My mom got hit by a truck when I was in fourth grade. Luckily my dad was home from work that day and able to respond and get her medical attention the moment it happened.
But my nine-year old brain did a weird thing. It wondered, “What if…?”
What if no one who knew my mom had been nearby?
What if no one knew to call us?
What if they took her to the hospital but didn’t know that she was allergic to Penicillin?
And, of course, that turned into – what if that happened to me?
My dad was in the military at the time, and to access different military resources you needed a military ID. Kids weren’t eligible for their own IDs until they were ten years old. So when my mom was in a coma for a full week, I worried about what would happen to me if nobody knew who I was.
I had a friend who introduced me to the wonderful world of “fan clubs” that she discovered among the pages of her pre-teen magazines. The main perk of joining these fan clubs was getting a “membership card” in the mail with your name printed on it… Oy vey… I must have joined at least 10 fan clubs in the next few months. I started carrying a purse with me (as a Fourth Grader) just so I’d have something to put all my IDs in because if I got hit by a truck and wound up in a coma, I wanted people to be able to figure out who I was. You could say I became obsessed with my identity.
With all the ACTUAL trauma in my family at that time, my goofy little neurosis fell completely under the radar. No one realized, until many years later when I told them as an adult, that I developed this super-weird personal coping strategy.
Eventually, I’ve managed to taper back to just carrying a couple forms of ID with me at a time – since ya know – they’re legally required in many contexts.
But as an adult, a new calamity struck – a serious diagnosis that consumed an entire of year of my life in medical treatments, surgeries and hospital stays. It happened – as “luck” would have it – right on the heels of my husband leaving me. So I was coping with the stress of a separation/divorce and a life-threatening illness all at the same time.
I went into “survival mode.” I dealt with what I could manage, and a bunch of other things fell by the wayside. To be perfectly honest, I don’t particularly feel like I ever fully “caught up” with life after that year – but that’s a completely separate tale.
Once the treatments stopped and the Doctors pronounced me “as good as it’s gonna get,” I heaved a huge sigh of relief, looked around at the nuclear fallout that remained of my now unrecognizable life, and decided to seek therapy cuz – What the HELL just happened???
My therapist was terrible at his job, but still managed to make me feel better in the long run because I realized with all the crap I’d been through; I still wasn’t as neurotic as he was!
I really just wanted someone to talk to – to sort things out with, who could be impartial and not blow smoke up my ass. He was constantly cutting me off, telling me about HIS personal issues and insisting that I wasn’t feeling the “right” way about certain things. And we totally got off on the wrong foot.
“I read your intake form. It appears you just overcame some pretty significant illness.”
“Yes.”
“And now that you’re through it, you’re experiencing some depression.”
“Yes.”
“Well this is very common. You see, most people who go through what you went through begin to identify AS the patient – AS the illness and when you finally are done with treatment, you feel like you’ve lost your new identity…”
“Um – no. I can pretty much guarantee that’s not it. I really didn’t identify as a patient at all. I worked overtime to live my life in between treatments and stay focused on ‘after.’ So, I think it’s just coming to grips with how much my life has changed in a relatively short time span…”
“Right – from being a patient to NOT being a patient…”
This exchange spanned a few sessions with little change in his assertions and ZERO change in mine. Maybe I should have told him that I’d already been through a trauma-based identity crisis when I was nine, so I KNEW the difference. I doubt it would have changed his “insight.”
However, I COULD see his point. I knew the kind of people he was talking about. I’d met them. But I also knew that wasn’t my issue. Some people wear their “Survivor” badge on their sleeve. It’s something they like to tell new people when they meet them.
“Hi! I’m Madison, and I’m an Ovarian Cancer survivor!”
“Heya – I’m Tony, and I’m almost a year out post-quadruple bypass!”
“I’m Justine, and I live with Type-II Diabetes…”
I guess I’m an insensitive bitch – but much like a person’s sexuality or gender expression, I kinda feel sorry for people who think whatever health crisis they managed to live through is the most interesting thing about themselves. Of COURSE, my friends and I share things we’re going through – but it’s not how we introduce ourselves – or each other for that matter!
So pardon me – but I don’t care what your mitigation factors were. I don’t care how many of which shots you took of how many times you tested positive or negative – your “Covid Survival Status” doesn’t interest me. By now we’ve all been exposed and either recovered or succumbed. In truth, the survival rate of my illness was only 80% with an 80% likelihood of recurrence. So color me unimpressed with those of us (especially under 70) who managed to “outwit” a variation of a flu/cold – with an overall 99.7% survival rate (not readjusted for deaths “with” vs “from” OR for Omicron – the mildest variant yet.)
I lived as an actual patient for a year and it was EXHAUSTING. The testing, the checkups, the hospital stays, the adjusting my lifestyle to accommodate my new limitations. I get it. But even though some aspects caused literal PERMANENT changes to my body, I set my sights on “returning to normal,” and eventually I did.
The broader damage of Covid-19 and the global “response” to it is especially evident among my friends in their thirties. They have SURVIVED. They could still get sick and – GASP – spread it to other people if they don’t: Mask, Distance, Vax, Boost, Boost, Test, Test, Test, Test…
Because of that 80% recurrence rate of a 20% lethal condition, I had to Test, Test, Test for several years following my initial course of treatments. I did NOT look forward to it. On the contrary – it was emotionally damaging every time I had to go back, get “readmitted” for the day and go through the barrage of hoops to prove I was still “gonna make it.”
Continued testing is holding people emotionally hostage. I eventually reached a point where my doctors smiled, shook my hand, told me I was outta the woods and wished me “vaya con Díos.”
Never has a girl been SOOO happy to put a chapter of her life behind her. So why are so many people still CLINGING so desperately to the “patient” narrative? They BELIEVED their lives were in imminent danger. It was never actually true.
I know, I know, I know!
“Rev – people actually DIED from COVID!!!”
I won’t get into the nitty gritty of the numbers, data sets and statistics with you here and now. That’s not what’s being discussed. What I’m getting at is – I get it. You may as well have suffered a stroke and needed a year of rehab just to tie your shoes again. You IDENTIFIED as “living with Covid,” for all of 2020. You identified as “Vaxxed” but then learned that you could still get sick anyway so “Mask back up, sheeple!!!” You identified as “Doing my part to stop the spread, so what the hell is wrong with other people?!?” But here’s the rub. You were never seriously at risk. (I’m obviously talking to people who didn’t end up shot up with Remdesivir and on a ventilator here.) You just BELIEVED you were because everyone was talking about it nonstop 24/7 and shaming people who didn’t message the “right” way and do the “right” things.
Do you realize the CDC has lifted all restrictions at this point regardless of your vax/booster status? No more masking. No more shots – even tho they ARE promoting the new “bivalent booster” with the safety and efficacy testing results in on 8,000 people – oops – make that EIGHT [8] dead mice. EVERYONE is pulling back on vaccine passports and mask mandates – even CANADA!
So WHY do I still hear people saying things like, “As soon as my husband and I get our new boosters we’re going to…” WHAT? WHY?
You know what’s equally as obnoxious? The people on social media in comment threads going on and on about their “Pureblood” status.
Yep. Didn’t think I’d go there – didja?
What “bullet” do you think you “dodged” putting your medical status out there into Cyberland for everyone to see? As a little-L libertarian, I 100% support each person’s individual right to make medical decisions for his or herself and any and all dependent children. I ALSO support a patient’s right to privacy. I’m APPALLED by the fact that among all the various lawsuits we had regarding the (ultimately failed) implementation of a FORCED “vaccine mandate” through the labor sector, no one ever stood their ground on medical privacy – you know the actual CONSTITUIONAL RIGHT the courts built the initial Roe vs Wade ruling on…? (The right to medical privacy is NOT quite the same thing as the right to terminate the life of a fetus – but for my much more nuanced look at that topic please check out THIS Article.)
Much more dystopian than employers requesting their workers disclose personal medical information, was the threat of a private business being forced by Federal Government to collect and report an employee’s personal health data to government agencies and/or require constant asymptomatic testing which only created MORE data for employers to collect and report. WTF? How did NO ONE fight back on privacy rights alone? Moreover – the very idea of a “vax passport” being shown at restaurants, theaters, banks, stores etc was ridiculous. You’re telling me that any schmuck serving me popcorn and overpriced soda should have access to my personal privileged medical information??? (I’ve worked in movie theaters – you’re not ALL schmucks ;) )
While Rand Paul was making a case for “natural immunity” carve-outs on Capitol Hill, I was pissed as hell that he wasn’t defending our rights to privacy and bodily autonomy. He seemed completely okay with Covid Check Points as long as you could have a “Get Out Of Jail Free” pass with “proof” of past infection. NO! NO! NO!
I’m not nine years old anymore. I don’t need a special card to look at to tell me who I am and remind me of what I’ve been through. Vaxxed. Pureblood. Covid-recovered. Masked. Tested. Don’t you get it by now? These are the fan-clubs everyone is joining for validation. These are the IDs you’re carrying around to cope with the upheaval in your lives. And in the long run, it’s as meaningful as a fourth grader’s purse stuffed full of puffy stickers, Chapstick and cheap plastic Fan Club cards.
I’ve allowed myself to be bullied and shamed into low levels of tacit compliance. I’ll admit it.
But as someone who REALLY DID face down life-threatening illness, I understand two things.
1) The medical industry KNEW the psychological ramifications of what they were doing to the GLOBAL public by treating them as perennial patients. They KNEW about the psychological connections that form when you face down life-threatening illness as part of a daily routine. They KNEW they were potentially altering your very IDENTITY.
2) You don’t have to identify that way if you don’t want to…
Very interesting insight into the complex genre of identity vs privacy vs political manipulation of individual freedom.