- Joined
- Dec 10, 2016
- Messages
- 9
- Reaction score
- 2
I feel that my idealism all my life, and lonerism led me to believe the world was better than i thought. Then i got into a medical school and experienced a part of the dark side of humanity (i have bipolar 1 and have lived with it for nearly 8 years).
The following is long, TL/DR: Do no harm only applies to certain people.
1) forced chronic sleep deprivation from roommate (leaving name out) shared single room), occurred first term here (January 2015), due to no other available housing and the person not stopping, had to take a 1st leave of absence
Explanation: My first Roommate (leaving name out) was the person who I was matched to live with during my first time here (Term 1 beginning January 2015). Shortly after arriving, during our first talks meeting each other, he found out that I didn’t have facebook (been somewhat of a loner for sometime after dealing with medical issues during youth, including the stated diagnosis as well as severe allergies), after that, he became hostile, would snap on me for the asking generic questions (how clean up spilled coffee, not soap?), then promptly requested to move into a single room. He had said it was because I snore, which I tried to remedy, but one day after coming back from class, his behavior changed. He out of nowhere accused me of taking $500 US from him from an envelope that he said he lost in the room. That led to campus security coming to search my bags. I had to ask if the roommate could leave my room while security searched, so that I could keep my medications (of which I had 5 months worth for the whole term) private. That just seemed to anger him more, although there was nothing to be found. For such a serious accusation, it ended there. The night before he moved out, he stood beside me and started rapidly clicking his pen near my ear (it seemed his purpose was to agitate me).
After that, I got a new roommate,(leaving name out), who had wanted to leave the 2nd Campus due to its distance from the main campus. After he moved in, things seemed ok for a bit until a few nights before our first exam (Term 1 Unified). Those nights, he literally stayed up all night, and wouldn’t turn his lights off, which led to me being unable to sleep. I was in shock that this was happening the very night before the Unified exam, and when I went to the RA, they said that since he’s paying for the room as well, he has the right to do that, so we needed to compromise. He wouldn’t. He said because of his Nystagmus he needed all of the rooms lights on all the time, and because of some medication he was taking, he didn’t need to sleep. It led to me doing poorly on the exam. I met with my school’s advisor about the situation, as I could tell that he was going to do the same thing towards Mid-terms. She said that since Housing was full and there were no unoccupied rooms, that I would just have to find a way around it. There was no way around it, as housing had already received the disbursement money for the term’s housing and so I didn’t have money to move off campus. I tried various things, sleep aids, going to the library, etc, but it wouldn’t work because he would literally not leave the room, and no matter how long I stayed out, I still needed somewhere to sleep, and that was the only place. He would not leave the room. At the time, classes weren’t mandatory, so he would watch the online lectures. He would intentionally misinform me about what’s important for exams, to the point where I just stopped listening, but he would continue to do it. After the Unified quiz had occurred, in classes and labs, other people who I didn’t know, but were friends with him, would sit near me, give me weird looks, and click their pens unnecessarily as if to distract me, as they had no paper. It was similar to what my first roommate had done before he moved out. All of this occurred right up to midterms, and even on the nights before midterms, (name out) still obstructed my sleep. After several meetings with the R.A, and me we finally came to an agreement that at 11:00pm, we would turn off the lights and sleep. The first night of it, he was fully up and doing homework on his computer, same as me. While I noticed it was getting near 11, I decided to finish what I was working on. His behavior was strange. The moment the clock showed 11:00pm, he went from his desk immediately to his bed, threw his covers on, turned off his lights, then acted as if he was sleeping. I started closing up the stuff I was working on. By 11:04pm, he got up, said that It’s past 11:00pm, but I wasn’t in bed, and so he wouldn’t have to listen to the rules, and then continued that behavior, even though the next night I tried to go to sleep by 10:30pm. During nights where there was a lab the next morning, his behavior got worse. He said that he would study in the bathroom, that way the lights wouldn’t bother me (he did not want to go to the all-night study halls, and that’s his choice). These nights in the bathroom, almost like a pattern, I would get awoken around 3-4am by the sound of his chair scraping against the ground on the bathroom. Then, the next day during the lab, I would look over and see him just watching me (we were in different small groups but had labs at the same time for some classes). It’s as if his goal was to force me to have to fail, as I remember that he told me that the next person to get off of the 2nd campus was one of his friends, and he wanted to room with him. After performing poorly on midterms, my faculty advisor suggested I take a leave of absence, which I did. I remained on campus since I would have to get tested on the material in the fall, but stopped going to classes, since the students there still didn’t stop with the distracting noises.
2) Peanut Allergies and the people I was living with led to a second leave of absence. Explanation: So in the fall 2015 I came back, repeated term 1, and completed the term. The person who I was living with before (name out), was also in the same classes, which meant he had to take a leave of absence as well (he had acted as if not sleeping wouldn’t affect him, but it did). We didn’t have any interactions after that so that had ended. However, when Term 2 began this year in January 2016, things became strange again. With the housing lottery system here, although I had a single room previously, it was random chance whether I would get one again or not. I ended up in a 3-bedroom unit with 2 other people, 1 person from my term, another from an upper term. When I had met them we talked for a bit, and I got to know them a bit. However, they became avoidant of me after I told them I didn’t have facebook. That was fine, as I figured we probably didn’t have much in common. I had told them both when I had arrived that I had a cold from the winter (coming in from Canada), and so that I would stay in my room for a bit. The cold lasted longer then I had thought, and after some time I realized that the continued illness was not a cold, but my peanut allergies acting up. Apparently one of the roommates that I lived with cooked meals with peanut paste, which led to the smell of fried peanuts all over the entire 3-bedroom units. I have peanut allergies. As well, the other roommate, whom I was in the same term, ate from a jar of peanuts, which were left in the main kitchen area. I didn’t notice for a bit because I wasn’t looking at their belongings when I had moved in. That was what was making me sick. It wasn’t until the people around me in class started acting strange that I noticed what was happening. For the first 2-3 weeks of Term 2, everyone takes short courses. They’re relatively less difficult then the others, but you still need a passing grade to move on to the next part of Term 2. It was during the week leading up to the final exam in those courses, that people started behaving strangely.
The roommates knew I wasn’t well, I had thought from a cold, but the one whom I was living with would tell me that he would watch me from afar in class, and saw when I was nodding off (now that it was term2 and a new class of people, I started going to class again everyday, and with the illness and the drowsy side-effects of my medications, the first 2 hours in the morning I tend to be somewhat drowsy). I didn’t think much of it at first, until in class I looked over and would see him looking at me often. Around February 7th, I had looked around to see what was making me sick, as no cold should last that long, and I wasn’t experiencing a flu. I had gone to the school clinic, and the doctor there said it was probably my asthma, although later i saw it was the peanut smell clinging to my fabrics in my room. In classes, the people around me started making distracting noises again, clicking their pens although they had no paper to write with in front of them (cameras in the class could verify that this occurred). It was loud and distracting, but due to the peanut allergies making me ill, it affected me more than it probably usually would. Then I noticed that some of these students had been with me during that first term (since other students take leaves of absences, and decel), and it was the friends of the person whom i had roomed with previously, who sat around me and would make the noises. I tried changing seats, but due to the nature of lectures (4 a day, with 10 minute breaks inbetween), people would either change seats during the break, or the following day, and with limited seats, there weren’t many other places to go). What made me very uncomfortable, was that one student, who I knew from meeting back in january 2015, was good friends with the person I had lived with (leaving name out), and changed seats to sit near me, and one day had 2 clickers and would bang them together during the lectures, it being loudest for me since I was nearest to him. No other day were clickers ever distracting. I was partially in shock that this was happening again, but it seemed as if not until after I completed the short courses and moved on to the next, that people started doing that aggressively. On February 9th, 2016, it took a dangerous turn.
A student that had sat beside me the day before, who was a buddy of the no-sleep roommate, then brought peanut flavoured coffee to class and sat next to me. I had started getting nauseous, but was unfamiliar with the feeling, since it had been early elementary school since I had come in such proximity to the smell of peanuts as to get nauseous. After 2 hours sitting in lecture feeling ill, I looked over and saw that his lips were pursed towards me, and he had a grin. That’s when I realized that the coffee he was drinking smelled like peanuts, and the way he was facing caused his breath to go towards me (although we were in the back-right of the lecture hall, and so he should have been facing the other way, towards the lecturer). Towards the break, he spilled the coffee, and that’s when the peanut smell made me extremely nauseous, and I could feel my ears and throat starting to swell. I asked him if he knew what flavor coffee he was drinking. He said he didn’t know but it was from his girlfriend. I asked if he could taste the flavor, and he still said he didn’t know. I then told him that I think it’s peanuts, and that I’m allergic, and asked if he could clean up the spilled coffee on the ground. While he went to the bathroom and got paper towel to wipe it, there was no soap, so the smell remained (this was just after the class had finished the course Community & Preventative Medicine, which discusses common food allergies such as peanuts, and how they can be transmitted and affect other people, such as peanut reside being left behind from people’s hands on doorknobs, etc).
After that incident, I reported it to the Dean of Students Office. As I hadn’t discovered why my illness was continuing for so long at home, I started cleaning the place. That's when i noticed the peanut cooking paste and other peanut products. The next day was when I sent an email to the RA asking them to tell the people I was living with that I was allergic to peanuts and their cooking with peanut products was affecting my health, since for the past few days they were always gone, & when I got home I realized that was the smell in the room that was affecting me. When I had informed the RA of the peanut issue, they became hostile. The RA said that the issue escalated into a Dean of Students Issue, and I had to have a meeting with the school’s lawyer. When I met with the lawyer, apparently there were 2 accusations against me. The roommates had apparently acted as if I was faking my peanut allergies, and so the Dean of Student’s office sent 4 campus security people to me to do a “wellness check”. They had told me it was due to the peanut allergies, but later i was told that such checks occur if someone is deemed a threat to oneself or others safety and security. The visit was strange to me, as I had not told anyone at the school about my diagnosis, but it seemed as if they knew, and assumed I was in a manic state and just fabricating the peanut allergies. Later it became apparent that students can call the psc on other students if they want, and it seemed that that was the roommates response to me bringing up the peanut allergy issue.
Another complaint that was launched against me was from housekeeping, which said that I wasn’t letting the housekeepers in my room. They clean the main area, and according to the email from the RA for that building, weren’t supposed to clean people’s bedrooms unless they asked. The housekeeper had offered to, and I figured she was being nice, but I had said no due to privacy issues. While I had started keeping my medications in the safe that’s provided for each room, it repeatedly started malfunctioning (i even took a video of me resetting it, and a day later the same code wouldnt work). After the first time, I split some of my medications and kept some in my bag. However, with the safe malfunctioning, I had nowhere else to put the rest of the terms stock of medications but somewhere in my bedroom, which is why I didn’t want housekeeping to clean my room. That housekeeper launched a complaint to the Dean of Student’s Office against me, saying I was refusing to let her do her job, although at the meeting with the lawyer I showed her the email from the RA stating that housekeeeper’s aren’t supposed to clean people’s rooms.
I’m fully aware that there is still prejudice and stigma towards people with such conditions, and so was not going to disclose it to strangers. I had put it on my health form after the school had accepted me, so I figured they knew, or the health clinic knew. As well, I had read that on this Island many people have a strong prejudice towards those with mental illnesses, so it was not something I wanted the housekeeper to know about. After the first meeting with the lawyer, she then told me to go to the health clinic. I was told it was to check up on me for my allergies, but the doctor there assessing me didn’t ask much about the allergies, and after running a full body physical examination , said I should see the school’s psychiatrist. I asked If I could come back to see him the next day, as the lawyer had told me it would only take 30 minutes, but it took nearly 1 hour 30 minutes, with the wait times inbetween. Apparently, I had no choice, and if I left the clinic, she would call campus security on me. That shocked me, and then I met the specialist. He initially kept probing around my diagnosis, asking if anyone in family had any history of mental illness, etc, but wouldn’t be explicit in which behavior I exhibited, just used generic symptom terms like somewhat irritable. I found it strange as I had thought that since I put the information on my health form, that the health clinic would have access to my medical records, but apparently they didnt. I told him about the diagnosis, which i received years ago and had learned to live with. Afterwards, he said he wanted to follow up weekly, which was fine with me, as while I met my doctors at home during the breaks, and they said I could contact them if anything came up, if the school was wondering what type of Bipolar person I was, that was fine, as I had learned to live with it. However, he kept acting as if I was keeping it a secret from the school, as if I was trying to hide it from them, while the whole time I thought they already knew from the health form so was wondering why they’re trying to get me to talk about it in that way.
Afterwards, I met with him weekly, informed him of my medications and dosage, and not much else happened at those meetings. He told me that the Dean of Students office was unhappy about my situation, whatever that was supposed to mean. I found that strange, as this is a medical school, but after reading online about mental health prejudice in the healthcare system, realized it could be an issue for some. My appointments with him were different from the ones I had had with all of the previous doctors I had met since being diagnosed (4, including the 2 when I was first diagnosed while attending undergrad, 1 in Toronto where I lived for a year after graduation, and 1 in my hometown, whom I saw after graduating while I was figuring out what I would do with my life.
At one point, 2 weeks before the midterms, The school specialist had suggested that I take less of my medication. I found this very off-putting, as over the years, while dealing with the side-effects of these medications, and trying to find the best combination (while the prescriptions worked, the side-effects of weight gain were strong with the first ones , and its unpredictable how well they will work for their main purposes , and so trying different combinations/dosages should only be done during times of low life stress such as during school breaks), they all always advised that its not wise to adjust medications around important life events, if they are fulfilling their purpose, in which case its better to deal with the side effects (exercise daily and healthy eating to keep off the weight gain). As well, when we talked about the peanut allergies, for a time he acted as if I was fabricating them, asking me to bring proof. I even brought my Epi-pen to an appointment after he asked me to, and he still gave me a questioning look, as if questioning the doctor who had prescribed it to me. As well, during these appointments, after a few weeks, I realized they weren’t checking my blood for my lithium levels. I then asked them to do it, and they did it immediately, at 3pm in the afternoon, after I had had lunch, which is not according to protocol. Since my first diagnosis, and as the medical literature states, when checking lithium levels, the person is supposed to fast for 12 hours, then take their blood drawn, having their latest meal at 9pm if one is going to get the blood work drawn around 9am. I told them that, and they said it didn’t matter, which was strange.
Come midterm I still performed poorly, as although the school was aware of my peanut allergy and living in that unit by January 20th, it wasn’t until February 22nd that a room became available, at which point only 2 weeks were left until midterms. When I had moved, I had to clean nearly all of my products, and even unused clothes, as many things still had the scent of peanuts, which was nauseating to me. After the housekeeper had apparently been informed of my peanut allergies, they still didn’t change their cleaning patterns, and cleaned even less, doing the bare minimum. As such, I spent a lot of time trying to clean everything of mine, as the nauseating smell was affecting my focus the entire time (neurological side effect of peanut allergies), which took time away from me studying, but the conflict was difficult because if I didn’t clean, I would be studying with nausea, which wasn’t effective anyways. Due to these issues, I had to take another leave of absence, and come back this fall to do term 2 again.
During clicker sessions, due to the distractions from before, I would stand in the back of the hall and do the quizzes, which some others did, instead of taking a seat because I didn’t want a repeat of the experience before. Then, the very person whom I was living with earlier, whom had apparently deemed me a threat to his safety and security, which was why he and the other roommate were able to move out nearly immediately, started standing with some of his friends a few feet behind me at the back of the lectures. Why would someone who deemed me a threat to his safety and security then start standing near me like that? He wasn’t talking to me or anything, but later I saw that one of his friends was a student that I had groups with during my first term there. He probably knew about the sleep thing, maybe. As well , every so often, during these clickers, a student that was friends with my previous roommate, would walk by me, looking at me with a weird grin, and then I would smell peanuts. It seemed that after the coffee-flavoured peanut incident, different people who i had seen hanging around the person who had the peanut flavored coffee, would sometimes walk by me and shortly after i would smell it, as if that person had eaten a butterfingers bar or something. It was disgusting, as they were simply exploiting my food allergy to make these mandatory academic activities a health concern for me. It even happened during a lab that was 2 days after I had reported the classroom peanut-flavoured coffee incident. The whole thing made me naucious, and when I got home had to wash all the clothes and my backpack as they smelled of peanuts. I’ve had peanut allergies my whole life, but never have smelled it like that before. I’ve been with people who had eaten peanuts, but it never would smell that strongly, which made me question if these people were doing it on purpose, as it started happening after the clicking pens stopped (one day during those lectures, I took out my iphone and started recording audio, to see if the distracting noises were as loud as I thought, and i think some students around me noticed, because then all of a sudden the people around me were quiet, and that’s when I saw that nowhere else in the class of nearly 500 students was there a section making that much noise, and it was after that day that the peanut in classes issue started). The summer after, when living with people who ate peanuts, even then the smell was never that gone. How could i become hypersensitive and that just have it disappear.
Again, I was set to take a leave of absence, but stayed the rest of the term since I would have to repeat it in the fall. During the last of my appointments with the specialist at school, while he said that things were ok, they said I would need to get assessed by a doctor at home during the summer to see if I was fit to return to the school. That summer, when I got home and had the appointment, I informed my doctor of the whole situation, and while at the time I even doubted myself due to everything that was happening, he simply said that it was quite an ordeal to go through, but that everything seemed fine with me, that I should continue on the doses that I had been on for a while now, and that I was good to go back. It was just 1 appointment, with everything that happened here, I expected more, but in just 1 appointment he said everything was ok. That appointment was like the ones I had had before the school's specialist, where I wasn’t being questioned as if I was hiding something.
Being in a new class, I had hoped that this wouldn’t occur again, and while I got a single room for this fall, this issue came up again. With what had happened, I became fearful that it would occur again, but then figured it’s a new class, and hoped most of the students who were involved before had progressed to the next term. The first time I went, was to the 2nd clicker session. I sat in a corner in the back and just did the quizzes. Apparently where I was sitting was where someone else usually sat, so the next week I went to the other side of the class and sat in the back. Again, it seemed I was in someone’s spot. After people filled in, there was a group of people sitting to my right who were all friends. The seat next to me was one of their friends. The person came in, and after the 1st quiz (first hour), during the 10 minute break before the next quiz starts, that person went to the store here and bought a pack of peanuts. I just figured it was a coincidence, but by the end of the 3rd clicker session I was feeling nauseous about it. I saw near the end of the quizzes that that person was friends with the person who had the peanut-flavored coffee the term before. I also saw that that very person was in the same class, due to whichever reason. I started thinking, if I go to these classes, are these students going to do this again? This would be the 3rd time where my health was being compromised. What am I supposed to do, there’s no cure for peanut allergies, so if people are choosing to do that, and these academic activities are mandatory, that's just too bad for those who are susceptible. When i had informed the faculty of it last term, they had acted as if i had made up the peanut allergies, and i had to go to these meetings weekly although nothing was being done to resolve this issue of peanuts in class. Even the thought that people would exploit my peanut allergies during mandatory academic activities due to possible prejudices/stigma, is extremely disturbing
-i have some points of evidence, but it won't fit here (about 3 pages in word). -in terms of suggestions to see my doctor, that's what i did this summer after the previous terms ordeal, there's no therapy for peanut allergies & prejudice (of which it's apparently been published in peer-reviewed journals that many medical students exhibit stigma/prejudice towards those with such conditions)
Thanks for reviewing this, I’ve never experienced this before, so your opinions on this would be nice (even if hypothetically it had occurred).
Either way, i think my view of people and healthcare has been changed forever.
The following is long, TL/DR: Do no harm only applies to certain people.
1) forced chronic sleep deprivation from roommate (leaving name out) shared single room), occurred first term here (January 2015), due to no other available housing and the person not stopping, had to take a 1st leave of absence
Explanation: My first Roommate (leaving name out) was the person who I was matched to live with during my first time here (Term 1 beginning January 2015). Shortly after arriving, during our first talks meeting each other, he found out that I didn’t have facebook (been somewhat of a loner for sometime after dealing with medical issues during youth, including the stated diagnosis as well as severe allergies), after that, he became hostile, would snap on me for the asking generic questions (how clean up spilled coffee, not soap?), then promptly requested to move into a single room. He had said it was because I snore, which I tried to remedy, but one day after coming back from class, his behavior changed. He out of nowhere accused me of taking $500 US from him from an envelope that he said he lost in the room. That led to campus security coming to search my bags. I had to ask if the roommate could leave my room while security searched, so that I could keep my medications (of which I had 5 months worth for the whole term) private. That just seemed to anger him more, although there was nothing to be found. For such a serious accusation, it ended there. The night before he moved out, he stood beside me and started rapidly clicking his pen near my ear (it seemed his purpose was to agitate me).
After that, I got a new roommate,(leaving name out), who had wanted to leave the 2nd Campus due to its distance from the main campus. After he moved in, things seemed ok for a bit until a few nights before our first exam (Term 1 Unified). Those nights, he literally stayed up all night, and wouldn’t turn his lights off, which led to me being unable to sleep. I was in shock that this was happening the very night before the Unified exam, and when I went to the RA, they said that since he’s paying for the room as well, he has the right to do that, so we needed to compromise. He wouldn’t. He said because of his Nystagmus he needed all of the rooms lights on all the time, and because of some medication he was taking, he didn’t need to sleep. It led to me doing poorly on the exam. I met with my school’s advisor about the situation, as I could tell that he was going to do the same thing towards Mid-terms. She said that since Housing was full and there were no unoccupied rooms, that I would just have to find a way around it. There was no way around it, as housing had already received the disbursement money for the term’s housing and so I didn’t have money to move off campus. I tried various things, sleep aids, going to the library, etc, but it wouldn’t work because he would literally not leave the room, and no matter how long I stayed out, I still needed somewhere to sleep, and that was the only place. He would not leave the room. At the time, classes weren’t mandatory, so he would watch the online lectures. He would intentionally misinform me about what’s important for exams, to the point where I just stopped listening, but he would continue to do it. After the Unified quiz had occurred, in classes and labs, other people who I didn’t know, but were friends with him, would sit near me, give me weird looks, and click their pens unnecessarily as if to distract me, as they had no paper. It was similar to what my first roommate had done before he moved out. All of this occurred right up to midterms, and even on the nights before midterms, (name out) still obstructed my sleep. After several meetings with the R.A, and me we finally came to an agreement that at 11:00pm, we would turn off the lights and sleep. The first night of it, he was fully up and doing homework on his computer, same as me. While I noticed it was getting near 11, I decided to finish what I was working on. His behavior was strange. The moment the clock showed 11:00pm, he went from his desk immediately to his bed, threw his covers on, turned off his lights, then acted as if he was sleeping. I started closing up the stuff I was working on. By 11:04pm, he got up, said that It’s past 11:00pm, but I wasn’t in bed, and so he wouldn’t have to listen to the rules, and then continued that behavior, even though the next night I tried to go to sleep by 10:30pm. During nights where there was a lab the next morning, his behavior got worse. He said that he would study in the bathroom, that way the lights wouldn’t bother me (he did not want to go to the all-night study halls, and that’s his choice). These nights in the bathroom, almost like a pattern, I would get awoken around 3-4am by the sound of his chair scraping against the ground on the bathroom. Then, the next day during the lab, I would look over and see him just watching me (we were in different small groups but had labs at the same time for some classes). It’s as if his goal was to force me to have to fail, as I remember that he told me that the next person to get off of the 2nd campus was one of his friends, and he wanted to room with him. After performing poorly on midterms, my faculty advisor suggested I take a leave of absence, which I did. I remained on campus since I would have to get tested on the material in the fall, but stopped going to classes, since the students there still didn’t stop with the distracting noises.
2) Peanut Allergies and the people I was living with led to a second leave of absence. Explanation: So in the fall 2015 I came back, repeated term 1, and completed the term. The person who I was living with before (name out), was also in the same classes, which meant he had to take a leave of absence as well (he had acted as if not sleeping wouldn’t affect him, but it did). We didn’t have any interactions after that so that had ended. However, when Term 2 began this year in January 2016, things became strange again. With the housing lottery system here, although I had a single room previously, it was random chance whether I would get one again or not. I ended up in a 3-bedroom unit with 2 other people, 1 person from my term, another from an upper term. When I had met them we talked for a bit, and I got to know them a bit. However, they became avoidant of me after I told them I didn’t have facebook. That was fine, as I figured we probably didn’t have much in common. I had told them both when I had arrived that I had a cold from the winter (coming in from Canada), and so that I would stay in my room for a bit. The cold lasted longer then I had thought, and after some time I realized that the continued illness was not a cold, but my peanut allergies acting up. Apparently one of the roommates that I lived with cooked meals with peanut paste, which led to the smell of fried peanuts all over the entire 3-bedroom units. I have peanut allergies. As well, the other roommate, whom I was in the same term, ate from a jar of peanuts, which were left in the main kitchen area. I didn’t notice for a bit because I wasn’t looking at their belongings when I had moved in. That was what was making me sick. It wasn’t until the people around me in class started acting strange that I noticed what was happening. For the first 2-3 weeks of Term 2, everyone takes short courses. They’re relatively less difficult then the others, but you still need a passing grade to move on to the next part of Term 2. It was during the week leading up to the final exam in those courses, that people started behaving strangely.
The roommates knew I wasn’t well, I had thought from a cold, but the one whom I was living with would tell me that he would watch me from afar in class, and saw when I was nodding off (now that it was term2 and a new class of people, I started going to class again everyday, and with the illness and the drowsy side-effects of my medications, the first 2 hours in the morning I tend to be somewhat drowsy). I didn’t think much of it at first, until in class I looked over and would see him looking at me often. Around February 7th, I had looked around to see what was making me sick, as no cold should last that long, and I wasn’t experiencing a flu. I had gone to the school clinic, and the doctor there said it was probably my asthma, although later i saw it was the peanut smell clinging to my fabrics in my room. In classes, the people around me started making distracting noises again, clicking their pens although they had no paper to write with in front of them (cameras in the class could verify that this occurred). It was loud and distracting, but due to the peanut allergies making me ill, it affected me more than it probably usually would. Then I noticed that some of these students had been with me during that first term (since other students take leaves of absences, and decel), and it was the friends of the person whom i had roomed with previously, who sat around me and would make the noises. I tried changing seats, but due to the nature of lectures (4 a day, with 10 minute breaks inbetween), people would either change seats during the break, or the following day, and with limited seats, there weren’t many other places to go). What made me very uncomfortable, was that one student, who I knew from meeting back in january 2015, was good friends with the person I had lived with (leaving name out), and changed seats to sit near me, and one day had 2 clickers and would bang them together during the lectures, it being loudest for me since I was nearest to him. No other day were clickers ever distracting. I was partially in shock that this was happening again, but it seemed as if not until after I completed the short courses and moved on to the next, that people started doing that aggressively. On February 9th, 2016, it took a dangerous turn.
A student that had sat beside me the day before, who was a buddy of the no-sleep roommate, then brought peanut flavoured coffee to class and sat next to me. I had started getting nauseous, but was unfamiliar with the feeling, since it had been early elementary school since I had come in such proximity to the smell of peanuts as to get nauseous. After 2 hours sitting in lecture feeling ill, I looked over and saw that his lips were pursed towards me, and he had a grin. That’s when I realized that the coffee he was drinking smelled like peanuts, and the way he was facing caused his breath to go towards me (although we were in the back-right of the lecture hall, and so he should have been facing the other way, towards the lecturer). Towards the break, he spilled the coffee, and that’s when the peanut smell made me extremely nauseous, and I could feel my ears and throat starting to swell. I asked him if he knew what flavor coffee he was drinking. He said he didn’t know but it was from his girlfriend. I asked if he could taste the flavor, and he still said he didn’t know. I then told him that I think it’s peanuts, and that I’m allergic, and asked if he could clean up the spilled coffee on the ground. While he went to the bathroom and got paper towel to wipe it, there was no soap, so the smell remained (this was just after the class had finished the course Community & Preventative Medicine, which discusses common food allergies such as peanuts, and how they can be transmitted and affect other people, such as peanut reside being left behind from people’s hands on doorknobs, etc).
After that incident, I reported it to the Dean of Students Office. As I hadn’t discovered why my illness was continuing for so long at home, I started cleaning the place. That's when i noticed the peanut cooking paste and other peanut products. The next day was when I sent an email to the RA asking them to tell the people I was living with that I was allergic to peanuts and their cooking with peanut products was affecting my health, since for the past few days they were always gone, & when I got home I realized that was the smell in the room that was affecting me. When I had informed the RA of the peanut issue, they became hostile. The RA said that the issue escalated into a Dean of Students Issue, and I had to have a meeting with the school’s lawyer. When I met with the lawyer, apparently there were 2 accusations against me. The roommates had apparently acted as if I was faking my peanut allergies, and so the Dean of Student’s office sent 4 campus security people to me to do a “wellness check”. They had told me it was due to the peanut allergies, but later i was told that such checks occur if someone is deemed a threat to oneself or others safety and security. The visit was strange to me, as I had not told anyone at the school about my diagnosis, but it seemed as if they knew, and assumed I was in a manic state and just fabricating the peanut allergies. Later it became apparent that students can call the psc on other students if they want, and it seemed that that was the roommates response to me bringing up the peanut allergy issue.
Another complaint that was launched against me was from housekeeping, which said that I wasn’t letting the housekeepers in my room. They clean the main area, and according to the email from the RA for that building, weren’t supposed to clean people’s bedrooms unless they asked. The housekeeper had offered to, and I figured she was being nice, but I had said no due to privacy issues. While I had started keeping my medications in the safe that’s provided for each room, it repeatedly started malfunctioning (i even took a video of me resetting it, and a day later the same code wouldnt work). After the first time, I split some of my medications and kept some in my bag. However, with the safe malfunctioning, I had nowhere else to put the rest of the terms stock of medications but somewhere in my bedroom, which is why I didn’t want housekeeping to clean my room. That housekeeper launched a complaint to the Dean of Student’s Office against me, saying I was refusing to let her do her job, although at the meeting with the lawyer I showed her the email from the RA stating that housekeeeper’s aren’t supposed to clean people’s rooms.
I’m fully aware that there is still prejudice and stigma towards people with such conditions, and so was not going to disclose it to strangers. I had put it on my health form after the school had accepted me, so I figured they knew, or the health clinic knew. As well, I had read that on this Island many people have a strong prejudice towards those with mental illnesses, so it was not something I wanted the housekeeper to know about. After the first meeting with the lawyer, she then told me to go to the health clinic. I was told it was to check up on me for my allergies, but the doctor there assessing me didn’t ask much about the allergies, and after running a full body physical examination , said I should see the school’s psychiatrist. I asked If I could come back to see him the next day, as the lawyer had told me it would only take 30 minutes, but it took nearly 1 hour 30 minutes, with the wait times inbetween. Apparently, I had no choice, and if I left the clinic, she would call campus security on me. That shocked me, and then I met the specialist. He initially kept probing around my diagnosis, asking if anyone in family had any history of mental illness, etc, but wouldn’t be explicit in which behavior I exhibited, just used generic symptom terms like somewhat irritable. I found it strange as I had thought that since I put the information on my health form, that the health clinic would have access to my medical records, but apparently they didnt. I told him about the diagnosis, which i received years ago and had learned to live with. Afterwards, he said he wanted to follow up weekly, which was fine with me, as while I met my doctors at home during the breaks, and they said I could contact them if anything came up, if the school was wondering what type of Bipolar person I was, that was fine, as I had learned to live with it. However, he kept acting as if I was keeping it a secret from the school, as if I was trying to hide it from them, while the whole time I thought they already knew from the health form so was wondering why they’re trying to get me to talk about it in that way.
Afterwards, I met with him weekly, informed him of my medications and dosage, and not much else happened at those meetings. He told me that the Dean of Students office was unhappy about my situation, whatever that was supposed to mean. I found that strange, as this is a medical school, but after reading online about mental health prejudice in the healthcare system, realized it could be an issue for some. My appointments with him were different from the ones I had had with all of the previous doctors I had met since being diagnosed (4, including the 2 when I was first diagnosed while attending undergrad, 1 in Toronto where I lived for a year after graduation, and 1 in my hometown, whom I saw after graduating while I was figuring out what I would do with my life.
At one point, 2 weeks before the midterms, The school specialist had suggested that I take less of my medication. I found this very off-putting, as over the years, while dealing with the side-effects of these medications, and trying to find the best combination (while the prescriptions worked, the side-effects of weight gain were strong with the first ones , and its unpredictable how well they will work for their main purposes , and so trying different combinations/dosages should only be done during times of low life stress such as during school breaks), they all always advised that its not wise to adjust medications around important life events, if they are fulfilling their purpose, in which case its better to deal with the side effects (exercise daily and healthy eating to keep off the weight gain). As well, when we talked about the peanut allergies, for a time he acted as if I was fabricating them, asking me to bring proof. I even brought my Epi-pen to an appointment after he asked me to, and he still gave me a questioning look, as if questioning the doctor who had prescribed it to me. As well, during these appointments, after a few weeks, I realized they weren’t checking my blood for my lithium levels. I then asked them to do it, and they did it immediately, at 3pm in the afternoon, after I had had lunch, which is not according to protocol. Since my first diagnosis, and as the medical literature states, when checking lithium levels, the person is supposed to fast for 12 hours, then take their blood drawn, having their latest meal at 9pm if one is going to get the blood work drawn around 9am. I told them that, and they said it didn’t matter, which was strange.
Come midterm I still performed poorly, as although the school was aware of my peanut allergy and living in that unit by January 20th, it wasn’t until February 22nd that a room became available, at which point only 2 weeks were left until midterms. When I had moved, I had to clean nearly all of my products, and even unused clothes, as many things still had the scent of peanuts, which was nauseating to me. After the housekeeper had apparently been informed of my peanut allergies, they still didn’t change their cleaning patterns, and cleaned even less, doing the bare minimum. As such, I spent a lot of time trying to clean everything of mine, as the nauseating smell was affecting my focus the entire time (neurological side effect of peanut allergies), which took time away from me studying, but the conflict was difficult because if I didn’t clean, I would be studying with nausea, which wasn’t effective anyways. Due to these issues, I had to take another leave of absence, and come back this fall to do term 2 again.
During clicker sessions, due to the distractions from before, I would stand in the back of the hall and do the quizzes, which some others did, instead of taking a seat because I didn’t want a repeat of the experience before. Then, the very person whom I was living with earlier, whom had apparently deemed me a threat to his safety and security, which was why he and the other roommate were able to move out nearly immediately, started standing with some of his friends a few feet behind me at the back of the lectures. Why would someone who deemed me a threat to his safety and security then start standing near me like that? He wasn’t talking to me or anything, but later I saw that one of his friends was a student that I had groups with during my first term there. He probably knew about the sleep thing, maybe. As well , every so often, during these clickers, a student that was friends with my previous roommate, would walk by me, looking at me with a weird grin, and then I would smell peanuts. It seemed that after the coffee-flavoured peanut incident, different people who i had seen hanging around the person who had the peanut flavored coffee, would sometimes walk by me and shortly after i would smell it, as if that person had eaten a butterfingers bar or something. It was disgusting, as they were simply exploiting my food allergy to make these mandatory academic activities a health concern for me. It even happened during a lab that was 2 days after I had reported the classroom peanut-flavoured coffee incident. The whole thing made me naucious, and when I got home had to wash all the clothes and my backpack as they smelled of peanuts. I’ve had peanut allergies my whole life, but never have smelled it like that before. I’ve been with people who had eaten peanuts, but it never would smell that strongly, which made me question if these people were doing it on purpose, as it started happening after the clicking pens stopped (one day during those lectures, I took out my iphone and started recording audio, to see if the distracting noises were as loud as I thought, and i think some students around me noticed, because then all of a sudden the people around me were quiet, and that’s when I saw that nowhere else in the class of nearly 500 students was there a section making that much noise, and it was after that day that the peanut in classes issue started). The summer after, when living with people who ate peanuts, even then the smell was never that gone. How could i become hypersensitive and that just have it disappear.
Again, I was set to take a leave of absence, but stayed the rest of the term since I would have to repeat it in the fall. During the last of my appointments with the specialist at school, while he said that things were ok, they said I would need to get assessed by a doctor at home during the summer to see if I was fit to return to the school. That summer, when I got home and had the appointment, I informed my doctor of the whole situation, and while at the time I even doubted myself due to everything that was happening, he simply said that it was quite an ordeal to go through, but that everything seemed fine with me, that I should continue on the doses that I had been on for a while now, and that I was good to go back. It was just 1 appointment, with everything that happened here, I expected more, but in just 1 appointment he said everything was ok. That appointment was like the ones I had had before the school's specialist, where I wasn’t being questioned as if I was hiding something.
Being in a new class, I had hoped that this wouldn’t occur again, and while I got a single room for this fall, this issue came up again. With what had happened, I became fearful that it would occur again, but then figured it’s a new class, and hoped most of the students who were involved before had progressed to the next term. The first time I went, was to the 2nd clicker session. I sat in a corner in the back and just did the quizzes. Apparently where I was sitting was where someone else usually sat, so the next week I went to the other side of the class and sat in the back. Again, it seemed I was in someone’s spot. After people filled in, there was a group of people sitting to my right who were all friends. The seat next to me was one of their friends. The person came in, and after the 1st quiz (first hour), during the 10 minute break before the next quiz starts, that person went to the store here and bought a pack of peanuts. I just figured it was a coincidence, but by the end of the 3rd clicker session I was feeling nauseous about it. I saw near the end of the quizzes that that person was friends with the person who had the peanut-flavored coffee the term before. I also saw that that very person was in the same class, due to whichever reason. I started thinking, if I go to these classes, are these students going to do this again? This would be the 3rd time where my health was being compromised. What am I supposed to do, there’s no cure for peanut allergies, so if people are choosing to do that, and these academic activities are mandatory, that's just too bad for those who are susceptible. When i had informed the faculty of it last term, they had acted as if i had made up the peanut allergies, and i had to go to these meetings weekly although nothing was being done to resolve this issue of peanuts in class. Even the thought that people would exploit my peanut allergies during mandatory academic activities due to possible prejudices/stigma, is extremely disturbing
-i have some points of evidence, but it won't fit here (about 3 pages in word). -in terms of suggestions to see my doctor, that's what i did this summer after the previous terms ordeal, there's no therapy for peanut allergies & prejudice (of which it's apparently been published in peer-reviewed journals that many medical students exhibit stigma/prejudice towards those with such conditions)
Thanks for reviewing this, I’ve never experienced this before, so your opinions on this would be nice (even if hypothetically it had occurred).
Either way, i think my view of people and healthcare has been changed forever.
