Just after I got out of the hospital, I tweeted about how great it was that my medical team was made of such diverse people. Different races, ages, genders, nationalities, sexual orientations, etc. There was an older woman from the Phillipines! There were several people from the Caribbeans! Several more who were Hmong! There was at least one gay woman! There were several Muslim black women! One Taiwanese-American woman like me! It was amazing.
Several months ago, I decided to look up the staff at Regions Hospital. None of the pople I remembered from my time in the hospital were there. Granted, this was over a year-and-a-half later, but still. You would think there would be a few people I remembered. That’s when it hit me. I knew I had had delusions while I was in the hospital. Many, many, many of them. So it should have occurred to me that maybe the diversity I had so welcomed in my hospital experience was…well, not real.
About a month ago, I asked my brother if there were any people of color on my medical team. Please remember I’m in Minnesota. PoC is just under 20%. Which, quite frankly, is a lot more than when I was a kid. But it’s still not much, and you can bet that the diversity goes way down in a specialized job such as nurse or doctor.
My brother said that not one of my team members was a PoC. He said that there may have been one when he wasn’t there, but he hadn’t seen one.
So. All the memories I have of people of color taking care of me? Either didn’t happen at all or I just substituted in PoC because that’s what I wanted to see.
Here are several of the incidents that I remember. One was an elderly female nurse from the Phillipines who reminded me of one of my Taiji classmates and even looked like her a bit. In my mind, anyway. She was very motherly to me and taught doctor-related classes at a college nearby. She brought one of her students (East Asian) to tend to me because it was related to his schoolwork.
Did that really happen? Probably not. Looking back at it, it doesn’t make sense. None of it made sense, but try to tell that to someone who is as high as a kite.
By the way, I am very straightlaced in real life. Idon’t do drugs; I don’t even drink. Now, however, I can see why people do drugs. It was the best feeling in the world. I was flying high and felt no paint. I think it was the second or the third week after I returned home that I realized I actually had a body. And that body was in PAIN. I could see why people got hooked on opiates. They were so fucking good. Anyway. Ahem.
My brother recently asked me if the story I told him about a girl on my floor dying of COVID was real. I said it probably wasn’t. I mean, I can’t say it for sure, but there is no evidence that it actually happened. I’m pretty comfortable saying it didn’t after looking at the situation dispassionately. There was no ruckus on the floor either before or after I thought it happened. Not that they necessarily would have talked to me about it, but I would think there would have been some fuss around me if that had actually happened. Plus, the story as I thought it happened was highly unlikely.
There are so many other things that I thought happneed that didn’t. But there were also things that actually happneed. I checked in with my brother about different memories. One was that I asked every nurse for a glace of ice water whenever they came into the room. He said yes, I definitely did that. He also confirmed that my father talked about taking me ‘back’ to Taiwan so we could be a family.
It’s really weird to have to question things that I thought I knew happened to me. And realizing that 90% of what I remembered was wrong in some way. Either wrong people or me just completely making shit up. I tihnk it’s funny for the most part, but it does make me wonder if the lessons I learned from the hospital are valid. I mean, one of the biggest things I took away from my stay was to stop hating my body. And that was because the nurses treated me so well when helping me use the bathroom. Does it matter if I don’t have the details right? I mean, if they made me feel safe, cared for, and like an actual human beeing, does it matter if it really happened as I imagined it?
I love my body now because of the care they took with helping me take a shit. Should I give that up because it might not have happened exactly as I remembered it? I don’t think so. Look, life is hard. If I can get a boost, I’ll take it. I don’t care if it’s real or not is what I’m saying. I love my body now, and I don’t care how that came about. Whether it’s the drugs or the mythical kind nurses in my brain, it matters not.
My brother has also confirmed that the one nurse who sat with me while I was unconscious came to see me when I was awake because she had to see me alive and talking. She had tears in her eyes as she talked about holding my hand when I was unconscious. It was the weirdest experience becauseI had no memory of that happening.
I’ve pretty much resigned my self to that lost week when I was unconscious. I know I will never recover that memory. It’s a bit harder to accept that the things I thought I remembered may not have happened. In my memory, there were at least five Asian people who were on my medical team. Two Muslim African American women. Nope. One gay white woman (no idea). The woman from the Phillipines, at least three people from the Caribbean (nope nope nope) and a Taiwanese American female doctor who noted our shared background. Also no! I know I said that earlier, but it’s so wild to me.
My drugged out brain literally made up the utopia I wished I lived in. That’s something I’ll think about for a very long time.