because of my special condition. They even got the teacher’s union and the school board involved! I later got a notarized apology letter from that teacher saying that it doesn’t matter if I have hemophobia, I can go on to do anything I want to, and if I want to be a doctor, I should go do it!

With that consideration, I graduated with an A in biology (even though I was never prepared for any of the tests lol) and went on to be accepted into a school far away on the West coast! I was so excited! I started classes and quickly decided that my choice of major was to be Biology Pre-Med. It was a great experience, getting to meet so many other people who believed in social justice and were sympathetic to my condition! And in classes, I learned stuff about cells and how the functions of the body work! I loved it! I even had a deal with the Disabilities Office that if any of my labs ever involved dissection, I had to be excused that day and given an automatic A on any assignment that I missed because of it.

When I graduated from college and started applying to medical schools, however, my experience wasn’t as great. I sent application after application, working hard to personalize my essay for each school, and always talking at length about my condition, highlighting all the challenges I’ve overcome because of it. School after school, though, sent me rejection letters. Finally, after almost a year off, I decided that enough was enough! I sent an email to the Title IX coordinator for my school of choice, explaining the situation and how I was being discriminated against. A week later, I got a letter in the mail from that school saying that not only have they reversed their admission rejection, but they would even grant me a scholarship to attend! This was a great moment of victory! No longer would I let bigoted bullies control what I do with my life! Patriarchal and ableist thugs would no longer keep me from pursuing my American right to the Pursuit of Happiness! I was on my way to a medical degree!

Of course, even with the scholarship, going to school for a PhD in medicine is not cheap, or easy. For my studies, I had to threaten lawsuit against a problematic and discriminatory textbook company that initially refused to provide me a custom textbook that had illustrations printed in black-and-white (to avoid triggering my PTSD and Hemophobia). I also had to work a job, so I started training to be a first responder, since I wanted something related to the medical field. Little did I know, working a real job would be hell.

On my first day out of training, riding in an ambulance, we got a call about a car crash. We got there as fast as we could, put the patients into the passenger section, and started rushing them to a hospital. My boss gave me the task of stopping the bleeding of one patient who had a bad scrape on his arm. This patient told me… that he… was a hemophiliac.

I froze up. My blood ran cold. I looked at his stained red arm, and I remembered the pain and suffering inflicted on that poor hemophilic man in the doctor show, and I remembered the inhumane treatment and butchering of that poor frog corpse in biology class… and I just couldn’t. I stood there for almost a full minute until my boss bumped into me and told me to do something. Well, the thing I did was slap the patient.

I slapped him. I slapped him right on the face again and again, screaming at the top of my lungs for him to stop bleeding and that he was a bigoted piece of trash, I was a hemophobiac and I HATED blood, how DARE he get all his blood over my clothes and all over the ambulance! Well, my boss tried to grab my arms and get me to stop, so I punched him in the face! The triggering was too much at that point. I had to get out. All I could do was open the back door of the moving vehicle going 70 miles an hour, and jump out! I hit the ground and rolled, and I barely avoided getting hit by a car! But I managed to stay alive.

Later, I called my boss and started yelling at him and asked him to apologize. He did something that took a whole lot of nerve! He told me I was fired! FIRED?!?!? I worked my whole life to get a medical degree and be a doctor, how could he FIRE me??? Well, after I mentioned my medical degree, he hung up the phone and called my school… and they DENIED me my degree and my graduation because of the incident! Incredible! One bigot bleeds on a hemophobic and it’s the Hemophobiac’s fault???

The other day, I was sad and sitting in my old room in my parent’s house because the medical school kicked me out of their dorm houses. My brother (who I don’t talk to anymore because he’s toxic and insensitive) sent me a link to a video, so I opened it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hok2PiRnDfw

The video was from a racist institution called PragerU! In it, some bigot named Ben Shapiro was talking about facts and feelings, and how greedy corporations only care about my productivity, rather than valuing the average worker and paying everyone the same. I was so upset about this video that I closed my laptop and cried myself to sleep.

Ben Shapiro says that if we graduate high school, don’t have kids before we’re married, and hold down a job, we’ll be just fine. Well, what if a kid is in a high school that doesn’t have a stellar guidance counselor who calls the teachers union when a biology teacher is threatening a hemophobiac student? What if a person with my condition (I refuse to call it a disability, hemophobia is BEAUTIFUL) can’t hold down a job because our toxic and corporatized medical industry doesn’t want people like me? And how are people to avoid pregnancy if they don’t get free birth control and they get raped in a state where abortion is illegal?

Ben shapiro talks about facts and feelings, but Hemophobia is MY fact, and I have to live with it.