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4:38am December 22, 2012

More about the nerve block from hell.

My DPA doesn’t want me letting residents learn procedures on me again. And after what she said, I have to agree with her. I just… forgot somehow.

There’s this concept. In people’s heads. Of a person who is technically alive, but whose mind isn’t big enough or real enough to count as a real person, as if this one little part of our mind somehow determines who we are. Most of the time, such a person isn’t even missing that area. But either way, it’s this horrible concept that exists in the minds of lots of people and compels them to see lots of people as almost like the living dead.

I had forgotten, somehow. I don’t go out much. Everyone I see knows me. I didn’t realize how easy it is to forget that this is how I come across to a lot of people. This is the ugliest side of the whole concept of a retard, although it goes by many other equally ugly names by situation (vegetable, empty shell, gomer, etc.).

Anyway, residents can be notoriously arrogant and confused. There are good ones but a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And my DPA reckons these guys who worked on me didn’t give enough of a shit what happened after they were done poking around inside my face. That they’d have been more careful if I’d been a real person. Just like the reason I didn’t get treated for very obvious delirium likely combines laziness and the “she’s not a real person anyway” principle.

I don’t know why I never thought of that. But this time was weird. It wasn’t just in and out again. It was all these dye injections and “vascular studies” and incompetence, and no way to know whether they’d have done better if I’d been a real person. Or a person who shows pain better.

Sometimes I don’t know what I would do without her remembering stuff like this for me. The world has been really confusing ever since I was in the hospital, and I forget about things like how people see me because I’m too busy trying to get my brain working better again.

Writing this has exhausted me. I don’t know why, the past day has actually finally seen things getting a little better. But if you’re disabled, especially if you are or people see you as cognitively disabled, be careful what you’re willing to put up with from teaching hospitals.