mainstream medical care is eugenics

I was trying to figure out why medical care hurts so much.  There are many factors, such as a handover of power I’m supposed to do–I’m supposed to believe the doctor can handle the well-being of my body better than I can, which is incorrect.  There’s also trauma I carry from decades of medical harm.  There’s being shamed, rushed, and having to wait amazingly long for specialist appointments.  But I realized yesterday that the big reason it hurts is that mainstream medical care is eugenics.

All bodies are valid bodies.  Hierarchy of bodies is wrong.  My body is ok, and no one can take that away from me.  Your body is also ok, and no one can take that from you.

problem patient

I saw my new doctor for a second time, and we talked about my blood test results.  Based on a number, she’d prescribed a medication before we even met.  But I didn’t start taking it because I’ve been on that medication before, and it made me sick.

As our appointment on Monday progressed, the doctor became more and more resistant to my questions.  I’ve heard it happens a lot, that autistic people such as myself are trying to clarify, but we get understood as aggressive.  The appointment turned into a power struggle.

My questions made me a problem patient, and I know that role from experience.  I knew too much, and I asked too much.  The doctor dismissed my questions with more force, and I started to panic.

Forcing myself not to cry until the appointment is over is hard work.  Waiting for the CNA to come in with my goodbye paperwork is painful, and this one ignored the tears on my face and let me and Ming go.

mainstream medical care is eugenics

I’ve known for a while that ableism and fat shaming are eugenics.  But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that the whole of mainstream medical care is eugenics: hierarchical valuing of a particular body type, and dramatic disruption of other ways of being, in favor of any movement toward a valuable, worthwhile body.

The doctor has in her mind an ideal body which represents Health.  She glances at me and the numbers from my labs, and she prescribes pharmaceutical medications to try to get me as close as I can be to that ideal body.  There’s no concern to who I actually am and what I want.

Of course I will never be an ideal body.  I’ll never be a thin, abled, cis-het, youngish white man.  Thank god for who I actually am.  I’m definitely fat, queer, disabled, crazy, non-binary gender, and living a whole other life.  With very little information, the doctor simplifies me to some numbers, which powerful medications with huge side effect risks are supposed to shift in the direction of an ideal body.  Then supposedly I will have a longer life, and she will win.

But I’m a living, breathing miracle animal, with a rich history and so much love that’s kept me on earth for 48 years.  Numbers aren’t me.  I’m a living person with language, feelings, and a large, literal body that’s right there in front of her.  As we talked, her face was looking into a computer screen, not into my face.

power

She was not interested in connection with me as a human being.  So it made more sense to find her information in a computer screen, not finding information in me, the human being she was supposed to care for.

It’s easier to shame people when there’s no love.  Shame and fear are some of the main tactics in how mainstream medical care is eugenics.  I said I was scared of going on the medications she suggested, that it was overwhelming to start multiple medications at once, since I wouldn’t know which medication was having what result.

My feelings were unwelcome in the room.  Rather than address them, or address my valid point about starting multiple medications at once, she threatened that if I didn’t treat the medical condition she was prescribing about, I could destroy my kidneys and need dialysis.  It was unbalanced, how I asked nuanced questions, fine like a tiny movement, and her ideas were like an oversized fist smashing everything.

It hurt that she was trying to scare me to motivate me, like dentists have tried to scare me to motivate me to floss, and dental hygienists have blamed me for the pain they were causing me by scraping my teeth.  The hot potato is passed around, the hot potato of “whose fault is it that you are suffering?”

It’s never the fault of the medical professional, culture, poverty, homelessness, systems, or any aspect of capitalism.  Somehow it’s always my fault based on their imagination of how I eat, how I behave, what I’ve done, and who I am.

money

How did patients get this dismissed, considered lacking intelligence?  To a doctor, information matters if it comes from another doctor, from an authority of their own discovery, a machine’s measurement, or even from the CNA who just wrote down what I said incorrectly.  Rather than listen to me, she listens to her CNA’s faulty interpretation.  Direct info from a patient wastes her time; the CNA is supposed to translate what I say into important person language.  But of course the CNA might not have heard me to begin with.

Whose time is worth more?  The doctor gets paid more than the CNA. I’m getting nothing.

Not only am I harmed by the hierarchical idea of the worth of thin, abled, white, young, male bodies.  I’m also harmed by the power hierarchy within the clinic itself.  Who matters, and whose time matters?  Not mine for sure.  I’m there to be easy and pliable to what the doctor says, biting my tongue about the reality of my life.  But I’m not going to do that anymore.

what I wish

I wish my ideas were welcome, and I was a trusted collaborator.  Not sure if it’s my fatness or craziness.  Does this happen to everyone?  Mainstream medical care is eugenics, so I’m never considered the boss of my health, or a competent collaborator in anything.

It’s infantilizing how I’m praised for weight loss and compliance, and criticized for anything outside what the doctor expects.  The truth is, I’m brilliant and pay attention to my body and what it needs.  I’m not clueless.  My fatness isn’t a failure.  It’s a valid variation of person, something neutral to work with.  Doctors see my fatness as a huge failure and evidence that I don’t matter.

My health is sacred, and my body is sacred.  A doctor can’t comprehend that, so who’s smart in the room?  I’m at a poverty clinic, and my inviolate spirit is not considered there.  I’m a customer to get in and out of the door.  The totality of my being is irrelevant.

Really that is disrespectful.  The deepness of the disrespect hurts me.  I don’t want to be treated like that, and I don’t want to treat anyone like that.

love

So I suffer and churn, turn it in on myself, roll around in emotional pain, consider my options, hate myself for a day, and then come out the other side ready to make plans.  I cry a lot, write this blog post, and cook breakfast, as I am the one caring for this fat, disabled, amazing, wonderful, beautiful, valid body 24-7.

I’m the one cooking my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Except these delicious, healing beans my friend made and brought over last night.  The Thai food Ming’s old friend had delivered.  And the savory Brussels sprouts a neighbor perfectly roasted for me.  Yes, love is real.  Community is real, and I deserve to live.