I am very much trans, but I was also a sickly child. I won’t get into all the details but for example I have moderate severity asthma. At this point in my life I need to take medication twice every day for my asthma in order to breathe as well as someone who doesn’t have asthma. If I do not do this my blood oxygen level is around 90%-92% depending on the season and the air quality. This is comparable to someone who has COPD and might be at least part time on oxygen.
I was never treated for my asthma until I was almost an adult. The inciting event is that I was seventeen I got sick. Like. I caught a cold and then the flu and then another cold and so on. I was sick for something like four consecutive months. Just coughing, sneezing, achy, fatigued, and my throat was so sore I could barely talk. For four months. And then one day I had an asthma attack. It was bad. I couldn’t stand without almost blacking out. Even sitting down I couldn’t breathe and talk at the same time. Between breaks where I was gasping for breath, I explained to my mom what was happening to me. That I needed to go to the hospital. I needed to see someone NOW. It wasn’t something she could put off anymore, it was urgent. I was seventeen and suffocating in my own body, legitimately afraid I would die and too oxygen deprived to help myself. She said no. I threatened to call the ambulance myself. She grabbed my cellphone out of my hand. She told me I was making it up and that the doctor wouldn’t help. I would still have to drive myself to school and I needed to stop complaining.
It took me telling her that I had already informed multiple friends and they were threatening to both call an ambulance and report her to CPS for her to cave, and the entire time she was disparaging and criticizing me. I saw the doctor, I was diagnosed with asthma, I was prescribed an inhaler. Then, still gasping for breath, I had to fight to be allowed to go pick up that inhaler. It cost less than $20 with the insurance I was on, and I paid for it myself. It wasn’t about money. It had never been about money. I used that inhaler and took my first clear breath in months. I got better. I wasn’t sick anymore. She never apologized.
That was one of many medical neglect induced near-death experiences I have had, and every time I hear about “parents rights” I remember how many people I had who wanted to help me and couldn’t. Teachers, friends, trusted adults in extra curriculars, and parents of friends all had to sit and watch for months as I got sicker and sicker. Had to sit with the fact that every time I disappeared from school I may not come back because they knew that even on my deathbed I would never see the inside of a hospital. All because my mother’s right to choose for her child was more important than my right to live without suffering. So I’m a bit leery of parents rights over children’s rights.
