if i was born in the US, i would be dead
I think about this often.
I was born a month too early, with an infection, and had to spend a while in the incubator. The birth and this alone would have greatly indebted my parents.
Later on, I needed so much medical care - I had weekly shots for allergy treatment as a child, I was always very sick with a high fever once a year and needed meds and inhaler sessions at the local doctor’s office. I had to have a hernia fixed back then, too.
As a teen, I had my tonsils removed, I had to have all my wisdom teeth removed because they were causing severe issues, and I needed therapy and antidepressants for a few years. One time in gym class, I dislocated my knee, too. I had to go to so many doctors because of symptoms I know now were due to my Crohn’s and Bechterew’s disease, but they didn’t find it back then. So many blood tests, imaging, gastroscopies and later, colonoscopies. So many visits to the gynecologist because of PCOS and endometriosis.
I also had to go to the ER so many times; the worst ones were my kidney infection, a suspected stroke, complications after a lumbar puncture, myocarditis after a Covid shot, extreme tachycardia after Covid that later required beta blockers, and me heavily bleeding due to Crohn’s disease in March 2024. Two of these required an ambulance, many of them needed hospitalizations of a few days.
Now I’m reliant on biologics for the rest of my life to survive (unless gene editing or whatever brings a cure) and my current ones would cost me thousands, but I don’t have to pay anything. My mum was thousands in debt anyway while I was a teen and she was fighting rheumatoid arthritis, too; imagine how much more debt would have been generated with her and my health if we were in the US.
There is simply no way we could have afforded all the medical care we needed, especially for me. I would have not gone to a doctor so many times to avoid debt, possibly until it was too late, or I would have killed myself to evade the pain and debt and stop being a financial burden.
I’m only alive because I don’t live in the US.
The situation in the US breeds thoughts and ideologies close to eugenics and due to their cultural dominance, exports them and strengthens local eugenicist bullshit. I know many people like to read this blog, and there’s enough on here so that I am not simply a number, I am more humanized and real due to it. I’m sure no one reading this thinks I deserve to die, and if I had died years ago, this blog wouldn’t exist. But many, many people like me have died and still die in the US due to their untenable healthcare situation, and thousands have died and continue to die due to austerity measures in the UK since 2010. They are all reduced to a number, but they’re as much of a person as I am.
My life hinges on the fact that I was born here, not elsewhere, and that we have systems of solidarity in place that help people like me. So make sure to keep them, to develop them, to fight for them, and not to vote them away.
Reply via email
Published 23 Feb, 2025