Thread by @DisInHigherEd

Trigger Warning: Trauma and Self harm for thread
@nolan_syreeta @manijadegarcia @BlackInMH

Today is my first trauma anniversary of the most severe medical trauma I have dealt with in my life in a critical period of my academic journey. Really, I could be in graduate school
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right now. My applications to my 7 planned programs could have been so strong. This medical trauma happened 2 months before the deadlines to my graduate school programs. I had just gotten to the point where I was ready to fill out the applications that acceptance would have
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meant leaving my medical teams, but I was prepared to make that change. This medical trauma was the worst 2 hours of my life to a consent that really wasn’t a full consent, to have my pain dismissed, to have wheelchair support to leave denied, to have a resident speak with
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such callous disregard for my experiences, to have a supervising doctor denying my pain medications whilst petting me on the head like an animal, to be left bleeding from the last nerve stimulation removed from my hip to be forced to find the alcohol and bandaids kept in the
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office, and to be abandoned in their @UCSDHealth neurology office. This triggered my PTSD deeply in retrospect to my previous medical trauma. Being raped in two psychiatric units to tell staff that dismissed my concern to be locked in two separate Florida units a year apart
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once at 18 and again at 19 with staff who didn’t believe and wouldn’t protect me along with my rapist. I felt abandoned. I was triggered to my final psychiatric unit stay in 2012 that I felt uncomfortable with after leaving to find the medical record written by this white
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female psychiatrist who called me manipulative, gamey, and said that I should be sent to the state psychiatric unit if I ever came back. Soon after that group dropped me. I was left with the YMCA for therapy. I dug deep into a Christ centered recovery program called Celebrate
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Recovery to see if God could help me to stop being suicidal and I think faith and desperation to never go back to a psychiatric unit is what has kept me at 9 years since my last suicide attempt. I am still Christian, but it is hard being Christian. To come back to that day of
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October 5, 2020 - new wounds and old wounds reopened intertwined. I know that I have all the support I need here to write strong applications, but I was terrified to leave. I wrote 2 applications that were not the best representations of myself, my talents, and my passion to
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transform the mental health field through comprehensive preventive strategies across the lifespan like we have in most other health areas. I didn’t get accepted to any universities and post bacc options out the state were now out of question. I wanted to heal and to have
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support. I started to see my counselor 3 times a week, it wasn’t enough. Here at @UCSanDiego, we have support for sexual trauma, but no resources for medical trauma. There is CARE at SARC and they offered to talk to me. I didn’t do it because I cannot always be the advocate
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for change when I just need to take care of myself. It hurts to feel abandoned in terms of campus resources. Having my #PTSD deeply triggered lead to a place where my #Fibromyalgia was more reactive to my emotional pain, I am still in that place of deeply triggered chronic
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pain. This medical trauma was overlaid with the emotional trauma for 7 months by my co-founder of the @_UCSA Disability Ad Hoc Committee and the aftermath of filing a grievance that he shared publicly to @ucsc student government to watch people leave massively as the weight
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of the committee was left on me with change in my communication abilities, I just shut down a bit. It could have also been the undiagnosed #autism that I just became aware of this year. The remaining leadership and I created a sustainable platform called @JADEdisjustice that
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we are working to create a stable foundation for before launching the new year for our @UofCalifornia @JADEdisjustice systemwide chapter, but I am afraid of something going terribly wrong this year again. I moved into an apartment to have it broken into the same day last
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month, which felt like another assault on my feelings of safety and another trauma to heal from. Last week, I started an intensive outpatient program as I have reached the point where I cannot heal from all of this trauma on my own and I need to be held more accountable for
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the constant picking until I bleed that I do in addition to my avoidance of self care. I got Sisterlocks to force myself to shower and I gently do once every two weeks but over the past year, the depression has been so bad that it may be once or twice in like a month. I am
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not much better with brushing my teeth with constantly masking because I am terrified to have another disability like #LongCovid that may interact with my other disabilities. I have also found myself reaching a point where I am angry that it is mom with cancer and not me. I
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wish one of my disabilities was life threatening, not just quality of life limiting. I have never been this open in a public space about the weight of the feelings I am dealing with so if your comment does not come from a spirit of kindness and respect, I ask you not to
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comment. I think that mental health and physical health intertwine so much, but it is not seen in the construct of medical malpractice. I have been trying for a year to get UCSD to actually hear my grievance and do something. I reported the medical trauma the next day, but
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it wasn’t until months later that a supervisor from the “We Listen” patient grievance line left me a voicemail that they forgot about me and Risk Management with Segwick has not been an improvement. The investigation was completed in May and I still have not had a meeting to
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discuss the findings of the investigation. My investigation left Segwick and now I have a one month extension on the statute of limitations. I want a settlement, but since this is being measured against medical malpractice since I am not dead because of medical errors or
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permanently disabled directly because of the incident, I am not likely to find a medical malpractice attorney to help me with this at all. I just feel abandoned in this way too. I love having you all here in #DisabilityTwitter supporting my and my #MutualAidRequest calls,
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but it should be @UofCalifornia paying and it is likely that will never happen. Being Black with the level of disabilities I have seems like a recipe for great harm. I just feel depressed and numb in this moment, but so glad to be here. I have a meeting to get to
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with @APHADisability's Executive board, I will be back.

Have any of you experienced medical trauma that has affected your academic plans?

I don't know if I will apply next year, I am just in a lot of pain emotionally and physically.

#DEHEM21

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