“Do you need a wheelchair?” “Are your lips usually blue?” “I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m almost done.” “I can’t get the IV in…” “You’re so brave.” These are quotes I remember from a recent visit to the emergency room. I, a disabled student, needed to go there after injuring myself from moving into a disability-friendly dorm from a disability-unfriendly one without assistance from Cornell. Carried by the momentum of the minifridge I rent to keep my insulin cool, I fell down a few stairs and landed on my back.
Past sensations haunt me: waking up with crusted salt streaks on my cheeks in the middle of the night, covering my face with my pillow to stifle the screams of pain that I could not contain; overworked lungs and a pounding heart; nausea and hot flashes that refused to leave; carpet scraping my hands and knees from softening a fall after I collapsed; a scalpel slicing my skin; cool steel forceps opening the scalpel’s incision. Images flash through my mind: the seven lingering bruises on my arms from nurses’ attempts to draw barely enough blood from my closed veins; my fingernails blackened by tight tourniquets on my upper arms, remaining that way for two hours, until the nurses were able to insert an IV into my arm; bloodied bandages and gauzes. All of this was avoidable.
It all started with a lack of transparency about elevator access in Cornell’s residence buildings on campus, which resulted in weeks of struggles before a resolution. I thought my problems would end once I signed my new housing license, but they only worsened. I was informed by Housing & Residential Life over the phone that no one would help me move my fridge. “You can rent a cart from RPCC for an hour to move it.” I did this on Labor Day but still had to move my minifridge out of my room and down eight stairs before getting to the cart. Thankfully, one of my friends helped me move. We both awkwardly grabbed the bulky minifridge and moved it down the stairs but lost our hold on it for the last few steps and dropped it. I fell with the minifridge and thought I had bruised my back. If only it had been that simple, that minor. The symptoms started two days later.
I called my parents and described the very painful bump that had formed on my back. They booked a hotel and drove to Ithaca from Buffalo on Saturday. Once they saw it, they told me I needed to go to Urgent Care the next day. I did, and that’s when I had the first of two incisions and drainages. My bump (abscess) wasn’t “ready,” proven by the half hour spent squeezing it after it had been poked four times and sliced by a scalpel. A little blood spurted out but not enough to make a difference. I had involuntarily wailed and sobbed in agony during the whole ordeal. Afterward, I was told I might need another I&D and to call in three days if my symptoms worsened. I didn’t even get the chance to wait three days.
On Tuesday night, I collapsed. I thought I could sleep it off and call Urgent Care the next morning, though I was advised by some students to call EMS and take an ambulance (which would have cost thousands of dollars). Urgent Care told me to go to the ER and my parents rushed from Buffalo to drive me there. I found out that, as a type one diabetic, I was more susceptible to this infected injury, and as someone with Addison’s disease, I should have drastically increased my hydrocortisone dosage. I had another I&D, this one uncomfortable rather than agonizing (they gave me morphine), before I was released around 12:30 a.m.
As I write this, my infection and pain have both gone and my “bump” is now flat (disregarding my developing scar). Barely able to walk, I had to miss an entire week of classes to recover. Cornell made it difficult for me, a disabled student, to find accessible housing and then refused to help me relocate from a dangerous dorm to a safe one, resulting in weeks of pain. I have been scarred both physically and emotionally from this unnecessary traumatic experience.
If Cornell had hired someone qualified for a heavy-lifting job to move my minifridge (a necessity because of my type one diabetes), I wouldn’t have fallen and developed the abscess that hospitalized me. I’m lucky I wasn’t permanently damaged/paralyzed from the fall. It’s intolerable and abominable that Cornell would make a disabled student endure this, further disabling them. Cornell must have services/procedures in place to assist disabled students with relocating to an accommodating residence on campus, especially considering the hoops we have to jump through to get accessible housing in the first place. Cornell’s gross oversight hospitalized me. My hospitalization, if the only one caused by the university’s negligence, was still one too many. It must be the last. Nobody should endure what I did.
Kaelin Lamberson is a sophomore studying English literature in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at kml346@cornell.edu.
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