I’m going to talk publicly about having a breast biopsy this afternoon. But first, about class and the difference between private & public health in this country.

I’m from a BRCA2 family. All but one of the women in this pic are dead from breast cancer.

One was my mother.

2/ I will skip the tedious disability stuff, about the location of the clinic at Hollywood Hospital being almost completely inaccessible. I ended up going down the main road via traffic.

I was referred here as a public patient - I have recurring lumps in my breasts.

3/ But this is public health, in a private setting. Even though it’s the same company that I have been to dozens of times before, including for exactly the same thing, it is so, so different.

Nobody writes about this. I have muscular dystrophy. I can’t get private insurance.

4/ I have spent far too much of my life in cancer settings, because my mother had cancer for more than a decade before she, like 12 others in our direct family, died of it.

Here is a post from the oncology ward at Charlie Gairdner Hospital, where my mother was a public patient.

5/ Here is my mother sleeping in a chair, ravaged by cancer and sick from chemotherapy. I took this photo on the fifth hour she was there.

That’s when I found out there were no complaint forms.

She was so tired of it.

6/ When she could no longer walk, it was a problem. Because they had privatised the car park and now they could not just push a chair to the car and pick her up. And I could not push her easily because I’m a wheelchair user.

This is public health.

7/ I had two choices. I could try and push her 300m or so from the car park with my feet, ask a stranger or privately pay a helper.

It was really shit. And cost a fortune in parking. Most people can’t afford to visit dying relatives if long term.

A few days before she died.

8/ They don’t talk about things like this. Industrial action because of low pay. Bitchy and overworked nurses because hell, who can keep up with the workload? And for that pay?

My daughter was in the country on her final trip to hospital, doing nursing prac. She chose private.

9/ I do not have a great deal of regard for private health care or aged care facilities, but I do not blame her one bit. I would use them if I could. Wouldn’t we all?

The biggest difference - people are NICE to you. Even at the point of diagnostics and imaging.

10/ It’s not because they are nicer people, more competent people. It’s because they are given the time to do their jobs and to be paid properly.

That’s what care should look like. Right? Not stressed people having to deal with stressed people.

11/ One of the things people don’t know about our dick public system is that you can’t have an ultrasound or mammogram and a breast biopsy on the same day. Or at least, three hours apart.

So you get to wait in a coffee shop, like I am now, rather than pay taxi trips/bus/train.

12/ Note, @NDIS - there is no taxi service in my town. So instead of the four hundred bucks round trip, it’s a train ride to and from somewhere. From my town, that’s two buses and three trains. And that’s providing I can get a lift to the station. And forty bucks, cos country.

13/ Ask why disabled women die at disproportionate rates of cancer. Height adjustable beds issue - access. Half of us live in poverty. And then there are the other issues around class and access to doctors.

As a crip, I am PRIVILEGED. I don’t live in a group home or have an ID.

14/ All of these are intersectional issues. They are about class and attitude and valuing disabled women, poor women and other women and people. And yes, I recognise that we are far better off than those in other countries, that our system is generally a good one.

Yet, this.

15/ False equivalencies are often drawn about socioeconomic status and health and these things are hard to talk about. It’s not just because we poor people drink or smoke or don’t eat well - it’s also about the health system response.

I’ve had my ultrasound now and now the wait.

16/ Yes, I need a biopsy. And so I have been waiting upstairs in the cafe for three hours. It’s lovely. Like a different world. The staff have been universally fabulous.

Great oncologists, too. How I wish my mother had had this kind of treatment and care.

We should do better.