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ICYMI: This post originally published August 4, 2020 on the California Health Care Foundation blog here.
It was the Black woman’s third trip to the emergency department because she was feeling short of breath. She was starting to panic. She knew the COVID-19 death toll was climbing and that it was far worse for Black people than white people, and yet the doctors told her to go home again. But this time she pleaded, “If you all don’t admit me to the hospital, I’m going to die. I can’t breathe.”
“My pending exodus from academic medicine after 15 years…” This is how I started my piece recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I wrote my thoughts on what academia needs to do to right the wrongs that centuries of racism and anti-Blackness have created, but not on the experience that served as my final straw. A story in the news since then makes me want to share it now…
Today is my 50th birthday.
A couple of weeks ago, I was lamenting my birthday’s approach because of its promise of middle-aged woman invisibility as punishment for graying hair and slowing metabolism. I managed to climb out of self-pitying funk long enough to eke out a “happy 50th birthday old man” wish to a Latino friend. His response: “Lol…Thank you. Crazy. Never thought I’d live past my 20s yet here I am.” And the next day George Floyd was murdered, just days after we learned about Breonna Taylor’s and Ahmaud Arbery’s murders. George was 46. Breonna was 26. Ahmaud was 25.
I spoke too soon.
Recently I posted on Twitter and FaceBook about feeling like I had found a non-confrontational way to appeal to folks to comply with wearing masks when we couldn’t be at least 6 feet apart. While a couple of people did kindly cover their mouth and nose with their t-shirt, there were at least a dozen more who just ignored me or rolled their eyes. I call these people selfish assholes.
