New Year, Same Body: What It's Like When An ER Doctor Actually Cares

New Years Day. Today. A fresh start. A new page. A day where I would gingerly paint a shimmering gold shadow on my eyelids and head to a friend’s small porch brunch with visions of vanilla bean French toast dancing in my head. A day where we could say “cheers” while clinking glasses and audibly daydream together about what’s next to come.

New year, new you they say. Pardon my French, but whoever they are is fucking wrong. In my case, let’s call it what it is — new year, same fucking body that loves to flair up with kidney stones and renal colic

After passing kidney stones and crying against my bathtub this morning, I could feel the spasms in my left flank take over. “It will stop,” I said to myself reapplying my mascara desiring so deeply that for this day, I could be a quote unquote normal woman with thriving organs and picture perfect insides.

I’m not that quote unquote picture perfect woman though. I am the woman who ends up vomiting into blue emergency department bags wondering if the wait to see a doctor will be 90 minutes or 4 hours. I am the woman anxiously working myself up with the question…Will I be treated with compassion and decency or like a mad woman seeking pain medicine with an invisible disease? 

In April of 2020, I wrote about a horrible experience I had with a physician. So horrible, the nurse shut the door and told me to not go home but directly to another hospital immediately. That story went viral with over 100,000 direct reads on my website and hundreds of thousands more on The Mighty. It was even picked up by Yahoo. To this day, I get multiple emails a week with people sharing their very own ER and chronic illness stories because they stumbled upon on what I shared.

When I wrote that blog, I wrote that if doctors won’t help me, and that is their job, then who would? I said. “I don’t need a band-aid, I need a medical hero to take me seriously with a true plan of attack  — I need them to take me as seriously as I take my pain and my chronic illness.”

Tonight, the doctor who oversaw my care didn’t just make eye contact and speak to me like a human deserving of respect — he listened. He didn’t question me and ask why I think it’s his responsibility to do something for me. He didn’t mock my pain. He didn’t treat me the way so many providers have done in the past. He acted with confidence, grace, and kindness.

Look, I know what it can look like when a doctor sees someone’s chart and they are what the medical field calls a “frequent flyer.” I get it. I understand the bias that can come from a chart like mine. It’s not right. It’s not okay. It’s not fair, by any means, but it’s reality. Bias is real, especially for women and people of color, and it’s extremely unprofessional, dangerous, and in layman’s terms: wrong. 

In April, I wrote: “I ask seriously for these providers to learn compassion, active listening, and out-of-the-box thinking even when they are overworked and tired. I ask seriously for these providers to see me as the woman I am and the pain I’m in and treat me accordingly, not based on an assumption or what they think will act as a band-aid.”

My doctor tonight didn’t just provide me with exceptional care, but he delivered on not just seeing me as another patient, another “frequent flyer” you see doctors make horrific TikTok videos about, or another mad woman with questionable, “made up pain” (I’ve been told this many times before). He saw me as someone in need of help — a real person. And he wasn’t going to leave any stone (no kidney stone pun intended) unturned until he could offer relief back for my body.

Tonight was one of the worst and most painful flare ups I’ve ever had, but having a doctor who went out of his way to ensure I received the care I needed without an ounce of judgment touched me deeply. So deeply. If every doctor could listen, focus, and troubleshoot like he did — the chronic illness community would be forever changed. 

When you’re writhing in pain and experiencing radiating sparks so severe you get on all fours in a fit of tears, having a physician acknowledge your pain — after so many saying “kidney stones don’t even hurt, nothing in the kidney ever hurts” means everything.

2021 is here. I didn’t get my vanilla bean French toast. But I did get treated by a doctor who, for the first time in a long time, saw my chronic illness while seeing me as a person too.

So, thank you Dr. Leumas for starting my New Year off with the things we all could use a lot of this year: compassion, kindness, listening, humor, patience, and determination. Thank you for rolling the dice on me and showing me someone in an ED can actually care.