Hello Listeners,

I’d like to start with an excerpt from the essay I’m sharing this week - it’s about being a medically vulnerable patient needing care:

To be a patient is to be the complete focus of a doctor’s attention and yet, made to feel invisible as if you could never understand the complicated thing they’re seeing — which, ironically, is you — the you that only you can be and feel. The docs hold back what they see, and what they see has never felt like any nuanced or emotional version of me — the version of me that I’m experiencing in that moment:  terrorized. Can I blame them?  Who wants to look at terror?  It’s unfathomable by design. 

And now, with the Roe v. Wade overturn, I can not fathom being denied medical care after my baby died in utero nor can I fathom a world that would gleefully prevent it. My body clung to that baby for over a month after it passed… and some people really believe that in order to safely get to the other side of that trauma and physical fact, that medical attention wouldn’t be warranted and shouldn’t be legal?

If you substitute “legislators" or “judges” for “doctors” in the excerpt above, that’s my best attempt at getting at the devastation of feeling unseen when getting legal care - in California by relatively compassionate caregivers! Now imagine what it’s like to not have your pain and need seen at all….

Now, the full essay….

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lizhansen.substack.com