Medical bias against women of color

I can’t tell you how many times over the past 8 years I’ve had to have my husband take off of work to come to Walter Reed or Ft Belvoir with me because they wouldn’t take me seriously as a woman.

And while I was given some opioid painkillers after my double mastectomy, unlike Wanda Sikes, they only gave me 3 days worth at a time and I had to go in and beg for more. The plastic surgeon screwed things up so badly that I was in pain for 3 solid weeks. The doctor’s made feel like I was a lying drug addict when I would try to talk about the pain with them. After my two subsequent reconstruction surgeries, each which lasted the same 5 hours as the mastectomy and initial reconstruction, the 3 days of opioids was enough and then ibuprofen was fine. But the humiliation I felt each time I had to go in and plead for more pain meds still lives with me.

Needless to say, this week’s John Oliver spoke my truth and I’m not double cursed by being a woman of color, just a plain old white woman.