🗓️ 4 January 2024
SWANK Blog Title: A Birthday, A Breach, and a Breathless System
Labels: asthma emergency, medical neglect, racial projection, safeguarding misuse, police escalation, emotional abuse, child rights, disability discrimination, St Thomas misconduct, COVID diagnosis
A Birthday, A Breach, and a Breathless System
💨 Filed under: Respiratory Crisis, Institutional Misconduct, and the Failure of Empathy
On the second of January 2024, I made the rational and collaborative decision with my children to attend A&E—not out of drama, but due to the small matter of my lungs not working. That night, I was wheezing, dizzy, and down ten kilograms from prolonged illness. Heir, my youngest, chose to accompany me.
We arrived at St Thomas’ A&E—or as it appeared that night, a dystopian social experiment in overpopulation and collapse. We were ushered into the Majors waiting area—an architectural simulation of empathy failure. Humans were crammed, strewn, breathing each other’s pathogens at close range. We tried not to step on anyone. We failed.
Despite my clear and documented history of eosinophilic asthma, a nurse—resentful for reasons that remain medically unexplained—suggested I might just be having an “asthma thing.” I politely corrected her. She offered a nebuliser. We sat. Then we were displaced. Then called again. Then told to wait. I stumbled over a foot in the crush of the neglected. For that, I was soon verbally attacked by a woman whose rage was racialised, misdirected, and endorsed by the environment.
And then the accusation came—the eternal bait: abuse. A common technique used by low-quality humans to deflect their own lack of emotional regulation. A nurse took me and Heir into a side room—not to treat my breathing—but to interrogate me about my children.
I could barely speak, but I kept asking for medical treatment. Instead, they sent police to our hotel room.
We left. Heir and I returned to our hotel. I cried. We had only just arrived when officers, again, appeared at the door. For what offence? “Leaving” A&E. Apparently leaving without treatment is now criminal.
They came back. Then more of them. Nine, at one point. One officer said my condition "wouldn’t be fixed in one night anyway"—a remarkable position from someone neither medical nor kind. Eventually, a woman officer told me I would not be arrested. She also told me: "I have no concerns about your children."
It was 4am when the police left.
Then it was my son Prerogative’s birthday.
🎈 We went bowling. We had cake. Balloons. We sang. The hotel staff helped. But amidst the celebration, more messages from social workers. Even after all this. Even when I’d said: not today. Even when I could barely breathe.
So we returned to a different hospital: Chelsea and Westminster. There, they confirmed what anyone with compassion or clinical training should have known days earlier—I had COVID. My lungs needed help. They gave me prednisone. And peace.
But the damage had been done.
By St Thomas.
By the police.
By the social workers who circle like vultures instead of healers.
I changed my number.
I do not want calls.
I cannot speak.
I reserve my voice for my children—those who listen.
The rest can learn to write.
—
This is not a story of bad luck. It is a story of institutional design.
Designed to punish, not protect.
To escalate, not resolve.
To make asking for help feel like betrayal of oneself.
And I won’t betray myself anymore.
—
Curated for the SWANK Archive by Polly Chromatic
www.swankarchive.com