#say that to the doctors who have been treating covid patients for over an year

[pandemic-info]

At Yale’s Long COVID Clinic, Lisa Sanders Is Trying It All

excerpts:

Since the beginning of the pandemic, she — together with colleagues in the pulmonary and neurology departments — had been seeing long-COVID patients at Yale but often in an ad hoc way. Some of the doctors had become so flooded with people seeking help that they were having difficulty scheduling and treating their regular patients who came to them for everything else ...

Long-COVID patients, generally speaking, have been very miserable for a very long time, and because the illness attacks their brains, their hearts, their lungs, their guts, their joints — sometimes simultaneously, sometimes intermittently, and sometimes in a chain reaction — they bounce from specialist to specialist, none of whom has the bandwidth to hear their whole frustrating ordeal together with the expertise to address all of their complaints: the nonspecific pain, the perpetual exhaustion, the bewildering test results, the one-off treatments. “These are people who have not been able to tell their story to anybody but their spouse and their mom — for years sometimes,” Sanders tells me. “And they are, in some ways, every doctor’s worst nightmare.”

...

Long COVID has been pushing the limits of hospital systems everywhere, not just at Yale. As Americans emerged from the most acute phase of the pandemic, as mask and vaccine mandates lifted and life returned to a semblance of normal for the people who had contracted COVID and recovered, primary-care physicians started to say, “‘I’m not interested in long COVID,’ or ‘I don’t treat long COVID. Let me refer you to a specialist,’” said David Putrino, who runs the new chronic-illness recovery clinic at Mount Sinai. For their part, Putrino added, the specialists were saying, “This is not what my practice is. This is not an emergency anymore.” Patients all over the country reported monthslong waiting times for appointments at long-COVID clinics. All the while, scientists and pundits heaped skepticism on the very notion of long COVID, arguing that infection made people stronger, that new variants posed no threats, that the danger of long COVID was overblown — implying that what patients were suffering from was all in their heads.

Forgotten in this debate are the 65 million people worldwide for whom the pandemic remains a torturous everyday reality.

...

In the late 1990s, patients with a galaxy of unexplained chronic symptoms — including fatigue, sore throat, joint pain, insomnia, dizziness, brain fog, and depression — began to gather into activist and identity groups, calling themselves sufferers of “chronic Lyme.” They had something, they argued, related to a previous infection from the bite of a deer tick, but their doctors were dismissing them as whiners and neurotics. This was in an era when the medical Establishment was rolling its collective eyes at patients who were querying whether diagnoses of “chronic fatigue syndrome” or “fibromyalgia” might fit their symptoms — ones that looked very much like those linked to chronic Lyme.

Sanders joined the chorus of debunkers. These patients had real symptoms and real ailments, she asserted in Every Patient Tells a Story. But the collection of symptoms was “hopelessly broad and overinclusive,” she wrote. “These are some of the most common symptoms of patients presenting to a primary care office.” She concluded that chronic Lyme was a “phantom diagnosis.” 

“I completely regret that chapter,” she says now. “I would like to rewrite it.” Sanders explains that she was reacting to the doctors who were preying on suffering people by prescribing interminable courses of antibiotics that were not helping them: “But I completely misunderstood it. The patients were making the connection between their symptoms and Lyme disease.”

...

“We’re not paying enough attention,” she said. “We’re not. Doctors are still dismissing this disease as something that’s in your head. I have seen the exchanges on Twitter: ‘Long COVID is exaggerated, not real.’” Women are diagnosed with long COVID at roughly twice the rate of men, Iwasaki pointed out: “I think if the situation was reversed, we’d pay even more attention to this disease.” - Akiko Iwasaki, immunologist at Yale [also known for her work nasal vaccine & long covid research]

...

But even Sanders was not prepared for how little doctors and scientists know about long COVID. There is no blood test. Health officials can’t even agree on how to define it. The CDC describes long COVID as “signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue or develop after acute COVID-19 infection” — or, in Sanders’s paraphrase, “You got COVID and then something bad happened.” Under the CDC definition, patients have long COVID if they are symptomatic at least four weeks after initial infection. The WHO defines it similarly but with a different time frame: occurring or lasting at least three months after initial infection. This discrepancy matters to Sanders because, as much as possible, she wants to identify patients who have long COVID and not those who may take a little longer to recover from their original illness. In her clinic, she uses the WHO definition.

...

Sanders, more than ever before, is dependent on the patient’s account — on detailed specifics — to establish her diagnosis. It’s a process of elimination and deduction. So she has “learned just to shut the fuck up and listen.”

#covid #long covid #article #medicine #ny mag #yale #re: 'I don't know anyone with long covid' #re: 'JUST get treatment' #lyme #me/cfs #mecfs #fibromyalgia #akiko iwasaki #womens health

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week #049

1. First 100,000 KG Removed From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Ocean Cleanup has been working on ridding the world of the GPGP since 2013. Its founder and CEO, Boyan Slat, said the company’s current cleanup platform, System 002, had collected 101,353kg of plastic since being deployed in August 2021. The cleanups swept a 3,000 square kilometer area of the Pacific, roughly equivalent to the size of Rhode Island or Luxembourg.

2. There are 40% more tigers in the world than previously estimated

It’s the Year of the Tiger, and a new population assessment offers some hope for the endangered species.

An estimated 3,726 to 5,578 tigers currently live in the wild worldwide — up 40% from 2015, according to a new tiger assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Tigers are still considered endangered and remain on the IUCN’s Red List, which assesses endangered species.

3. Fourth patient seemingly cured of HIV

A man who has lived with HIV since the 1980s seems to have been cured in only the fourth such case, say doctors. He was given a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancer leukaemia from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus.

The 66-year-old, has stopped taking HIV medication. He said he was “beyond grateful” the virus could no longer be found in his body. The man is known as the “City of Hope” patient after the hospital where he was treated in Duarte, California.

4. Pennsylvania nurses receiving student debt cancellation

Nurses across Pennsylvania will begin receiving notifications next week about whether they are eligible for a share of the $55 million the state is making available to lower or erase their student loan debt.

The money for Pa. Student Loan Relief for Nurses Program comes out of state’s share of federal American Rescue Plan funds. This one-time offer will relieve selected state-licensed nurses who cared for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic at a Pennsylvania health care facility of up to $7,500 of student loan debt.

5. This beautiful blue parrot has returned to the wild 2 years after being declared extinct

After teetering on the edge of extinction, the beautiful Spix’s macaw has made its return to the wild, over two decades after the last bird was seen in nature. Eight of the bright blue parrots have been released into a protected nature reserve in Brazil.

“They’re doing absolutely wonderful. So far there is 100 per cent survival. The birds are all staying together as a group… They’re staying in around the release area. And they’re also beginning to forage on natural occurring foods,” biologist Tom White told The Current guest host Duncan McCue.

6. New research shows that signs of Alzheimer’s can be found in blood 17 years before symptoms begin.

A newly developed immuno-infrared sensor allowed researchers to discover biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease in blood samples 17 years before clinical symptoms appeared.

The goal is to determine the risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia at a later stage with a simple blood test even before the toxic plaques can form in the brain, in order to ensure that a therapy can be initiated in time.

7. Drone lifeguard saves boy, 14, from drowning in sea in Valencia in Spain

A pioneering drone lifeguard has saved a 14-year-old boy from drowning in the sea in Valencia in Spain.

The drone lifeguard service, which has been rolled out across Spanish beaches, dropped a life vest into the sea this month that was able to keep the teenager afloat just as he started to sink, its operators have said. The vest kept the boy afloat until a physical lifeguard team arrived moments later.

...

That’s it for this week. This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

#Youtube

[mamadoc]

1, 2, 11, 20😊

1 - Talk about someone who changed your life.

Okay. I took far too long to think about this. Since we're all in a post 6x6 and TTPD era, here's a vulnerable, tortured answer.

I had a very close friend for several years. My husband and I were very close to her and her husband. Our kids were friends. We went to the same church, all loved to travel, had similar interests and tastes, had all lived internationally, went on double dates, etc. We even considered having them raise our kids if my husband and I both passed away. In sum, we were super close.

Then COVID hit. As a doctor COVID was difficult. I struggled a lot because I was taking care of sick patients. I recall one tearful day of talking to a pregnant mom who was about to be transferred to the ICU and was saying goodbye to her other children. It really wasn't safe or comfortable to go to work for a long time. I wasn't really dealing with it well, especially with the people around me treating it like it didn't matter. I was really depressed for the first time in my life.

This friend didn't understand that or if she did, she didn't care. So, when I said I wasn't interested in going out in public and having any type of birthday celebration for my birthday (who wants to celebrate turning 41 anyway?), she started attacking me on a personal level. I was already in a dark place and instead of being a good friend and supporting me, she just keep sending me hateful messages.

That was the first and only time in my life I considered suicide. I reached out for help and got it. I wasn't in that dark pit for a long time. I'm much better now. I mostly have my sister to thank for that.

I brought her flowers for Valentine's Day with an apology note a few weeks after that. She never apologized. I brought treats to her a few weeks after that with an apology note explaining why I felt so hurt. I tried to call to explain how I felt so that I could heal. She never answered the phone.

I'm still not sure what I have to apologize for or why she never seemed to accept or offer an apology. But that was two years ago. We still don't talk. Our husbands don't talk. Our kids don't play together anymore. For a long time, I didn't like going to church because I knew I'd have to see her.

Most of that is better now. I'm just sad for a lost friendship and for the dark place I had to crawl out of.

I've used a slight modification of her name for a character in one of my stories who betrayed Lucy. I thought that might be therapeutic, but it just brought the situation up to the surface again.

Uhhh... I can't believe I just wrote all of that. I'll try to keep the rest of the answers a bit lighter.

2 - Talk about something you really want to do.

I LOVE to travel. I've been to 47 states and 16 countries. My husband and I had all of our plans in place to get to all 50 states before we turned 40. Then COVID hit and all of our plans were dashed when travel shut down. We're going at a slower pace now, but we're getting close to it. #48 (NM) in October, #49 (HI) July 2025 as a 20th anniversary trip, and #50 (AK) the summer of 2026.

11 - Share something you're proud of.

According to AO3's stats, I've posted over 339k words since I started posting 7 months ago (plus another 9-10k chapter I hope to finish tonight). I know there are those that blow me out of the water (Ahem, ahem @girlintotv and @centralperkchenford) with their numbers, but I'm pretty proud of that as a first-time writer and working mom with 4 young kids.

20 - Share with us a random fact or two.

I'm afraid I've already overshared. *yikes* But here we go.

I'm the oldest of 6 kids. The first 4 of us are all 23 months apart, then 27 months apart, and 25 months apart. So, we're essentially every 2 years for 10 years with all of our birthdays clustered together. 3 boys and 3 girls.

I had the chicken pox for my eighth birthday. My grandparents came to visit for my birthday, but they were afraid of getting shingles. So, I had to stay in my bedroom on the second floor, and they stayed on the first floor for the whole time they were visiting. I still remember standing in the hallway near the dining room while they sang happy birthday. One of my siblings blew out the candles for me and my mom brought me a piece of cake in the hallway. (Man, I'm still rocking those depressing TTPD vibes, aren't I?) I was officially not contagious the day my mom came home from the hospital with baby #5 in our family, and I remember being so excited to be healthy enough to hold my baby brother.

Sheesh. Now you probably won't ever ask me anything again. Between TTPD, 6x6, and the angst I'm supposed to be writing right now, I'm coming up with some strange answers.

Sorry to be the Eeyore in the crowd. Thanks for asking me to play though.

Ask game

#ask game

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

I thought this was a good article. There is a lot of discussion of ME/CFS in it.

I've copied a few extracts below.

"Lucinda Bateman, founder and medical director of the Bateman Horne Center in Salt Lake City, is one of a small number of ME specialists in the county. She has been treating and researching the illness for more than three decades. “I can tell you from our close assessments that many people with long COVID become severe enough and chronic enough to meet these criteria [for ME/CFS],” she says. “So I would consider them SARS-CoV-2 induced ME/CFS.” --- Outdated therapies

Because so many physicians are uninformed about ME, some at long COVID clinics prescribe therapies that have been proven to be harmful to patients who experience post-exertional malaise (PEM). Graded exercise therapy (GET)—a controversial form of physical therapy for ME and long COVID which slowly increases exercise over time— worsens patients’ symptoms who experience PEM. “Graded exercise therapy implies that you can exercise yourself into fitness and resolve the illness,” Bateman says. “When in reality, that’s not the case.” --- "In the meantime, Bateman recommends long COVID patients do the same thing she has been telling ME patients for years. “Become very well-informed yourself,” she says, advising individuals to read broadly about their own condition from ME non-profits, patient-led research groups, and papers written by ME specialists. “Secondly, work with a provider that you can communicate with and learn about long COVID together. It’s easier to train up a trusted doctor than to go searching for [ME specialists] when the numbers are still so low.” " ---

#long covid #covid long hauler #cfs #post viral illness #post covid

[ausetkmt]

STAT: In counties with more Black doctors, Black people live longer, 'astonishing' study finds

Black people in counties with more Black primary care physicians live longer, according to a new national analysis that provides the strongest evidence yet that increasing the diversity of the medical workforce may be key to ending deeply entrenched racial health disparities.

The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, is the first to link a higher prevalence of Black doctors to longer life expectancy and lower mortality in Black populations. Other studies have shown that when Black patients are treated by Black doctors, they are more satisfied with their health care, more likely to have received the preventive care they needed in the past year, and are more likely to agree to recommended preventive care such as blood tests and flu shots. But none of that research has shown an impact on Black life expectancy.

The new study found that Black residents in counties with more Black physicians — whether or not they actually see those doctors — had lower mortality from all causes, and showed that these counties had lower disparities in mortality rates between Black and white residents. The finding of longer life expectancy persisted even in counties with a single Black physician.

“That a single Black physician in a county can have an impact on an entire population’s mortality, it’s stunningly overwhelming,” said Monica Peek, a primary care physician and health equity researcher at UChicago Medicine who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study. “It validates what people in health equity have been saying about all the ways Black physicians are important, but to see the impact at the population level is astonishing.”

“This is adding to the case for a more diverse physician workforce,” said Michael Dill, the director of workforce studies at the Association of American Medical Colleges and one of the study co-authors. “What else could you ask for?”

Lisa Cooper, a primary care physician who directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and has written widely on factors that may explain why Black patients fare better under the care of Black doctors, called the study “groundbreaking” and “particularly timely given the declining life expectancy and increasing health disparities in the U.S. in recent years.”

“These findings should serve as a wake-up call for health care leaders and policymakers,” she told STAT.

The team of researchers, from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the AAMC, started their work by analyzing the representation of Black primary care physicians within the country’s more than 3,000 counties during 2009, 2014, and 2019. Even this first step resulted in a stark finding: Just over half of the nation’s counties had to be excluded from analysis because they contained not a single Black primary care physician.

“I knew it was a problem,” said Dill, “but ooh, those numbers are not good.”

The team’s analysis of the 1,618 counties that had at least one Black primary care physician in one of the three years found that the more such physicians a county contained, the higher life expectancy was for Black residents. (They’d like to repeat the analysis in the future to see how counties with Black doctors fared during the Covid-19 pandemic, which disproportionately affected people of color.)

The team found life expectancy increased by about one month for every 10% increase in Black primary care physicians. While extending life by a few months may not sound like much given that the life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans nationally is nearly six years, picking up such a signal on a population level is significant, the authors said.

The study found that every 10% increase in Black primary care physicians was associated with a 1.2% lower disparity between Black and white individuals in all-cause mortality. “That gap between Black and white mortality is not changing,” said John Snyder, a physician who directs the division of data governance and strategic analysis at HRSA and who was one of the lead authors. “Arguably we’ve found a path forward for closing those disparities.”

The study did not directly address the reason Black people fare better in counties with more Black physicians, nor does it prove a cause-and-effect relationship. While earlier research suggests “culturally concordant” medical care is of better and higher quality for patients, the new study indicates that one factor may be that Black physicians are more likely to treat low-income and underinsured patients, taking on new Medicaid patients more than any other racial or ethnic group, for example. The study found that improvements in life expectancy were greatest in counties with the highest rates of poverty.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” said Rachel Upton, an HHS statistician and social science analyst who was one of the report’s lead authors. “It shows having Black physicians is not only helpful across the board, but it’s particularly useful with counties with high poverty.”

Many studies have found that communication is improved when patients and physicians are of the same race. Owen Garrick co-authored a 2019 study in Oakland, Calif., finding that cardiovascular disease could be curbed more in Black patients who are seen by Black doctors because they are more likely to engage in preventive health care. He noted during his study that Black patients were not only more likely to talk with Black doctors about subjects like upcoming birthday parties or weddings, they were also more likely to invite them to the events.

But good communication is not the only factor: A 2020 study found that in infant care, where verbal communication from the doctor is not an issue, mortality rates for Black infants were reduced when they were treated by Black physicians; the authors suggested stereotyping and implicit bias may play a role when doctors treat patients outside their racial and ethnic groups.

The current study looked past the patient-doctor relationship and showed that patients may fare better simply by living in counties with Black doctors even if they are not directly treated by those doctors. Living in a county where Black doctors work and thrive “may be a marker for living in a community that better supports Black lives,” Snyder said.

Another factor, said Peek, is that Black physicians may be more likely to do unpaid health-related work outside of the health care system, such as providing expertise to community organizations, being politically involved in health-related matters, and encouraging medical societies to advocate for public health.

That’s the case with Peek, who has spent two decades working with a nonprofit that helps Black women in public housing become health navigators and advocates. She also spends a good deal of time providing a second opinion to her network of friends and family — and their friends and families — who do not personally know any physicians and may have issues of mistrust with the medical system.

“With my non-Black colleagues, it’s like ‘Both my parents were doctors! Everyone’s a doctor!’” she said. “Their social network is not all paranoid when they enter the health care system.”

She said the study also pointed to problems with racism within medicine and bias toward Black patients that has created a “chasm” between non-Black physicians and their Black patients. She’s struck, she said, by the number of Black people who come up to her after she speaks at a local church to give her their detailed medical history and ask her opinion because they don’t trust their own medical team. “I look like them,” Peek said. “They trust I have their best interest at heart.”

The authors of the new paper said they were not advocating segregated care and all doctors should improve their cultural competency. Patients of all races and ethnicities would be helped by increased diversity in the physician workforce, they said.

But increasing the number of Black physicians remains a stubborn problem. Despite decades of attention to the matter, a 2021 study showed the number of Black and Native American medical students, particularly males, has stagnated. The AAMC has reported a recent uptick in admissions of Black medical students, possibly due to a renewed focus on diversity in recent years, but an upcoming Supreme Court decision expected to limit the use of race as a factor in admission could cut into such gains.

The current study did not address how the presence of physicians from other groups underrepresented in medicine, including Hispanic and Indigenous people and Pacific Islanders, affects health outcomes. Upton said she hoped other researchers could focus on such groups in the future and that more researchers would conduct “within group” studies to examine the health of people within a single racial or ethnic group and not just examine how such groups compare to other, usually white, populations.

“Oftentimes we just look at the disparities,” she said. “I would like people to be looking at how people are doing within their own groups and what can help within those groups.”

#Black Doctors #Black Life #Black Healthcare #In counties with more Black doctors #Black people live longer #Black Healthcare with Black Doctors

[foolstemper]

trigger warning: the american healthcare system

i used to drive almost an hour to a specific clinic where every doctor i needed worked and they were great. everyone knew how to properly care for queer, disabled, fat, poor, etc people. they told me once that they don’t pressure patients to lose weight so if i ever had questions on how to do so, if ever i wanted to, i was welcome to ask, but it wasn’t their priority unless it was *my* priority. they didn’t act like every symptom i had was the result of my size or what they thought i was eating/not eating. they used my pronouns. they used my name before i’d even changed it. even their pharmacists used my chosen name BEFORE I HAD EVEN EVER TALKED TO THEM. they didn’t make me feel like i was stupid. they didn’t make me feel bad when i couldn’t afford to spend a bunch of money on vitamins. they went out of their way to treat everyone - even if we couldn’t give them money.

so today i cave and see a new doctor. they’re closer and still exist (old clinic is barely staying afloat because of covid). it wasn’t terrible but i walked out feeling worse. i was put on a diet even tho i never agreed to it. they want me in every three months to be weighed - even tho i’m agoraphobic and was visibly falling apart in the office. i caved and spent $41 on vitamins. i was made to feel so fucking stupid for not taking vitamin d. i was made to feel stupid for not having any answers about my deteriorating health because it’s been five years living like this - even tho i made it clear that for most of those years, the clinic i went to was struggling to stay afloat and keep their doctors, and i was told over and over and over, “we suspect it’s severe anxiety, but we will run tests,” just to get a call saying the doctor was fired because of budget cuts, which meant starting from scratch.

i’m not saying i’ve been taking perfect care of myself, or that i couldn’t have done more or left sooner, but after so many years of finally being treated like a human being by doctors, y’know, feeling cared about and being talked to in words someone who isn’t also a fucking doctor (me) can understand… i wanted to hang on for as long as i could because seeing someone who just. ignored significant parts of my identity, who didn’t let me choose whether i even could swing an expensive diet, who made jokes about how stupid she thought it was that i wasn’t doing this or that or the other. and knowing i have no other options. that i can’t go anywhere else because there is no one else. it sucks.

#personal

[atlanticcanada]

There's so much demand: Accessing primary care a challenge in N.B.

The New Brunswick Health Council has published the results of a survey on accessing primary care in the province that confirm what many in health care already knew: the system is stretched thin.

According to the 2022 survey, only one in three New Brunswick residents who have a primary care provider could get in to see them within a five day period last year.

Council CEO Stéphane Robichaud said accessing primary care continues to be a challenge and there are many factors contributing to the trend going in the wrong direction.

“There's a higher proportion of people right now that feel a bit overwhelmed when it comes to navigating the system. So that does speak to an uncoordinated, not properly organized resource in how it tries to meet the needs of citizens,” said Robichaud.

The survey states almost 51 per cent of people could get an appointment with their care provider within a five day period back in 2020.

However, that number shrunk to thirty-four per cent last year.

“It's a significant drop. It's worrisome and I think it speaks to the fact that we're adding options, practice options for these physicians, but no one is really keeping an eye on what's the impact on time spent in their own practices,” said Robichaud.

Nearly two-thirds of the population that have a family doctor reported using other services like after hours clinics, pharmacists and the emergency department because their health care provider was not available.

“But the resource itself is staying the same. So what that means is time is being taken away from their own family practice to operate in these other settings,” said Robichaud.

In a statement to CTV News, New Brunswick Medical Society [NBMS] President Dr. Michèle Michaud said the survey confirms what physicians are often hearing from patients – access to primary health care services in a timely manner is a struggle.

“The fact that access has become more challenging over the past few years is not surprising, and can be attributed to a variety of factors,” said Michaud.

One of those factors is burnout, which was made worse during the pandemic when many family physicians were asked to help cover gaps in the health system.

That left them with less time for their own practice.

“The resulting burnout led some healthcare providers to scale back their practice or leave the profession entirely,” said Michaud. “Family physicians also deal with increasing amounts of paperwork and other administrative activities that take away from the time they are able to devote to seeing patients.”

The NBMS also said New Brunswick’s older population is contributing to the challenges faced in primary care.

“Our population is one of the fastest aging, most chronically ill in the country, meaning patient health issues are more complex and time-consuming to treat, which results in longer office visits that leave physicians unable to see as many patients,” said Michaud.

Expanding collaborative care models and bringing more family physicians to the province, and keeping them here, are key strategies according to Michaud.

Robichaud said it’s not a simple fix.

“We need to address who is accountable at the end of the day,” said Robichaud. “In 2018, the council made a recommendation that regional health authorities should be made accountable for primary care.”

Dawna Melanson recently hurt her knee, but hasn’t been able to get an appointment with her family doctor.

She was told to call Telecare and she received the number for a couple of walk-in clinics.

Melanson said it’s been a struggle for her to access care.

“I would say all around for all New Brunswickers, since COVID everything is harder to get things done. It's harder to get in to see a doctor, it's a longer wait,” Melanson said.

“Overall, it must be hard for new people coming into New Brunswick to get health care.”

That's exactly what Laura Corazza is experiencing upon moving back to the province from Italy. She’s having a hard time accessing primary health care, but said she’s fortunate people have been very helpful in giving her a hand in trying to search for a doctor.

“So far, I've come up empty handed. There's so much demand and the waiting lists are extremely long and very few doctors,” Corazza said.

For more New Brunswick news visit our dedicated provincial page.  

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/ke2lXNu

#new brunswick #prince edward island #nova scotia #news #politics #canada #CTVAtlantic

[college-girl199328]

'My body was burning': Suffering since COVID shots, Gatineau man desperate for relief

A Gatineau, Que., man who developed a severe skin condition after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine says he's ready to give up on Canada's healthcare system and seek treatment abroad.

Mohammed Tisir Otahbachi, 29, received his first dose of the Moderna vaccine on July 15, 2021, at a Walmart pharmacy in Gatineau. Ten days later, small, acne-like blisters appeared on his right hand.

Otahbachi, who goes by his middle name, told CBC he had never experienced it. He tried a topical cream suggested by a pharmacist, but it didn't work.

While complications from COVID-19 vaccines are rare, Otahbachi's shot might have had something to do with the rash. Nevertheless, he was eager to receive his second dose and returned to the same pharmacy for another Moderna jab on August 13, 2021.

Accompanied by his father, Otahbachi, who has no family doctor, went to the Gatineau Hospital. After waiting for 23 hours and learning it could be many more, they left.

Otahbachi said he tried every doctor's office he could find in Gatineau, then began calling medical clinics in Montreal, Mirabel, Terrebonne, and even Quebec City, more than 400 kilometers away. None were accepting new patients. Numerous attempts to book an appointment at a local walk-in clinic proved equally fruitless.

By September, Otahbachi's skin condition was worsening. He had been working as a mover and an Uber driver, but the painful rash that covered much of his body cost him both jobs.

Increasingly desperate, Otahbachi began searching for a doctor in Ontario, where Quebec residents must pay out of pocket for some healthcare services. His wife, Fatima Outaleb, worked for a major insurance company, but the couple was expecting a baby.

With a loan from his father, Mohammad Tawfiq, Otahbachi finally got an appointment at a medical center in Ottawa. He was prescribed a hydrocortisone/anti-fungal cream and tablets used to treat bacterial infections and referred to a dermatologist. The dermatologist prescribed him antihistamine tablets and more ointment.

None of the medications helped. It was March 2022, more than eight months since Otahbachi's first vaccine dose. Throughout his ordeal, Otahbachi noticed something else: none of the doctors he had consulted appeared willing to acknowledge any possible link between his vaccination the previous summer and the sudden onset of his skin condition.

One doctor he visited suggested his condition was an allergic reaction to his gloves or the shampoo he'd been using for years. Moderna acknowledges a "remote chance" that its COVID-19 vaccines will cause severe allergic reactions, including "a bad rash all over your body," but says such symptoms typically occur within a few minutes of injection.

The Public Health Agency of Canada notes that adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines represent just 0.011 percent of the more than 95 million doses administered in this country as of Dec. 9.

Still, there have been 20 reported cases of erythema multiforme, which can be triggered either by an infection or by some medicines, in people who received the Moderna vaccine.

Other studies have noted "growing evidence" of a link between COVID-19 vaccines and various cutaneous reactions, including pruritus, urticaria, angioedema, and morbilliform eruptions.

Outaleb and Tawfiq told CBC that before receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, Otahbachi had never experienced any sort of skin ailment. That spring, Outaleb gave birth to the couple's first child, Julia, in Winchester, Ont. They were referred to a family physician in Ingleside, Ont., about 100 kilometers from their home.

On their first visit with their newborn daughter, the doctor, Michael Bensimon, noticed Otahbachi's blisters. Bensimon referred Otahbachi to Ottawa allergist Antony Ham Pong, who provided him with a letter confirming that Otahbachi suffered "a severe blistering, weeping, and peeling eczematoid skin reaction" shortly after receiving the Moderna vaccine.

Ham Pong told CBC he has seen cases of hives among other patients who received the Moderna vaccine, but those occurred after booster shots, which appears relatively unique.

Armed with that letter, Otahbachi reached out to his MP Greg Fergus and his MNA Mathieu Lévesque, whose offices assisted him in applying to Quebec's vaccine injury compensation program for financial relief.

It was a long shot. By the end of last March, 125 claims had been filed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, of which only eight had been evaluated, and only three had resulted in payouts.

In late October, Otahbachi received a reply from Quebec's health ministry informing him that he'd need to obtain a letter from a physician practicing in that province. He was back to square one.

Doug Angus, a professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management and an expert in health economics and policy, called Otahbachi's ordeal a "classic example" of a chronic shortcoming of Canada's healthcare system.

Otahbachi has now paid hundreds of dollars to consult doctors in Ontario, not including the cost of his prescriptions that aren't covered by Quebec's health insurance plan.

Quebec's health ministry declined CBC's request for an interview about Otahbachi's case but wrote in French in an email that "the declaration of a clinical event related to vaccination does not constitute a claim under the compensation plan."

The ministry reiterated that the physician representing the claimant before the medical review committee that assesses compensation claims "must have a license to practice in good standing and be a member of the Collège des médecins du Québec."

Earl Brown, a professor emeritus of virology at the University of Ottawa, said diagnosing such cases can be extremely difficult for physicians.

According to Brown, some medical professionals may be extra cautious because they don't want to fan the flames of the vaccination debate.

Last fall, Ham Pong suggested one more possible option to ease Otahbachi's suffering: a drug called dupilumab, approved by Health Canada in 2017 under Dupixent.

The hitch with Dupixent was the cost. At more than $1,000 a shot and biweekly doses required for at least a year, Otahbachi was staring at a $30,000 prescription that he couldn't afford.

While Ham Pong explored the possibility of getting the drug covered for his out-of-province patient, he referred Otahbachi to another allergist at The Ottawa Hospital, who was able to at least get him started with samples.

After two injections, Otahbachi's symptoms have improved considerably but haven't disappeared entirely. He fears the rash that has tortured him for over a year will return.

His faith in Canadian health care was shattered, and Otahbachi has begun exploring treatment options in Morocco and Turkey. Outaleb, still the family's sole breadwinner, said it's been heartbreaking to watch.

[ashok-kumars-world]

From being a taboo discussed in hush-hush tones, mental health is now finally being recognised as an ailment just like any other, one that requires treatment and healing.

The COVID-19 pandemic-induced stress and trauma has made many across the world wake up to the reality: mental illness is not something that happens only to ‘others'.

This March, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that the pandemic had triggered a 25 percent rise in anxiety and depression worldwide. Its World Mental Health report published in June 2022 showed one billion people were living with a mental disorder in 2019, and that 15 percent of working-age adults had experienced a mental disorder. Not surprisingly, the theme for this year's World Mental Health Day is, ‘Make mental health for all a global priority.'

Indian insurers are seeing a rise in customers being upfront about mental any illness they may be suffering from. “As we come out of the shadow of Covid-19, we are seeing more customers who have been dealing with mental health issues. They are being transparent about having taken anti-depressants or attended counselling sessions. Insurers do not see this as taboo at all, and there is no discrimination,” says Nikhil Apte, Chief Product Officer, Product Factory (Health), Royal Sundaram General Insurance.

Also read: Does your health insurance policy cover mental illnesses?

Health insurance policies cover mental health treatment

In India, regulations have evolved to treat mental and physical illnesses on par. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 came into force in May 2018, prompting the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) to direct insurance companies to comply with the provisions. The Act requires all insurers to provide insurance ‘for treatment of mental illness on the same basis as is available for treatment of physical illness.'

Most people dealing with mental health issues undergo treatment as an out-patient – in the form of counselling or medication – rather than as an in-patient where one is hospitalised (which is what's required to avail of the medical cover). Hence, not many have been able to claim medical insurance for their mental health treatment.

“Theoretically, you can go to any hospital and get yourself treated, but very few hospitals in India offer in-patient treatment for mental illnesses. Most mental health treatment is on an out-patient basis,” says Sanjay Datta, Chief, Underwriting, Claims and Reinsurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance.

If your policy covers OPD (out-patient department) expenses – such as doctor's consultation fees, pharmacy bills, etc., – it will also pay for consultations with psychiatrists and psychologists. “It will be covered up to the OPD sum insured limit (which is lower, and not the overall sum insured),” adds Datta.

No discrimination at policy issuance, but loading might apply

Due to prevalent laws and IRDAI regulations, insurers cannot discriminate against an applicant just because she is suffering from a mental illness. However, when taking a new policy the insurer may reject your application depending on the severity of your existing illness and the insurer's underwriting practices (as is the case with any physical ailment).

Some could charge an additional premium – a loading of 10-20 percent – while issuing the policy. “Our underwriting grid determines how we treat the proposals. If an applicant is suffering from a pre-existing mental ailment, we ascertain if it's for more than five years, whether she has had to be hospitalised, and whether the applicant is undergoing active treatment,” explains Apte.

So, if you have suffered episodes of anxiety, the insurer could impose a waiting period of 2-3 years for this pre-existing illness at the time of issuing the policy. “If you have been dealing with this issue for over five years, then a loading of 10-20 percent could come into play. If you have had to be hospitalised for the ailment, we might add a co-pay clause. However, we have not rejected any proposal only because the applicant was suffering from a mental ailment,” says Apte.

Also read: Health insurance excludes major costs in treating mental health

Be transparent to ensure claims are paid

Since the industry has seen fewer in-patient claims, insurers have no fear of an increase in claims due to mental ailments.

“Even when hospitalisation is required, it is largely medical management and drugs, particularly in case of younger policyholders. The risk to insurers is only at the end-of-life stage, when policyholders could need treatment for Alzheimer's or dementia, since these entail long periods of hospitalisation, which is expensive,” says Apte.

On your part, ensure that you are transparent about your health conditions – physical or mental, particularly if you are on medication. “When you file a claim, the insurer will go through the discharge summary. If your doctor has mentioned your (undisclosed) mental health condition in the discharge papers, your claim could be rejected,” says Kapil Mehta, Co-founder and CEO, SecureNow.in, an insurance broking firm.

And, if you have a health insurance policy that comes with built-in OPD coverage, ensure that you utilise it. “It (mental health) will ultimately affect your body. Early detection and prevention are important so that it does lead to in-patient hospitalisation,” says Datta.

[hairline91]

Hair loss rampant after Covid, say Bengaluru trichologists

BENGALURU: Bengalureans are tearing their hair over their receding hairlines. Covid-19 is to blame for their loss of hair, according to city trichologists' observations over the past two years.

A trichologist and dermatologist set out to learn the link between contracting Covid and its effects on hair. She found that 80% of her 2,525 patients over the past two years, mostly below 40 years of age, were infected by Covid and losing their hair in various forms. Thinning of ponytails and receding hairlines were seen in three months of catching the virus.

Upon investigation, the researcher, Dr Kala Vimal, trichologist & dermatologist, Hairline International Hair & Skin Research & Treatment Centre, inferred that post Covid, many people suffered acute hair loss and shedding. The reason could be the disturbance of the hair cycle.

Dr Vimal explained that a hair cycle is a growing phase of three years, transition phase of three days and resting phase of 30 days. She told STOI this cycle was disturbed during the stressful Covid viral fever. Hair went prematurely into the resting phase, leading to shedding.

Dr Sunil Kumar Prabhu, consultant dermatologist and aesthetic physician, Aster RV Hospitals, who saw 450 patients in the last year, agreed that just like any infection that is accompanied by fever for a week to 10 days, hairfall takes place after Covid too.

He also pointed out that after two to three months of the event (Covid), people visit with hairfall incidence as the hair growth cycle would be arrested till then. Once hairfall starts, it stops in 6-8 weeks, he added.

However, if the treatment for hair loss has to be continued after that, it could be due to other underlying problems too, the doctor said.

Vax also caused hairfall: Doc

Dr Shruthi Chikkaiah, dermatologist and director of Skin and Recon, said she too witnessed quite a few patients coming in with hairfall in the past two years. She said not only Covid, but vaccination for it also caused stress-induced hairfall. She said patients came to her with balls of hair they were losing anywhere between three weeks and four months after the infection.

She said the hairfall was a self-limiting condition and once the body is supplied with enough rest, diet and nutrition, it was arrested.

According to Dr Vimal, patients went through various treatments to reverse this reduction of hair due to the disturbed hair cycle, a process which is known to take about nine months. They were administered topical serums, oral antioxidants, low-level laser therapy, platelet-rich plasma treatments, among others. These patients continued to be treated for hair loss even up to a year since they were affected by Covid.

Dr Vimal believes that the number of patients with hair loss she saw would have been more if it had not been for mobility issues during the pandemic years.

#hair treatment in bangalore #Hair loss rampant after Covid #hair fall #hair loss treatment

[purevigorx]

America Has A Long Tradition Of Medically Exploiting Black People

Sandra Lindsay sat still as the needle went into her skin. She stared straight ahead at the media and photographers eager to capture the historic moment. She had received the COVID-19 vaccine for the first time in the country.

Lindsay 52, who is the director of critical-care nursing at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. She has also witnessed the number of deaths due to the coronavirus. Lindsay saw her December vaccination as a chance to stop the outbreak.

She could not miss the significance of a Black woman being the first American to receive the vaccine. Though she wanted to reduce skepticism in communities of color about the vaccination, she understood that the country's history of racist medical practices cannot be changed in a flash.

Since the beginning of the nation at the time of its founding, the American medical establishment has exposed Black bodies to torture, exploitation, and experimentation. For scientific research, corpses were retrieved out of the ground. Black women being sterilized without their knowledge and robbed of the opportunity to bear children. The whole Black community was misled into believing that they were immune to a fatal illness. Black people have been repeatedly betrayed by the medical system, which has engendered deep-rooted suspicion. To discover more details about society, you must visit racial justice website.

The most well-known example of research conducted on Black body parts was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which sharecroppers were denied treatment for syphilis throughout 40 years. In 1932, U.S. Public Health Service personnel recruited hundreds of poor, uneducated African American men with syphilis and watched them die unavoidable deaths over time until an effective cure was discovered. In 1972, the results of the study was made the media. In 1975, the research participants were awarded $10 million in a settlement in a class action and, in 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized.

"When we discuss the reasons the reasons Black people shouldn't be able to believe in a medical institution many people cite Tuskegee as a reason, which is understandable," said Rana Hogarth, a history professor at the University of Illinois. "But Tuskegee does not represent the end.

Medical abuse on the slave ship, plantation

Black anxiety about getting medical treatment could be rooted in the stomach of slave ships, say experts. The entire Middle Passage experience was based on fear and violence as the foundation of medical treatment.

A lot of slave ships had doctors. Although some were professionals, many took a cruel method of treating sick Africans. Merchants and owners could take in insurance cash to cover the costs of sick captives. Captives were often required to take food or medication and were threatened with an axe, a cutlass, or a pistol. Carolyn Roberts, a Yale history professor, claimed that slaves were able to have their jaws pried open using the torture tools to make food go down their throats.

Roberts declared, "This was a novel method of treatment in which people who were enslaved were dehumanized to the point that these ill-treatments were a regular par for the norm."

The medical care provided to the Africans following their sale and transferred was varied. The male owners usually wanted to reduce their involvement with daily medical care, according to Sharla Fett, a historian professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles. The women who were enslaved often had to do the work of providing health healthcare. Surveillance officers were responsible for taking daily health care decisions on larger plantations. They also prescribed medicine and vaccinated.

The relationship between doctors and enslaved patients was fundamentally strained due to the fact that the slaveholders controlled slave bodies. This led to slaves being "medically incompetent" as they were not able to stop or initiate treatment with consent from their owners. Fett, who wrote in her award-winning book "Working Cures" about the dehumanizing ways that slave owners employed medicine, said that this premise resulted in slaves being "medically incompetent".

Slaveholders could have used drugs to punish and torture slaves in certain instances. Moses Roper, a former slave, described one horrifying instance in his 1838 account about his escape from a South Carolina cotton farm. A cruel slave owner forced female slaves to consume as much castor oil, a purgative, as she could. He then forced her to rest in a wooden box and weighed it down with stones, so that it was unable to open. He locked her in the box for a night and then buried her in her trash.

One slave was ordered to vomit by his owner in order to amuse his family. The owner of the slaves was punished by placing them in stock above one another. He made them take large quantities of medicine and forced them to shed their "filth" upon one another.

[thefeistydragon]

Okay so looking into the clinic more, it doesn't surprise me I ran into a bad technician there.

It's in the professional building of the hospital I received treatment at years ago that thoroughly messed me up with repeated medical abuse and mistreatment from the people working there.

TW ahead for mysophobia/unsanitary conditions, mentions of medical professionals being crappy, along with sexual harassment and what's likely queerphobic malpractice.

On a list of issues I have encountered while dealing with that specific medical system, there's

The nurse that would yell at patients when they accidentally dropped or knocked something over or if their blood draw took too many tries. She would also get physically rough and handle patients in a painful way if they tried to bring up that she was treating them wrong, or brought it up to her superiors. I didn't have it too bad but she literally bruised one of the cancer patients on the floor I was on, and her superiors wrote it off as the poor woman being fussy and delicate.

The nurse that would berate patients for taking too long to get in and out of wheelchairs on the way to operations. She'd also make disparaging comments if a patient needed help dressing after operations.

The ER doctor that would forcibly give people anti anxiety medication if they were asking "too many questions". I do not physically respond well to anti anxiety medications and it made my condition worse. I'm lucky he did not also work in the ICU.

The nurse practitioner that didn't listen to my lungs at a follow up appointment after I'd been in the hospital for specifically having had them fill up with fluid. Ditto on my heart despite the fact I also had heart surgery.

The nursing assistant that would linger in the rooms of women and people he perceived as women, and would watch them dress and undress. Then make inappropriate comments he'd always deny.

The nurse that wouldn't wash his hands after retrieving bodily fluid samples. Or before drawing blood. And had improper glove handling techniques.

The (likely queerphobic) ER nurse and ER doctor that told my S.O. (pre-covid) his difficulty breathing was"Just anxiety" despite the fact his blood tests showed he had an infection. They tried to send him away from the hospital without a prescription for anything to deal with that, and it's only thanks to an angel of a nurse looking over his information that the "mistake" was caught.

The time they dismissed me as just "being dramatic* when I was a small child who had just eaten a nut it turns out I'm allergic to. I was having anaphylactic shock and it took them so long to see me in the ER or do any testing that it died down and I luckily survived. Somehow my throat didn't close up quite enough to kill me, and I made it through no thanks to them.

The list goes on and on, and that's spread across the hospital, outpatient community clinic, and now their testing lab.

The only team that was consistently good was the nutrition team. They rocked and deserve to be paid so much more because they were so nice to the patients. Like better bedside manner by far than half the nurses and most of the doctors.

So it doesn't surprise me a crappy technician would work for a crappy hospital, and if I'd realized it was a clinic run by that group, I would never have gone there. So many people there are on a power trip over patients I'd say you have a literally 50/50 shot of getting a bad technician, nurse, or doctor.

The hospital also doesn't have a place in their ICU for family to stay like most do, like reclining chairs or anything, so family has to sleep on the floor or sit in those little metal waiting room chairs if someone is in the ICU. Just a bad system overall.

#medical abuse #medical mistreatment #to tag

[ayeforscotland]

I really disagree re: books by doctors, have you read any? The three biggest come to mind… When breath becomes air (a nonfiction account of a 36 year old doctor battling terminal lung cancer), being mortal (a surgeon’s philosophical discussion on how to make end of life care dignified, meaningful and kind), and this is going to hurt (a series of funny anecdotes that are mostly extrapolated and have been gone over to prevent confidentiality breaches, but read between the lines and you see a man’s life being burnt to the ground by an obstetrics and gynaecology training rota) (now adapted into a BBC series which is an 8-episode scream against the way junior doctors are treated in the uk) … Doctors are people, and in the uk they’ve spent the last 2 years working under horrendous conditions and being screamed at by an irate public, sometimes with reason (if the patient has waited 8 hours to be seen in an underfunded A&E - although this still isn’t the doctors fault) and sometimes without (if the patient doesn’t wear a mask or thinks covid is a hoax). If you try to extrapolate any understanding of a profession from twitter, I think you’re probably going to come away with the impression they’re all cunts, but that’s still a tiny anecdotal percentage

And that’s all we’ll and good, I’m not saying all doctors are bad. It’s just I’ve literally sat in the room as dozens of them have all been utterly condescending and flat-out ignored what their patients have been telling them.

I totally sympathise with the horrendous working conditions over the past two years, but even before that - going to doctors appointments and hearing them pull the classic “Oh it’s just female problems” or “I don’t think it’s that, we’ll schedule a different test in two months time, we’ll just up your pain meds that make you feel shit” - spoiler: It was exactly what we thought it was.

And yeah, there’s dickhead patients who think covid is a hoax and I get that it would wear someone down, but I don’t think it gives you a free pass to treat every patient like they’re completely stupid.

In fairness, I was rushed through and looked after and prioritised when I got my appendix removed. But my partner was left in pain for almost 3 years by doctors who treated her like a child, and I’m still angry about it.

Totally admitting my bias, I know there’s a lot of nuance and it’s largely to do with budgetary pressure and the Tories being evil, but I can’t really forgive how she was treated. She was right, and she was right for years before a doctor would even consider putting her on a waiting list to get a diagnosis.

[justsomeantifas]

Please call the Florence Field Office and ask them not to deport Amir and tear their family apart: [phone]

Full details:

I work as a registered nurse in an intensive care unit in Southern California. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, I’ve been working alongside my colleagues as we try to save the lives of the sickest patients and comfort their families. The hours have been long, and we have all seen more than our share of sorrow.

Fortunately, for most of the pandemic I had my husband to lean on. It was comforting to know that while I was in the unit, he was at home caring for our two young children and that when I came home he would be there to support me. That changed in July, when ICE detained him during a routine check-in. Now they are saying that he will be deported to Pakistan as soon as they are able to put him on a flight. I need your help to try and stop that from happening. Amir and I were introduced to each other by a mutual friend in New York. I loved listening to him talk. He was so knowledgeable and interesting. In Pakistan he had been a doctor, later coming to the United States on a student visa to pursue a PhD at the University of Texas in environmental science. While he was there, he started dating a woman who eventually became his first wife. Then 9/11 happened. As a Pakistani Muslim, Amir suddenly became a target of the FBI due to his research into bioluminescent bacteria, and agents showed up at his door, interrogated him, and took him away. It took them a few weeks to realize their suspicions were baseless and though they never acknowledged it, based on discriminatory profiling. Unfortunately, in the months prior to this incident, he and his wife had become estranged. As a result, he was then transferred from FBI custody to ICE, where an officer told him that the collapse of his marriage had made him deportable. For three years, Amir fought to stay in the U.S. from the inside of a detention facility. He taught himself immigration law, filing over 200 cases on behalf of other immigrants while also dealing with his own case. Eventually, he was released after a custody review. But Amir’s troubles with ICE didn’t end there. Every time they could, they detained him again, hoping that they would be able to get documents from Pakistan that would allow them to send him back. Despite this ordeal, Amir and I fell in love, moved to California, and started our family. He told me about the problems he’d had with ICE, but I didn’t care — I believed we would find a way to work it out. Now we have two children, one of whom is a year and a half old and another who is six. Every summer, Amir has dutifully checked in with ICE, who have been issuing him temporary work permits and allowing him to remain in the country with us. He started a business, and has been a taxpayer and member of the community here. I wanted Amir to apply for a marriage visa for us, but he feared that it would anger ICE and lead to his deportation. His time in detention psychologically scarred him and left him afraid of what might happen if he rocked the boat. This past July, when Amir went to his check-in with ICE, they didn’t let him leave. Without warning, they detained him, saying that they had obtained documents from Pakistan that would allow him to be deported, and that they would be doing so as soon as they could.

The months since Amir’s detention have been devastating for me and my family. I cannot stop working — my colleagues need me, and now that my husband’s income is gone, I am the sole breadwinner. When I am working, my children are in the care of a babysitter, but if anything were to happen to me they would have nowhere to go. Already, two other nurses at my ICU have become sick with COVID-19. To make matters worse, last week I received horrible news. Amir had been complaining of the lack of precautions in the Adelanto Detention Center, a privately run facility that has a contract with ICE to hold immigrants. He told me that there was no social distancing and that they were often packed into holding cells without regard for anyone’s safety. Now, he has contracted COVID-19. Hearing of his treatment since he became sick has been horrifying. Despite his positive diagnosis at Adelanto, ICE seems to have covered up the test results before transferring him to another facility in Arizona, where he once again tested positive. Now his condition has worsened. The last time we spoke, he told me that his fever had reached 104 degrees. As a medical professional who deals with COVID-19 every day, I am shocked and appalled at ICE’s irresponsible conduct regarding the highly contagious virus. As a wife, I am terrified for my husband, who is a cancer survivor. Amir is a doting father and a gentle man. He deserves better than this. Once Amir recovers and tests negative for COVID-19, ICE says that they will chain him in shackles and fly him to Pakistan, a country he has not seen in nearly 20 years. I’m not sure what will become of our family if that happens. They call me an essential worker, but how much can they really care about me if they are willing to treat us like this? Even though we are U.S. citizens, my children and I may be forced to leave my country and my job as a nurse, just to keep our family together. Deporting Amir will not make America stronger, better, or safer. It will separate our family and cause grave suffering for me and our children. It pains me to know that we are not the only family facing this kind of treatment from ICE. I need your help to keep Amir here with us. Time is running short, but it’s not too late yet. Please call the Florence Field Office and ask them not to deport Amir and tear our family apart: [phone]

#deportations #Immigration raids #violence against immigrants #immigration and customs enforcement #fuck ICE #boost