I went to get my blood drawn the other day, and sitting in the waiting room, I was struck by the strange sensation that almost every stranger around me was a resident of the area. The dizzying thought that each and every person sitting in the chairs around me had their own full, distinctive history and everyday life separate from mine — but that all of our daily lives were converging for a half hour or so in this nondescript little waiting room.
I read my book, but kept glancing up to imagine what kind of life each person there was leading; noticing details about their clothes, or the way they interacted with the receptionist, or the (im)patience with which they sat in their seats waiting. Once in a while I am hit with this overwhelming sense of how vast the depth and breadth of human life and experience is on this planet… how weird it is that everyone is centered in their own experience of life but that there is so much life going on around you, you couldn’t possibly understand everything about the human experience even if you read constantly or spoke with as many people as possible.
I was also struck by the strange sensation of being in a new place, a new room, of a region of the city that I know very well. A little reminder that even the places you tell yourself that you’ve explored every inch of are still filled with spaces that you have yet to (or may never get to) discover.
The older I get, the more I recognize that I know and understand very little — but paradoxically, that seems to me like a sign that I’m getting wiser (to the fact that I am a tiny speck in the fabric of existence). It’s a peaceful sort of humility.
You’re not that important in the grand scheme of the universe. But you’re of vital importance in your own life, and your influence touches many lives, even though most of those lives and the little marks you make are invisible to you.
There’s just too much to take in at any one time.
But some of the details I remember were: a daughter was accompanying her elderly mother who didn’t speak English, a man who sat next to me for five minutes kept making heavy sighs, a man in a power chair waited in the centre of the room with eye-catching silver-flecked cowboy boots on and a Starfleet sticker next to one of his front wheels, a woman across from me was falling asleep with her head leaning against the wall, and a couple came in trying to ask about the bill they had gotten in the mail for a test not covered by OHIP in broken English, then graciously paid and left relieved when the receptionist explained the situation and that OHIP would still cover most things.
Despite it being toward the end of the day, the technician who drew my blood was patient and gave me a warm smile. Definitely not a given when someone has already been working for hours! I’m lucky that I not only have no adverse reaction to getting my blood drawn… but that I also have a morbid fascination for watching my blood fill the vials — or pouch, when I donate (though I haven’t been well enough to do that since last summer).
Recently, I heard the theory that fainting at the sight of your own blood might have been a survival mechanism akin to “playing dead” in the hopes that whatever clawed you open would lose interest and move on to a livelier target. If that’s the case, then I wonder what evolutionary purpose my morbid fascination might serve. Perhaps to psych out whatever is attacking you by a display of curiosity or enjoyment, contrary to expectation.
The technician was lovely, though; happy to trade little jokes back and forth as she went through drawing my blood and another procedure that is so commonplace to her and so out of the ordinary for me. Like everyone else in the clinic, I just want answers: for some, a confirmation that things have or haven’t changed, and for others, a clue that will lead to diagnosis or treatment.
I took the long way home after leaving the waiting room, relieved that my doctor is making another attempt to diagnose the chronic condition that has been paining and exhausting me for years. I don’t expect there to be a magic cure, but I do hope that we might be able to determine some clear ways to manage the symptoms… the first round of tests several years ago resulted in the equivalent of a shrug and try physical therapy. I felt so defeated by that reaction that it took until this month to actually go back and try appealing to my doctor again, re-explaining everything I am experiencing and mentioning all the remarks and suggestions that my other healthcare providers have told me.
The first time, I explained that the chronic pain, fatigue, and depression were affecting my quality of life.
The second time, I explained that the same symptoms were affecting my ability to show up to work and that I didn’t think parenthood would be a safe option without being able to manage my symptoms.
It shouldn’t be the case, but using the exact same symptoms, the second appeal is what got the most engagement from my doctor, and the most tests ordered. The only difference between the two is that my symptoms were worse the second time around… because I got no treatment plan when they were first starting to appear/worsen.
I avoided going back to the doctor because when you have chronic pain and fatigue, you’re already running on less energy day-to-day, and I didn’t think it worth the energy to go back to the doctor and get the same depressing response a second time. I stumbled across a thread of women explaining that they got the same reaction I did at the doctor until they framed the exact same symptoms as being a barrier to pregnancy or as affecting their work, and suddenly their doctors were motivated to figure things out. With my worsening symptoms, I thought it worth a try.
I’m glad that it worked, but I’m also really sad that women’s (or femme-presenting people’s) health issues (chronic or acute) aren’t as well-studied and tend to be received without the same sense of urgency or seriousness. It doesn’t matter that my doctor is and always has received my concerns with a compassionate manner; there are systematic and societal issues at play that influence healthcare as a whole and that influenced my doctor’s training, most likely. I’ve gone to my doctor about my chronic chest pain for years (before this constellation of symptoms appeared/worsened) and the reaction I got was that it was likely costochondritis and not serious… that there was no known cause or treatment, and that it is a condition that primarily affects women. And I was sent on my way.
I was in my early twenties then, and had been experiencing that kind of chest pain since I was about fourteen. I had another doctor dismiss me and tell me it was just heartburn. It isn’t. I’ve had both, and heartburn doesn’t feel like this, so an antacid would do nothing. But that was that. It took until I was in my thirties for my doctor to order any kind of test to ensure that the pain wasn’t indicating any underlying heart problem. I was essentially told to just… endure it. The costochondritis hypothesis no longer held; instead, I was diagnosed with undifferentiated chest wall pain that is not dangerous. Even more vague than before. There was no suggestion of specific physical therapy to try or even medication to manage the pain when it got debilitating. It was just a dead end.
People won’t take your chronic illness as seriously if there is no specific diagnosis for it, either; you can’t ask for accommodations at work for something that a doctor hasn’t formally named and developing a treatment plan for something undifferentiated is guesswork at best… on the shoulders of the patient, in this case.
So I’m hopeful.
If you’re interested in reading more about the gender gap in data/design or a primer on menstruation, I highly recommend the two following books:
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
Blood by Dr. Jen Gunter
Whatever your baseline is, whatever your normal becomes, romanticize something in your day-to-day. This life is too rare, too fleeting, too strange and surprising to trick yourself into thinking that the everyday is mundane. Sometimes you can’t do a damn thing to change your circumstance, but your perspective? That’s yours to get creative with.
