-I would hope that people know that, you know,
not to generalize all Asian people as,
you know, being a carrier of coronavirus
or being related to somebody who's a carrier of coronavirus.
I had a patient who was brand-new to me,
and it was a telephone visit, so all done over the telephone.
I have no idea what she looks like,
she has no idea what I look like.
Towards the end of the visit, she started, you know,
asking me some questions about myself as a physician.
She asked me where I'm from.
She asked me where I went to med school,
went to college, and all these little things.
One of the last questions that she asked was,
you know, what's your ethnicity and your nationality,
and I told her that I am Asian.
I'm Filipino.
Her response was, "Wow.
I can't believe what your people did."
I usually wouldn't choose to see an Asian doctor,
but you seem nice.
That was what she had told me,
and I was just absolutely speechless.
I asked her if she had any other questions medically,
and then I ended the call.
-Patient was in the triage room.
He kind of looked at me
surprised like why am I in the room.
So, I introduced myself.
"I'm Hengky.
I'm one of the nurse practitioners."
I give him the mask, and instead of putting on the mask,
he coughed so much,
and he coughed right in front of my face.
And I was stunned at first,
and you could see the spit on your face shield.
I thought he wasn't doing it on purpose, right?
But then he did it again, and then it seems like
he was a bit upset, and he said, "I don't want to be seen by you.
I don't want to be seen by you," and I said, "Why?
We're trying to help you.
We're trying to see what's going on."
And he stands up, and he's like, "It's because of you I got this.
You people."
I quote it like "You people."
"I got sick."
And he got up, and he left.
-My schedule lightened up a little bit in March,
so I was like, "I'll get back into my life
and start doing yoga," which I used to do all the time.
We met at the station, and we got on one of the cars.
It was pretty busy because it was 6:30,
so people were still commuting.
But we were able to grab a seat.
There was this man in the back
that was yelling things to no one in particular,
just saying things like "F China.
F the Chinese.
These people eat bats, and now my life is F'd up."
I was very unsettled and very uncomfortable.
I was born and raised here in the United States.
I've actually never even been to China.
And for him to be so ignorant
and say all of those hurtful things is really aggravating.
-It made me feel disappointed that, you know,
there are people out there that feel this way,
and that kind of makes that generalization
that what's going on right now can be linked to,
you know, certain people or certain ethnicities.
-I'm not even from China. I mean, I'm from Indonesia.
I've been doing this for almost 10 years now,
and I've never come across a situation
like this before, you know?
-Racism is very real, and I'm lucky that I kind of
maybe lived a sheltered life growing up,
and I never really had to experience overt racism.
-Asian doctors, we've done the exact same training
that other physicians have gone through.
We've gone through the same licensing and certifications.
-You know, I worked so hard to try to help people.
That's what I've really dedicated my life to.
And it's really hurtful for someone
I don't even know to say those things.
-People can feel like they're outsiders.
Like, us at this time,
people can feel like they don't belong in the society
that they grew up in and in the culture
that they worked so hard to be a part of.
If you want to be in my shoes, I welcome you to be in my shoes.
I welcome you to be in my occupation.
I just ask people to actually,
you know, treat people like the way you want to be treated.
-We're not bad people, and we want to unite everybody
because we're all in this together
no matter what race we are.