"Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it". - Vincent Van Goga
My story is about a family of 5 children from Iraq that escaped the war in 2006. The parent’s and their five children had to cross many borders and live in 5 countries in the Middle East to find a safe place for their children to grow up in and get the education they deserved. One of the countries that they lived in, Lebanon, didn’t accept Iraqi immigrants however, being undocumented in Lebanon meant that there was a way for most undocumented families to come to United States as refugees with the help of World relief. They had to take the risk to get to US for their kids to receive an education, have freedom, and a safe place to call “home”. In Lebanon, they spent 3 years living undocumented. They weren’t able to receive any healthcare. Their children weren’t able to attend school unless they paid so much money to the principal who would told them that he would “keep [his] mouth shut about them being illegal if they paid money for their kids to attend school and not report them to the government”. Plus, the parents didn’t work. In my culture, it’s common to see the mother taking care of the children at home while the father works and provide for the family. However, due to his immigration status, he had to work “under the table” for couple of cents to feed his wife and five children all under the age of 16. He worked nonstop to get only three of his children in school, but they didn’t have any healthcare access or insurance. They feared any healthcare providers because of the stories they heard about people getting deported when they reached out to medial resources in Lebanon.
Not having healthcare accessibility was the toughest part on the parents. The children never complained, because at that age, who would want to get vaccines or take medication? One day, their middle child fell off multiple stories of stairs in the place they lived in. The place was under a building, it was a small room for a grantor to live in (which was the fathers second job, he become a janitor and a mechanic) it was filled with water, rats and electrical cables everywhere. It wasn’t the ideal living situation for a family of five, but they lived there for couple of months until they found a big apartment for the whole family.
The middle child, who was eleven at that time, refused to go to the doctor after she has fallen. She was afraid of her parents getting deported if anyone found out about their immigration status. The parents did everything they could to convince their child to go to the doctor, but the child refused to be seen. While the fall affected her back and legs, she didn’t care about the pain. She cared about losing her parents. They decided to call an in-house doctor. In most Middle Eastern countries, it’s common for doctors to come into the patient’s house and treat them. The doctor they reached out to asked why they wouldn’t go to the hospital for x-rays and the parent’s decided to tell the doctor about their immigration status. After the doctor heard they are undocumented, he refused to come and see the child. He was “kind” enough to not call immigration on them, but he couldn’t help them due to “personal reasons”. Couple years later, the family was able to get to the US as refugees. At the age of 14, the middle child agreed to seek medical help about her back. She was able to tell the truth about her pain, but she never admitted that she didn’t go to the hospital in Lebanon. She told the healthcare providers that in Lebanon, the doctors couldn’t help her because they couldn’t find anything. The child always wondered why the doctor in Lebanon refused the in-house visit, she always thought that because of her immigration status the doctor refused to see her. She became ashamed to tell the healthcare providers in the US about never having access to healthcare due to the war in her countries and being undocumented in all the other places she lived in. It was easier to never tell the truth because her parents didn’t speak English and she was the first one in her family to learn English. The healthcare providers were okay that she was the one translating and were able to help her eventually with l4 and l5 lumbar spinal injury that was left untreated for many years. As you might have guessed, the middle child is me. While I have a lot of biases, I struggled reaching out to healthcare providers my whole life. From not having healthcare access to deciding to work in a healthcare field was very challenging but I want to be the voice to those who have struggled with trusting the healthcare system. Also, always I am inspired daily by my parents who have given everything for their children and always this makes me want to work hard for them.