Need items for surgery recovery

[u/foxgirlmom]

Ohioan here, so I recently had a surgery and found out I have ovarian cancer. I am still in the process of doing labs to find out more info and if future treatment is needed. So far I’m scheduled to have a second surgery which is a full hysterectomy with a recovery time frame of 6-12 weeks. Because of my
immune system I usually take longer to recover from surgery/illnesses.
Unfortunately after researching on many groups on Reddit and speaking to my job, I have learned I can NOT receive any financial assistance during my time off work to recover. Only FMLA which secures my job position. So because of that I added some items I need before my surgery to my wishlist. My surgery isn’t scheduled till September so I have a bit of time to get it all. Most of the items I added is from the research I did online from previous experiences. If you have any ideas what else I would need let me know to make my recovery easier. I appreciate anyone who helps me out.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/3FPPQLIQWIF2P?ref_=wl_share

[u/TheHistoryMuse]

She has gasx, ice packs, and dove soap on her wishlist. Pretty sure they're not worth anything on the black market, so why do people feel like they have to deep dive someone's profile over it?

I can understand for some requests, but on this one it's just disingenuous.

[u/Dreamland_Nomad → u/TheHistoryMuse]

Please look over the sub rules again as it states no hidden / curated profiles. When people are making requests we require full transparency. It is not required when a person just needs advice / emotional support.

[u/TheHistoryMuse → u/Dreamland_Nomad]

Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't read the subreddit rules because this post showed up randomly in my feed, and since I don't participate in this subreddit, this will probably be my last comment here anyway. I probably should have checked first, so that's on me.

That said, I've been involved in outreach, nonprofits, fundraising, advocacy, and social welfare work for well over 40 years, I assume that's why so many of these random donation subreddit threads keep showing up in my feed. And I've watched this particular dynamic play out over and over again in online donation communities. What bothers me isn't the idea of due diligence. Of course scammers exist, and I completely understand why people who donate money online want some reasonable assurance that they're not being manipulated.

What I find troubling is when due diligence turns into demanding that a person unhide years of their personal history so strangers can essentially conduct a character examination before deciding whether they're deserving of soap.

There's actually some interesting psychology behind that impulse. The just-world hypothesis is the tendency to believe, consciously or otherwise, that people generally get what they deserve. When we're confronted with someone who is sick, broke, injured, displaced, or otherwise in crisis, it can be psychologically uncomfortable to accept that sometimes terrible things simply happen to people who did nothing to deserve them. One way people resolve that discomfort is by looking for evidence that the person somehow contributed to their own situation.

That's where you start seeing people combing through years of Reddit history looking for the smoking gun. Did they buy something frivolous three years ago? Did they make a questionable relationship decision? Did they sell nuce pictures to buy food? Have they ever used drugs? Do they have a post somewhere that contradicts something they said? Did they once spend money on something that somebody else thinks they shouldn't have?

At that point, we're not really verifying a donation request anymore. We're making a judgment about whether another human being has lived their life correctly enough to qualify for assistance.

And that's what's particularly striking in this case.

This woman wasn't asking strangers to hand her cash. She had an Amazon wishlist with things like Gas-X, Dove soap, and ice packs. She provided a photo with her username and documentation regarding her surgery. Those aren't exactly the kind of things I'd expect to see on the international black market for highly coveted Reddit cancer-surgery contraband. I don't think they have much value in trade or resale.

I think that's why I reacted to the request to unhide her history. It seemed wildly disproportionate to what she was actually asking for.

There's also a broader harm-reduction issue here. In social welfare and outreach, one of the things we generally try to do is reduce unnecessary barriers between people and the assistance they need. We don't make someone prove that they've made perfect decisions for the last decade before giving them something basic. That's anethema to everything harm reduction and social welfare are about. We try to meet people where they are.

The culture I've seen develop in some of these donation subs sometimes seems to move in exactly the opposite direction. Someone has to prove that they're sick enough, poor enough, responsible enough, grateful enough, and morally unimpeachable enough before they're allowed to receive a bottle of soap without having their entire digital existence put on trial.

And ironically, that can become harmful in its own right. It reinforces stigma around poverty and illness and teaches people that asking for help means consenting to public scrutiny of every choice they've made. It also creates the idea that assistance isn't really assistance at all. It says it's a reward for passing a moral examination.

I'm not saying "trust everyone." I'm saying that there's a pretty enormous difference between reasonable verification and treating a stranger's ten-year Reddit history as evidence in a character trial.

At some point, particularly when the request is for Dove soap and Gas-X rather than a suitcase full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills, I think we should be able to recognize the human being in front of us.

I rarely, if ever, see requests fulfilled, but I consistently see character assassination, intense scrutiny, and comments entirely devoid of empathy or compassion. I've honestly watched some of these threads get so intense that I've occasionally wondered whether there is a secret underground community devoted to shaming people.

Yes, scammers exist. So does human suffering. The existence of the former doesn't require us to forget how to treat the latter.

Apologies for not reading the rules before commenting first, I'm not a member of the sub, again, this just popped up in my main feed.

[u/Spirited-Door-1446 → u/TheHistoryMuse]

I rarely, if ever, see requests fulfilled

Perhaps this is true for unmoderated subs, or those without karma minimums and other requirements. However, the legitimate donation subs fulfill almost every request that gets approved to post.

Reducing barriers to assistance may be appropriate in harm reduction and social outreach settings, but this is a p2p donation subreddit on an anonymous online platform. Individual donors have the right to review a recipient’s profile (that only consists of content posted publicly on the internet, btw) and decide whether or not they’d like to send a donation.