I’m Tired and Angry

I’m Tired and Angry I’m tired and I imagine you are too, tired and angry about the same stories of inappropriate, racist treatment of people with sickle cell disease from our healthcare providers. Over and over “they said I just wanted drugs,” “they called security on me.” I’m tired and angry. It’s like going through a door that is stuck, you try to get it open, you push and shove and yet the door stays stuck. You may think to yourself, how can I fix this damn thing, do I need a file or saw to make it smaller, do I need a screwdriver to tighten the hinge, or should I give up and call a handyman? I find it ironic that we can easily think of ways to fix a door, the tools we need come quickly to mind, and yet we don’t have a clue for fixing the treatment of people with sickle cell disease. This is not true of the entire healthcare system. If we women feel a lump in our breast, we know what tools are available. We can call our regular doctor, or visit a clinic. This is true of most healthcare issues, heart disease, pregnancy, accidents or injuries. There are doctors able to treat us, doctors who do not accuse us of being drug seekers because we have made a trip to the emergency room. So what’s different about sickle cell disease? Frankly sickle cell disease is just about the only illness that affects mainly people of African ancestry. For all the other conditions I mentioned earlier, there are lots of research and plenty of specialists situated all across the country. A person experiencing a heart attack can find a doctor to treat him, he doesn’t have to hope that the local emergency room doctors will actually know something about heart disease or won’t accuse him of being a drug addict when he shows up at the hospital. The problems of racism in medicine began of course with the kidnapping and enslavement of people from Africa. This supposedly Christian nation had to find ways to resolve the cognitive dissonance between believing in a fair and righteous God and holding people in bondage. They decided that thinking of Africans as animals, close in heritage to the chimp or baboon, would give them the permission they needed to rape the women and sell the children to the highest bidder. If you think these racist practices are in the distant past, think again. We can continue our awful treatment of people with sickle cell disease because they are somehow “less than.” Things are changing. Researchers are working on cures, professional organizations are coming to grips with their part in this sad story, yet those stories persist. If we are to fix racist practices in healthcare, we must fix racism. We must understand that all lives are worth saving and that unbiased, high quality treatment of all patients must be the accepted standard of care.   Nancy M. René Co-Founder, JVT Advocates Los Angeles, California, United States