They just can't help themselves

I went for my first COVID vaccination at the beginning of March at my local health centre. After (fairly logically) queueing outside the main entrance for 10 minutes, I learned through overhearing a conversation at the front of the queue that the vaccinations were taking place in another part of the building with a different entrance. The health centre  had not thought to communicate this to their patients in advance as the written signs were expected to do the trick for everyone. The receptionist on the door apparently suffered from the (not uncommon) white stick blindness, and I realised that she was using gesticulations to indicate the direction I needed. After having explained that the white stick meant that I couldn’t see enough to follow her directions, I eventually found my own way to the correct (tucked away and locked) entrance. I (perhaps too politely) suggested that it would have been helpful if they could have tagged visually impaired patients in their database giving us clear information about where to queue/go in the invitation reminder.

 

Eventually, I met with two staff in the vaccination room, one of whom was a doctor the other admin. Both were pleasant and courteous to me. I asked the woman at the computer why I had been invited for the vaccination earlier than I had expected, perhaps they had already reached below 60(?). She explained that my neurological spinal cord condition had caused me to be tagged as having a health issue in their patient database.

 

When the doctor heard the name of my condition, he was overcome by such a level of uncontrolled excitement that lesser writers than me might (not without good reason) have stooped to describe him as having almost orgasmed . his boyish glee was palpable and he immediately switched from talking to me as “you” to talking about me as “they” in that way that only doctors can. That way of imparting information, giving it a level of importance and not assuming, but knowing that their audience will be hanging on their every word. That   level of self-assurance, of utter confidence in their own right to speak about someone in the third person (plural) while in their presence. I had, in an instant, ceased to be personalised and become transformed into something far more interesting for him - a rare specimen, an object of curiosity due to my rare congenital neck condition. He clearly wanted to share (or show off) his  little knowledge to his junior female colleague. He’d probably only heard about the condition in his training and never met anyone with it, nonetheless, he wasn’t interested in me and my experience of it but simply imparting his scant knowledge about the condition – I wondered if I was meant to be impressed too.

 

“They can’t feel hot and cold” he boasted to his colleague almost stumbling over his words as they tumbled out.

“they can’t feel temperature!”, “they burn themselves without knowing” he excitedly continued while “they” was sitting right in front of him.

 

I’d had enough and  interjected that my neck condition has certainly been the object of medics’ fascination and how easily doctors seem to get carried away with themselves losing all sense that I am in the room and that there might be anything more to me than this condition. At least the guy had the good grace to concede that he was doing this too.

 

A part of me wished that I’d just said “who the fuck do you think you are talking about me like that”.

 

There is still so much baggage around this stuff for me and probably for many disabled people. This thing about having to remain calm, polite and considered even in the face of great rudeness and disrespectfulness. Disabled people  still struggle to be legitimately angry, it’s still framed in terms of a ‘failure to come to terms’ with our conditions/impairments, or being ‘over-sensitive’ and the label of having a ‘chip on your shoulder’. So it is these judgements that stop me swearing at such behaviour.

 

Sadly, to some doctors, we still represent the objects of clinical fascination, living examples of what they’ve studied or trained for, the living evidence of their successes or failures.