Claudette

‘I ran out of doctors. You know, when a person's really crook, like me, there should be more consideration, just don't brush me aside.’

Claudette is a First Nations woman in her 60s. She lives with chronic pain and depression.

About a decade ago, she was diagnosed with sternoclavicular joint disorder, which makes her clavicle ‘pop out’ of place.

‘It just jabs into my sternum so it prompts me to get pain in my chest,’ she told the Royal Commission. ‘I have pain with every movement. I've lost the rotation of both shoulders because of that. I can't do any domestics, I can't brush my hair or get dressed anymore.’

Claudette said ‘doctors have never done anything’ for her. She can't understand why. ‘You can see the bloody thing plain as day.’

She ‘blames’ the first doctor she saw for not ‘following up on anything’.

‘He didn't fix me up in the first place. He diagnosed it, but he never did anything else about it. He just left me.’

When Claudette asked, ‘How come my collarbone's popping out?’ the doctor said she’d ‘stretched a tendon’.

After ‘trying to make appointments after appointments’, she ‘didn't bother going back’.

‘He'd always find some excuse not to see me. He didn't want nothing to do with me.’

Claudette tried to look after herself. ‘I got to the point where I was really sick. I had to go and get another doctor.’ Since then, she’s seen about 10 doctors.

‘They've never done anything for me. I kept going from doctor to doctor because they didn't want to deal with this. I realised they're not going to fix me. Going from doctor to doctor is painful.’

She would go to the hospital with pains in her chest, ‘but they'd still do nothing’.

Because of this, she can’t get disability support.

‘They rejected me four times because I didn't have enough medical evidence. This is a very unusual condition. I’ve asked doctors time and time again to research it, and because they didn't, my NDIS fell apart and my DSP fell apart.’

Claudette also has to ‘deal with the pain’ alone.

Her first doctor put her on ‘a lot of medication, a lot of painkillers’. She’s ‘been in and out of hospital’ because of the opiates he prescribed. Now the only drug she can take is aspirin, which is problematic as she is ‘a chronic asthmatic’.

Claudette has resorted to makeshift solutions, such as straps to stop her bones ‘clinking’ together painfully at night and a back brace.

She said she’d ‘been through four surgeons’ – one of whom treated her ‘like a dog’. Recently, she saw a new specialist.

‘When I finally got to see him, he turned around and said to me he could fix any bone, but he couldn't fix my bone.’ The surgeon didn’t explain why. ‘He just shut me down.’

Claudette was so depressed she considered taking her own life.

‘I had to suffer with this for 10 years, and the people that I've spoken to, they’ve let me down.’

Currently she’s seeing a doctor through Indigenous health services, who she describes as her ‘last hope’. She’s also attending a pain management clinic.

For support, Claudette relies on two young relatives who live with her. ‘They help me get dressed as well as things I can't do. They've got to learn how to bloody cook because I can't cook anymore.’

She has just started getting some supports through a community disability service, including someone to clean her house. A health worker is helping her with her medical situation.

Claudette was born on an island.

‘As soon as I can get back on my disability pension, I just want to go home. I’ve got family over there that can really help me.’