"and who are you? the mom?...are you in the same grade?" -- AKA lessons learned from the ER

for someone headed to spend a good portion of my upcoming years in a hospital, i have almost zero experience being a patient in one.  the hazy 4am ER visit that lasted only a couple hours freshman year was really the only legitimate hospital experience.

last week, however, i had to take a client to the ER, and it was a new experience.  i drove there thinking that i'd just let the doctors do whatever they had to do and just be supportive company for the client, but as soon as we stepped inside, i immediately became so protective of my client that i was ready to fight whomever was going to be less than perfectly friendly to my client.  starting from the triage nurse, who couldn't believe that my client didn't know what "abdominal" meant ("Do you have abdominal pain?" "i don't know what that means" "ABDOMINAL? like, your belly?!"). I wanted to pull her aside and be like, "look, she's only 16 years old and probably hasn't even taken biology yet because of all the different schools she's been transferred to, so why don't you just try to pretend that you are not judging." but i didn't, because that would have been poor role modeling of communication skills. 

then we got lucky and got a very nice nurse (the one who asked us "so are you both in school? are you in the same grade?").  she was the one who completely understood my client's fear of needles and coaxed her through the entire process effortlessly, and who also told me that the single most important thing in working in the medical field was making people comfortable and being able to still do so with all the craziness going on in a hospital -- making patients feel like the doctor had all time time in the world even when you only had 60 seconds.  i told her she was doing such a great job with that.  unlike the older male doctor who barged in later, obvious that he was in a huge hurry and was like, "so you are the patient, and who are you? the mom?" before i could even answer, he got pulled away again.  he came back to confirm her medical history, saying, "so you have ADHD? is that why you are in a mental health treatment facility?"  NO! that is NOT why, and how is that any of your business anyway? plus, do you really want to know the real reasons? how about rape, incest, physical abuse, paternal abandonment, maternal drug addiction and periodic homelessness?  but my client handled it so well and just said, "no, i'm in treatment for a variety of reasons."  way to go, girl.

THEN, the doctor wanted to do a rectal exam on her despite her protests told her dismissively that there weren't any female doctors around.  at this point, i remembered one of my interviewers asking what i would do if a patient asked me to get him a doctor of his own gender.  i remembered thinking that it was just one of those stereotypical scenarios that everyone always hears about but never ends up being a big deal.  now i know just how big of a deal it could be.  working in an environment where just the word "sex" could trigger a flashback of a rape, or witnessing a seizure could trigger flashbacks of mothers overdosing on crack, i'm getting very good at never assuming what anybody has gone through.  after all, who am i to say, "just get over it," when a girl that may have been through hell and back doesn't want a male doctor poking around her area?  everyone has their issues and i'm all about going out of one's comfort zone, but not at the expense of adding more trauma to the most vulnerable people in the world.  the tricky thing is, sometimes you really can't tell who they are.