A Warrior's Call To Action
Dear Providers,
You may not know this about me, but I am a fighter. This means I am going to fight you, tooth and nail, for you to do what's best for me as a patient.
I am going to challenge you to see me as HUMAN first.
I wear many hats. I am a mom, wife, sister, an aunt, a niece, a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin, a friend, a confidant, and an advocate.
I have qualities you may not be aware of yet. I'm educated, passionate, devoted, outspoken, charismatic, funny, sarcastic and sassy.
I just happen to have Sickle Cell Disease.
But I spend a lot of my time being emotional and fearful that the first thing you see when I walk into your place of work, is a combination of my skin color and my disease. You make judgements about why I am there. You question if I am truly in pain. You may even accuse me of drug seeking. I will go along with all of your tests designed to rule out imminent death, and will ride along as you do the minimum allowed to void yourself of risk.
Yet sometimes that only delays the inevitable.
I once walked into the doors of your workplace with debilitating nausea and a feeling that something wasn't right. Within hours I was in the ICU suffering from stroke and seizures. You didn't take my intuition seriously. You dismissed my symptoms as trivial and as a result, just minutes before the seizures began, the ICU team dismissed the concerns of my family because you didn't believe me.
Imagine not being thorough with my medication list while I was alert and mixing two medications that alone were harmless, but together were life threatening? Pretend for a moment that you were me, becoming more aware of your surroundings, but still having no concept of where you were, who you were, and why you were there? Can you relate to the panic and fear that spread throughout me after opening my eyes and staring at an unfamiliar ceiling? Of learning that my family kept my child away since I didn't recognize his face and it upset him?
How often do you examine your ambitions for becoming and remaining a physician? Do you still believe in the hippocratic oath? Or does "do no harm" only apply to protecting your finances and your reputation? Does remaining in medicine prevent you from being a kind and sympathetic soul?
Have you considered your:
As the sickle cell community fights to bring awareness to the challenges of living with this disease, I ask you to examine your moral fiber. I want to be treated with dignity and respect. I want to be heard and have my concerns addressed.
I WANT TO LIVE!
With or without pain. I want to live until I am old and gray with my husband. I want to see my child grow into an adult. I don't want to attend any more funerals or hear about more of us dying needlessly and in vain.
Remember your oath and your original reasons for seeking a career in medicine.
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
*The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath was written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University Hippocratic Oath
You may not know this about me, but I am a fighter. This means I am going to fight you, tooth and nail, for you to do what's best for me as a patient.
I am going to challenge you to see me as HUMAN first.
I wear many hats. I am a mom, wife, sister, an aunt, a niece, a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin, a friend, a confidant, and an advocate.
I have qualities you may not be aware of yet. I'm educated, passionate, devoted, outspoken, charismatic, funny, sarcastic and sassy.
I just happen to have Sickle Cell Disease.
But I spend a lot of my time being emotional and fearful that the first thing you see when I walk into your place of work, is a combination of my skin color and my disease. You make judgements about why I am there. You question if I am truly in pain. You may even accuse me of drug seeking. I will go along with all of your tests designed to rule out imminent death, and will ride along as you do the minimum allowed to void yourself of risk.
Yet sometimes that only delays the inevitable.
I once walked into the doors of your workplace with debilitating nausea and a feeling that something wasn't right. Within hours I was in the ICU suffering from stroke and seizures. You didn't take my intuition seriously. You dismissed my symptoms as trivial and as a result, just minutes before the seizures began, the ICU team dismissed the concerns of my family because you didn't believe me.
Imagine not being thorough with my medication list while I was alert and mixing two medications that alone were harmless, but together were life threatening? Pretend for a moment that you were me, becoming more aware of your surroundings, but still having no concept of where you were, who you were, and why you were there? Can you relate to the panic and fear that spread throughout me after opening my eyes and staring at an unfamiliar ceiling? Of learning that my family kept my child away since I didn't recognize his face and it upset him?
How often do you examine your ambitions for becoming and remaining a physician? Do you still believe in the hippocratic oath? Or does "do no harm" only apply to protecting your finances and your reputation? Does remaining in medicine prevent you from being a kind and sympathetic soul?
Have you considered your:
- desire to continue as an MD
- biases and innate prejudices
- comfort level with institutional racism
- contentment with the status quo
As the sickle cell community fights to bring awareness to the challenges of living with this disease, I ask you to examine your moral fiber. I want to be treated with dignity and respect. I want to be heard and have my concerns addressed.
I WANT TO LIVE!
With or without pain. I want to live until I am old and gray with my husband. I want to see my child grow into an adult. I don't want to attend any more funerals or hear about more of us dying needlessly and in vain.
Remember your oath and your original reasons for seeking a career in medicine.
The Hippocratic Oath
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
*The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath was written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University Hippocratic Oath
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