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My Bad Brazilian Wax Burn Made Me An ER Spectacle
And I can’t tell if all the attention was for a legitimate medical reason or something else
Years ago, I had a bad Brazilian wax burn that landed me in the emergency room (ER). At first, I thought the pain and visible irritation was a combination of normal post wax soreness or minor allergic reaction. However, after a couple of weeks of home remedies ranging from cold compresses, Benadryl, Nopalea and a vat of Neosporin, it wasn’t healing. As a matter of fact, it was getting worse and one morning I woke up in such excruciating pain, I went to the ER. I knew it must have been bad, because the female doctor gasped. She said she’d never seen anything like it and didn’t know how I was able to walk.
Now I should note that I’m a lighter complected, Black/African American woman and I wasn’t sure if she, a young white doctor knew that our skin color sometimes varies throughout our bodies, so I wasn’t alarmed until she showed me. The entire area was severely swollen, discolored and inflamed. Now it really looked like a burn.
She said she’d seen a few wax burns, but nothing this severe. She said the area was badly infected and I cried, breathing a sigh of relief. I wasn’t crazy. She said she was going to take care of me…What happened next was humiliating, scary and bizarre:
She then asked if I’d mind letting some medical students see my burn. I hesitantly said, yes. She quickly left and returned with about 6 students to “observe” as she gave details about my case. Then, I noticed a few others people slipped in the room. When they left, I started to see other people peeking into my exam room and whispering. It was apparent that word had spread and I was becoming a spectacle. When the doctor brought another group of students, I refused. This group seemed oddly excited and I asked, who they were and her hesitation made me question if this second group were medical students. She looked embarrassed, apologized and said a nurse would be in shortly.
By this time, I was still in a lot of pain and was creeped out by the parade on onlookers.
As if things couldn’t get worse, a white man came into the room and closed the curtain. He said he was a nurse and needed to “check”…
