Politicians stoke fears of ‘queue jumpers’, but refugees deserve the same dignity and agency we all value
“Can you help me understand why that man died when you said he wasn’t as sick as your other patients?” The medical student deserves a neat explanation; instead, her innocent question brings my regrets crashing to the surface as I wonder how best to explain to her the practice of medicine that increasingly comes wrapped in layers of politics.
The patient was a refugee twice plagued, once by war and then cancer. In the years that I cared for him, he’d tell me that the bright spot in his life was his Medicare card, which provided access to government-funded healthcare at public hospitals like mine. Youthful and requiring no treatment for his quiescent disease, he enrolled in English lessons which were finally paying off so that if the interpreter was a little late, he felt comfortable enough to start. His first words were “no pain”, “feel good”, “sometimes worried” and “thank you”. He was convinced that simply seeing me kept his cancer at bay, but I’d take pains to give him the credit for his wellbeing.
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