Warning: Don't Blindly Trust Your Doctor

I was adopted by the most kind, loving, and racially un-biased family a little multiracial girl like myself could ever want. In 1971, I was a 6 week old baby--a white, black and native American baby, who was being adopted by an all white family, which was really quite revolutionary at that time, especially being that I was from Detroit and they were from a conservative west Michigan city called Muskegon. And I think it was being raised with the kindness of true love and acceptance that this family had for me is what ultimately made me who I am today. I now know and understand why I am a child of God--to have been given the strength and dignity I need today to fight for my life, as well as truth and understanding for the lives of other minorities so that we may all try to fulfill our God given purpose while on this Earth.

In Muskegon County, racial discrimination and discrimination in the delivery of health care services has been found repeatedly in focus group sessions conducted by the Western Michigan Minority Health Project over the years. In their report, 2004 Minority Health Matters: A special Focus on African Americans, while access to quality health care has been deemed important to eliminate these racial disparities and increase quality for African Americans in Muskegon County, it has continued to decline without being questioned by whites and nonwhites in the community as a whole. Well as my mother used to tell me, sometimes if you want a miracle to happen, you have to be the miracle, so I am writing blogs to help emphasize the health care problems that our medical community intentionally continues to fail to address. Furthermore, denying people like myself access to their medical files when they have already been diagnosed and treated for cancer, only ensures that persons slow suffering and death from cancer because it was not treated early or accurately, even though it could have been.

It wasn't until I was about 33 that my mother told me the following story, and since it shows how little the discriminatory attitudes of local doctors has changed in 30 years I will tell it again here. When I was about a year and a half old my mother took me to a local pediatrician she was referred to in Muskegon. When the doctor came in the room she told him how old I was and that I was adopted. The doctor immediately looked at my mother and arrogantly said, "well...couldn't you have adopted a white baby". My mother said she remembers leaving his office that day in disgust and looking at me in the car seat as she started the car and saying to me, "well, we won't be going back there", in response to this doctor's obvious racial bias.


Recently an study reported by channel WOOD TV 8 during the week of March 10, 2008 reported that almost 75% of the African Americans they polled reported not being able to obtain or receive a quality health care (they also listed other minorities who were polled like Vietnamese but the study of course didn't indicate they were from Vietnam) and noted that these were african americans who were born in Africa. Well, that sounds completely ridiculous considering since you can go to the Internet and find several reports from 2002 to present that indicate that African Americans are receiving Unequal Treatment, which has been outlined extensively in in research conducted by several reputable institution's of medicine (the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, National Cancer Institute, and Briefs prepared by the Commonwealth Fund/John F. Kennedy School of Government Bipartisan Congressional Health Policy Conference which summarize these disparities. Even more, all of these resources seem to point out that even when disparities in health care can be explained by differences in income, insurance status and medical need, there is increasing evidence that racial and ethnic disparities in care persist even after accounting for these factors (http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=247164).


Now I think we can all remember a time when we were referred to a physician because someone thought that he or she was an "excellent physician" who was supposedly "well-respected" by his patients and peers alike. However, when this happens, I firmly believe that every single person, of every single race needs to stop and ask themselves some very basic questions like, 'why are they really saying this to you', 'what are their intentions in doing so', and 'who will benefit most' from not only giving this referral, but using their influence to make you think what they want you to think about this particular physician. Is the beneficiary truly you, or is it actually the physician. Well, I guess only time can tell for most, so I would like to use my experience with the physicians in the Muskegon area during the past 35 years to tell you what has happened as a result of the area physician's disrespect and disregard for human life that is 'different' from theirs. And remember, how would you like to be treated differently because of how you look or the kinkiness of you hair. Because it can and will happen to you or a loved one too if we don't stand up and protest these kinds of injustice together.