That's amazing! I veer mostly towards the mental health aspect of medicine (at least right now), which deserves a lot more talk such as breaking down stigma and generally help people live a better life emotionally. I don't know much stuff on it, but I hope to research more about it in the future. It's great that you want to focus on disabilities- it's something I thought about here and there, I hope to delve into it much more in the future, as I have almost no knowledge of it right now . How did you get to this aspiration?
That's incredible. Mental health is so important. It's amazing (sorry that sounds insensitive - I just find it fascinating) and terrible the things your body does when your emotional health is poor, and also how your mental health and brain chemicals can be changed from having health issues. You're inner voice is a lot more important than people tend to think. I also would love to know more about this area - I'd be especially interested to see the mental health of people with intellectual disabilities and how that would play into it.
This is probably going to be a long explanation
It's been a long journey haha
Well, when I was a lot younger, I was tossing up between being a vet and being a doctor (mum laughed it off as a phase haha). I've always been drawn to healthcare, bodily functions and dysfunctions fascinate me
I was actually leaning more towards wanting to be a vet, because I figured animals would be better patients
Then when I was 10, my father passed away from motor neuron disease. We'd had him at home for the entirety of his diseases progression (6 years) - from slurring of speech, to needing a wheelchair, to being hoisted around and fed - and this was before anyone really knew what MND was. I was at the hospital with him before he passed and the doctor had no clue about MND. He was on the phone with a lot of other people trying to figure out how to treat my dad (and there was absolutely nothing he could do) but watching the doctor do everything in his power to help my dad and see him looking so defeated after my father passed, really inspired me.
About six months later, my niece was born prematurely (at just 24 weeks). As you could probably imagine, she has a host of health issues -severe autism, nonverbal, epilepsy, brain injury from encephalitis, etc. I thought I had experience with people with disabilities after my dad, but it was a whole other ball game. And I realised how uneducated I had been about it. And then, over the many years of watching how other people treat her, I also realised how uneducated a lot of other people are about it - not to the fault of anyone, but even a lot of healthcare professionals out there just don't understand how to act around people with disabilities.
My niece also has eating problems - she doesn't understand that she has to eat, so if she doesn't feel like it or if she is stressed, she just stops eating. She has the peg now, but she had used nasal feeding tubes before. I watched 2 nurses hold my niece down while she sobbed to try to get a nasal tube up her nose. Forty minutes later, my niece collapsed back in exhaustion - from the look of it, I would have said she passed out for a couple of moments. For hours afterwards, I thought to myself - this would never have happened to a child who could say no. If a child without the disabilities my niece has needed a feeding tube, but didn't want one, they would have tried (for a much shorter time than forty minutes - or at least have broken it up to give them a moment to catch their breath), but when that didn't work, they would have figured out another way - like possibly getting an anaesthetist in.
But it wasn't the nurses fault. They didn't know any better. How much time of their studies had been dedicated to treating people with disabilities? Not much. Which is silly, because people with disabilities would surely need to see doctors and nurses more often, right? They do, after all, have more health issues than the average person. Unfortunately, because so many people are uneducated about disabilities, they also don't see that more education would fix a lot of issues and get these people better healthcare.
To be honest, after going through all that, I don't think I had much choice in my direction in life haha.
I must note though, I have met a number of healthcare professionals - mainly through my niece - that have absolutely understood how to treat my niece and their other patients with disabilities in a respective and effective manner. They have further inspired and taught me the kind of care that unfortunately many people with disabilities don't get access to.
Sorry to rant - I get a little too passionate about this subject hahaha