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Lets Talk About Medical Trauma…

December 12, 2021 Lucy Dawson

hello friends. Let’s chat.

Tw – medical negligence

This past week has had me thinking a lot about the impact that having a bad experience with a medical professional/s can have on any future encounters a person has at doctors/ hospitals.

I remembered a poignant tweet I read from @ JackMeraxes – ‘being able to trust your doctor is a really big privilege’ and how this rings true for so many disabled people, for so many reasons.

A very long and short for anyone here for the first time is that my brain disease was misdiagnosed by doctors as a mental breakdown, and upon them then sectioning me for three months, further (big) errors led to me leaving hospital newly disabled with a paralysed lower leg & a brain injury. The reasons that all of this happened were hidden from me for years.

Something I never really talk about, but should, is how since this happened, I cannot go to a hospital appointment without having a severe trauma response. Being inside hospital makes me feel extremely panicky and scared, and I often have sleepless nights and lots of tears if I know I have an appointment- regardless of what it is for.

More than this, when I left hospital in extreme pain this week, my first thoughts of course were that the doctor had done something wrong … or an even harder thought to manage… the doctor hates me because they know I told people about what this hospital did it on purpose …. Sounds silly right? Sounds very self involved and self important? But these thoughts after what happened are so hard to shake.

And it is such a uncomfortable position to be in, and to talk about – because as well as hating what doctors did to me and how this has left me feeling, I am also fully aware of the lack of funding, overworking and understaffing of health care in the country I live.

It is difficult to not feel like a bad person for expressing these emotions and hard to explain to anyone who has not been through anything similar. To be so grateful for our healthcare system and everything it does, but also to have been one of the people that’s life was completely altered and changed forever by malpractice of a select few in the system?

Overall, I feel – confused.

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Let’s Talk Pity Porn.

December 8, 2021 Lucy Dawson

Hello friends. Let’s have a chat.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is the way that others want to see disabled people, particularly in relation to inspiration/pity porn.

In my own life, towards the start of my illness and when I was discharged from hospital – people in my personal life were happy to discuss what was happening to me, to share the news, to chat about it over coffee with friends etc.
When I was stuck back in my parents spare room, unable to keep my eyes open, unable to leave the house – it was a great story to share that was bound to get people who heard it to shed a tear or shake their heads and tut along in disbelief.

But what I noticed- as I started to regain ‘Lucy’ and was able to start making my own life choices again, and made my journey down the path I am on today, an unconventional path – social media, reclaiming my sexuality, speaking out loudly and confidently spreading my message wherever I can … these people were no longer accepting and supportive of me. Instead, MY behaviour became the source of the tutting and the head shaking.

It was harder to pity the girl wearing some (rather exquisite) underwear & womping out with messages of being disabled and sexy. Even though my condition hadn’t changed, and everything I’d been through hadn’t disappeared.

Now I heard reports of family members and acquaintances with their judgmental takes on how id turned my life around.

And I wonder – would it make you more comfortable if I was still in that bed? Do i make you uncomfortable because I don’t match the preconceived idea you had in your head of what knowing a disabled person would be like? Can you not proudly tell your friends, around coffee, about the girl you knew who had a brain disease anymore in case they Google me and see me rocking some Ann summers or lovehoney?

Disabled people often have to force our own paths in life, finding work that allows for our conditions and best believe I tried a multitude of jobs, and struggled immensely. I am so lucky to have landed where I have after such a traumatic ride, and even if you cannot be proud of me, I am proud of myself 🙋🏼‍♀️🦓