‘All you want is to be believed’: The impacts of unconscious bias in health care

In mid-March, Karla Monterroso flew home to Alameda, California, after a hiking trip in Utah’s Zion National Park. Four days later, she began to develop a bad, dry cough. Her lungs felt sticky.The fevers that persisted for the next nine weeks grew so high — 100.4, 101.2, 101.7, 102.3 — that, on the worst night, she was in the shower on all fours, ice-cold water running down her back, willing her temperature to go down.“That night I had written down in a journal, letters to everyone I’m close to, the things I wanted them to know in case I died,” she remembered.Then, in the second month, came a ...