The power of a label, jumping to the wrong conclusion

When you know that you are sick, but all the tests come back negative; it's a very frustrating place to live.  But our modern medical system doesn't allow for diagnosis unknown.  Every interaction between a patient and a provider requires a procedure code and a diagnosis.  Thus doctors are required to work under a presumptive diagnosis.  Within 30 seconds, most doctors have labeled a patient.

And it's these instant labels that are the problem.  If a doctor labels a patient as a drug-seeker, he may never ask the questions that say why she is in so much pain.   My balance problems were written off as a drug interaction, until I had insanely overactive reactions to a vestibular eye motion provocation test.  When I was in the emergency room with chest pain and trouble breathing, I'm sure the instant diagnosis was panic attack.  Luckily the doctors followed the heart attack protocol and my second cardiac enzyme test came back positively.  With a bedside echocardiogram, they found significant heart failure and I was in the hospital for 2 days of observations and testing.  It would have been an easy miss, and if I went home and assumed the shortness of breath as asthma; steroids and albuterol would probably have further trashed my heart.

Now all of us use these instant labels in real life.  Instant classification is encoded deep within our brains.  Its learning to push yourself past these labels and identify the real person inside that can be a challenge. The black teens gathered on a street corners are presumed to be discussing drugs and not calculus. A teenager playing with smoke bombs and explosives will either be classified as scientific prodigy or a troublemaker depending on their looks and history.

And all too often a teacher will classify a student almost instantly, and will shape their interactions with the student based on this label.  Your brother was a slacker who never worked hard, so I don't expect you to succeed.  Your sister was a star student, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and really push you to your best.

And if these labels are based on the color of your skin, your ethnic heritage, your financial background or even your looks, you are going to deal with these labels in every interaction with a new individual.  Having to wash off that label with every interaction in your life is exhausting.

If you are a white male who graduated from a fancy ivy league college, you're assumed to be a competent, intelligent individual until proven otherwise.  If you are a black student at the same fancy college, it's presumed you didn't really earn your place.  If you are an attractive woman in the workplace, it's assumed that you are eye-candy and not a professional.  If you are obese, you are labeled as lazy and stupid.

It's these labels that make an individual's path through life either a stroll down the boardwalk, or an uphill climb.  And while I have a lot of the positive checkmarks, even overcoming one stereotypical label can open your eyes to the lives of those stuck with labels that can't erase.

So take time to get to know someone new in your life.  Whether it's at church, at work, at school or a neighbor; learn who the person is and move past that label you stuck on their chest.