Hiding my "Yuk"

Yesterday I had one of those insensitive-healthy-people experiences while receiving a service from a 250- to 300-pound woman, let's call her Debbie. She's a sweet gal, but she doesn't know anything about dialysis, as is the case with most people. She didn't know the difference between hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis, the latter of which I do. When I said that PD necessitates a tube issuing from my abdomen, Debbie made a face and groaned an exaggerated "YUK."

I should have said something then and there, but I didn't. It was a teaching moment. Already several men have rejected me because of dialysis. One of my very best friends said that she wouldn't want to be intimate with someone on dialysis.Another friend's boyfriend said that dialysis made me a "freak." And here is Debbie, reinforcing this rejection.

Granted, she probably thought nothing of her comment, just as people who are in long-term relationships think nothing of giggling and making light of others being without a partner, without even a date.

I wonder what the psychological mechanism of this is. Is that people think that by laughing at another's pain they distance themselves from it? That in this way they perform a ritual to keep sickness and loneliness from ever touching them? I can't answer this because it's not been my response. My heart has always gone out to people who have been dealt a difficult hand, though I have very little sympathy for people who bring difficulties on themselves. But I certainly don't laugh at them!

Interesting, too, that Debbie is showing her "yuk" to the world all the time in the form of her excess weight, whereas I at least am hiding my "yuk" under my clothes.