Friday, November 25, 2005

happy goddamn thanksgiving

Well, I don't want to go into a lot of details, but instead of cooking indian food as expected Anna and I spent the majority of yesterday in the emergency room. She's okay, more or less, but it was stressful and unpleasant. I was in the waiting room most of the time, waiting for someone to come out and tell me that something had gone terribly wrong and either a) she was dead (I've seen too many episodes of ER, I know) or b) she was really sick and was going to have to spend the night. At one point, she told me her body was rejecting the colonialist holiday and that was the problem.
Can I just say, it fucking sucks being in a lesbian relationship when it comes to healthcare? (Also looking for an apartment, but that's another story.) Linguist Lauren printed something in her blog recently about how women recieve less care in ER's, and it's of course even worse for queer women. Not to mention exchanges like this:
Nurse: So are you sexually active?
Queer patient: Um, kind of...
Nurse: So you need a pregnancy test.
QP: Um, no.
Nurse, Seriously, if you're sexually active you need to take a pregnancy test.
QP: I'm only sexually active with women, okay?
Not what you need when you're sick, I find. Not that it's always a big deal, but it certainly can be hard to cut through the preset dialogue and make yourself understood, and it can be a little embarrassing (for me anyway) to be forced into a discussion of my sexual practices with someone I don't know anything about. Anyway, Anna's going to be fine and they hopefully have figured out what's wrong with her and she's peacefully sleeping while I get up way too early on a holiday to go to, you guessed it, rehearsal.

1 comment:

lauren said...

What an unfortunate situation. That's of course what our health care situation is: an unfortunate situation. Sorry to hear it; glad Anna's well!