An advocate for others

What does it mean to be an advocate for someone?  What does it mean to be an advocate for yourself?  This week I have had a couple of experiences that have demonstrated how important this concept of advocacy can be.

The first example is personal.  I have a wound just below my knee that has been taking it sweet time to heal, so my surgeon sent me to another doctor to get it debrided and irrigated (which basically means they would remove the necrotic tissue to aid in the healing process of the healthy tissue).  However, the doctor I saw on Monday thought the best possible option was to perform a skin graft (which would involve another surgery to take skin from another place on my body to heal the area that is not healing on my knee).  What made me upset and frustrated was this doctor did not even touch my wound nor look at it for more than 5 seconds... he just decided a skin graft would take care of the problem.  After a few minutes of this doctor pressuring me to get the surgery scheduled, I told him I would get back to him. I left his office pissed because if I did not a medical background or been aware of invasiveness of a skin graft surgery, I probably would have signed up because I would not have known differently.  I found I had to be my own advocate that day.

The second example comes from my ethics class yesterday.  We were discussing patients with mental health disorders and after a lengthly discussion about how these patients get passed around by various health care providers, one of the members in my small group asked "what can we do for these patients"? My response was simple:  can we as members of this dysfunctional health care system, at the very least be an advocate for these patients?  Can we fight for them when they do not know how to navigate the vast mazes of referrals, specialists, insurance, etc.  As a PT, there is very little I can do for a patient with a mental health disorder (regarding treatment/diagnosis of the disorder).  But what I can do is listen.  I can be an advocate for that patient to get the attention they deserve from doctors who would rather pass them along to the next provider.

Those are just two examples that have helped me to realize how important it is to stand up for others (as well as ourselves).  I have always been a leader in school, sports, groups, etc and sadly it has just occurred to me that I can use that position to help others with basic needs that might not otherwise get met.

I think about my own experience with a person who was affected by a mental disorder.  At times, I was uncomfortable because this person was no longer the person I knew growing up.  She had all the same appearances on the outside, but inside her brain was severely misfiring.  She could not separate fantasy from reality and often said hateful things to people trying to help her.   Between the images she created in her head and the fears those created, she lived the last two years of her life a prisoner to her own brain.  Despite the love I had for this woman, it took everything within me to interact with her and by doing so, encourage the reality and discourage the fantasy.  And when she was able to separate the two, she was herself, the woman whom I always knew and loved.  She was my grandmother.