Reflection on Abortion & Euthanasia, Take 3, P6: Where I tell but don't show why I mistrust doctors.
Channel: Ari R pronouns she or they
Date: 12/07/2021

Part 4 is tentatively titled "Where I start some stories not really mine to tell," and therefore may remain unpublished. Part 6 is short, so in the interest of actually publishing part of this, I skipped Part 5 for now. Here are the notes I drafted while I was editing what I edited of the Part 4 transcript before deciding to keep it private for now:I stumbled upon an article a few months or years ago that led me to believe the kinds of school suicide prevention rallies that my high school held after the death of a student by self-inflicted gunshot wound back in the late 90s have become frowned upon within the mental health community as poor practice. I hope that's true from a "too late for me but glad for the people who will benefit" perspective, but I'm sure as shit not researching it right now.  I LOVE to see "too late for me but glad for the people who will benefit" changes. I cried when I learned that parental income is no longer to be considered as part of the process for seeking financial aid for higher education. What a disgusting way to give parents far too much control over the life choices of another human being. I do forgive my parents for attempting to exercise too much control over my life choices, but it still takes active and difficult emotional work.That change came 20+ years too late to undo the damage I did to myself diving into debt and continuing to conceal my sexual orientations after I learned that I would still have to return to my parents' house between semesters because I couldn't actually afford to attend university. I would prefer to see some changes that benefit me, too, but lemme not hold my breath on that one. There are more fun and effective ways to kill myself. Suffocation is the method I failed at during my first attempt. It sucks for people who could benefit from "the power of touch," a phrase that one of the yoga instructors I follow, Adriene Mischler, uses, that I no longer desire to touch people who are not my sexual partners or potential sexual partners. I like to make people feel soothed, not only satisfied, and it feels far more cruel-to-be-kind than I prefer to be to deprive friends, family, and people in need of the warmth and connection of a hug or a shoulder rub. But physical contact is, for me, no longer worth the risk. I will assume myself to be an asymptomatic carrier of both COVID and HIV for the rest of my life. I hope this offers some reassurance to anyone who has felt sexually harrassed or assaulted by me. This is a step that I should have taken as a responsible adult when the good ol' boy doctor who several years earlier told me I had a "perfect vagina" tried to talk me into paying for an STD panel I could not afford by telling me in 20-fucking-17 that as an educator, I might have caught something from a toilet seat. Paying for an STD panel was a rationalizable expense during multiple partner play years, but definitely not as an underemployed and uninsured person practicing monogamy, regardless of my orientations. The urgency in his attempt created a concern that he may have concealed a previous diagnosis and that the prescription from the dermatologist to whom he had referred me was treatment for an STD/STI of which I was unaware. But the reason I walked out of his office mid-exam during a subsequent visit was that he told me in 30 years of medical practice, a woman had never asked him to see a copy of an ultrasound when I asked to see mine. Because this is not the only incident where I have felt like medical professionals were hiding information about my health from me, I have become increasingly concerned over the past two decades that I was sterilized as a child during groinal hernia surgery. I'm one of the people with two scars, one on each side, for a herniation on only one side. Knowing that sterilization has happened to the unwilling, unwitting poor and knowing that members of the military and their families are included in the groups of people experimented on, I have lost all interest in interacting with medical and healthcare professionals. I occasionally make exceptions for family members who pursued medicine, but even those have become rare since I watched my uncle suffer through three months of wildly inconsistent medical care during paralysis and hospitalization following a stroke because his life partner - A NURSE - hung an irrational amount of hope on his being a miracle recovery case. His organs failed two days before the time that she finally agreed to schedule the plug to be pulled on his life support.Reshape the healthcare/governance/education systems to respect and appreciate diversity (as that's what sustains our ecology!) and to provide quality services equitably (as that's what unlocks sustainable society). Among those services, include an opt-out option, not only for each service type but for participating in any services at all.