Healthcare Seen Through Uncommon Eyes

Healthcare Seen Through Uncommon Eyes

Limitations, they’re everywhere at work, school, and in life all together. But what about something that not many people can say they think about on a daily basis? Healthcare may seem like a right that people don’t have to think about on a daily basis but in fact some major corporations of healthcare networks treat it as if it were a privilege. In many countries healthcare is a major part of their culture. Taking and receiving the injured with little to no cost to them. Such as in Germany, in an article on “Insider Monkey”, “Germany’s hospitals are 90% publicly managed where citizens can receive a fast and affordable health care service” (qtd from Novicio). In America healthcare is big but debated, from newspapers to reports online to debates on TV, healthcare is everywhere and limitations on healthcare create bigger debates. The poor and the unfortunate are the ones that get the smaller cut of whatever is left after a debate, such as having hospitals and clinics that are packed with very little staff to care for them. It wasn’t till recently that it started getting very hard to acquire health care and even harder to not get decriminalized when having healthcare. It’s so narrow in a sense that if a person doesn’t fit the small square of normal, they get judged, such as the gay or the trans. I Can’t Afford to get Sick is a great example of that which was a speech debatable but at the same time relatable delivered by Leslie Feinberg. Leslie opens wide the healthcare system from her point of view and the struggles she’s had to go through as a trans woman, while also staying true to her self while readers like myself can relate to having dealt with it first hand.

 Before Leslie’s speech is presented, the written version of it is opened by her thought bubble. Fienberg starts off by describing how she feels, “I felt so ill the room seemed to spin. Yet if I stepped down from this podium, where would I go to seek health care? I decided to attempt to speak, and if I couldn’t continue, I’d ask for help from the audience (97).” Leslie’s thought bubble is what introduces her struggle head on. Before she even speaks to her audience she’s already set the tone. She doesn’t trust the health care system that she’d rather get help from the audience rather than seek medical help for herself. It gives the reader the impression that she’s gone over this before, that medical help would be the last resort as stated when she said, “As a transgender adult, I had only sought treatment in life-or-death situations. Moments when I was weakened and scared because of illness were times I least relished when a stranger examining my body; I felt vulnerable to potential hostility” (97-98). Without a doubt getting checked by a stranger you don’t trust can be scary, especially when a patient is different than the textbook normal patient in their 80s with a UTI. It’s a scar that gets ripped open every time she goes in to get checked out. Working at a hospital has exposed myself to many different patients, ranging from extremely sick to mildly drunk in the ER. One thing I never did was judge a patient based on their illness unlike many nurses I had the misfortune to meet. If a patient came in with a drug problem, they were immediately ‘junkies’ and the atmosphere changed in not only in the room but in the care. The nurses did their job but at the same time silently judged them because of their life choices. People shouldn’t have to be judged or feel insecure when all they want is to get cured, everyone’s human and no one should feel the need to cure themselves for the sake of not getting judged.