I have never met in person the two women I'm about to write about. I won't use real names, but I'll call them Susan and Jamie.
Susan is someone I know (or knew) from blogging. She became ill with cancer and stopped blogging, but wrote me and asked if we could correspond by email.
We started emailing in 2012, and we exchanged over 220 emails (I still have them). She was having a tough time with her health care - she couldn't find a good doctor, other health issues cropped up that may or may not have been related to her cancer and/or to her treatment.
She wouldn't go to the emergency room even though she was quite sick from the sounds of it.
I don't know if she had insurance. I know she wasn't yet old enough for Medicare. Lack of insurance may have been the issue.
Even so, I grew frustrated with her inability to find health care. She had access to major universities with great health care programs, but she wouldn't go. I felt sure some of this was related to finances, but she was quite sick, and I was concerned about her. She was also constantly self-diagnosing and trying to deal with her issues via the Internet.
That obviously wasn't working.
She last wrote me in March 2021, a depressive missive that sounded full of despair and a desire to feel better but without much hope of it happening. She wouldn't go to the hospital because of Covid. I wrote her back and suggested she stop relying on Dr. Google, find a decent physician, and suck it up and go to the ER.
She never wrote me back.
I've written her since then but had no response.
She was so ill the last time I heard from her that I periodically look up her name in the obituaries for her community. I have yet to find her name, but that doesn't mean she's still alive.
I'm rather afraid she may have passed away. I also suspect I will never know one way or the other.
The other woman, whom I will call Jamie, is someone I know on Facebook. She is a distant cousin through my father's side, somehow or another, and she has multiple health problems, like MS and lymphoma and other things. She obviously does not feel well most of the time.
Now she's having some kind of issue that sounds like progressive breast cancer, and she can't get into the breast care center because of her insurance. She has been to the ER and she made appointments, only to be told she wouldn't be seen because of her insurance.
Good thing we don't have the government running insurance companies because, you know, the government might be telling her she can't have a breast exam instead of a private insurance company. As if there would be any difference.
What I want to know is, what kind of screwed up country is this where people who are this sick cannot find doctors or get the care they need to keep from not only feeling bad, but dying? What is wrong with our health care system? Why do we have billionaire playboys flying off into the lower atmosphere of "space" when we have other people who can't get in to see a doctor?
Why is this ok? It is not ok. It's disgusting.
What is wrong with us as a nation? Are we that hard-hearted? Are we incapable of empathy? Do we not ever worship anything but the almighty dollar bill? Is power and money the only thing that matters here?
Whatever happened to courtesy, to love, to understanding, to caring?
What kind of monstrous people are we?
I'm so sorry about what these women and so many others experience when it comes to health care. It really does seem that most hospitals are run by those who view them as a business only and care only about the bottom line. I wish I had the answers, but I am not hopeful for the future of our society. It is broken and diseased.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry about your friends. You obviously care for them and feel helpless ... because you are. It's such a sad state of affairs.
ReplyDeleteI recently heard that the care you receive depends on your Zip Code, and I believe that may be true. That is why when anyone asks me who I'm voting for in the gubernatorial election, I say "JB." I don't care that gas is $5/gal here. I want to maintain the status quo because, by and large, IL citizens fared better than many states during the height of the pandemic. I know I did. My oldest friend, who lives just north of Los Angeles, had covid at the same time as I did and she couldn't even get in for a test, much less treatment. AND SHE HAS DIABETES AND CHRONIC HEART DISEASE! I got in for a test within 24 hours, my doctor (or her nurse) returned each of my calls promptly, and the IL Dept of Health phoned or texted me every day for that first week. Though many conspiracy-minded individuals complained to the local press and in social media that the Dept of Health was intrusive, I felt cared for. Their offer to handle delivery of groceries and medication was not lost on me. I never took them up on it, but THIS IS WHAT I WANT MY TAX DOLLARS SPENT ON.
I also know JB will protect a woman's right to choose. Look at IL on the map and you can see how important that is.
Which is not to say this is an oasis of health care. Following my favorite ballplayer, Anthony Rizzo, has taught me how ridiculously expensive getting sick can be. His charity is devoted to helping families deal with pediatric cancer. I had no idea that hospitals routinely charge patients for parking! Imagine you have a child with cancer and you can expect him to be in the hospital for 8 weeks. Just parking in a major city could run you $900 while you visit your sick child. That doesn't count meals at the hospital. Or gas, if you have to drive any distance to get to the cancer center. You likely do not have 8 weeks of vacation from your job, so you're not receiving a paycheck, and unreimbursed costs like these could literally break you. Anthony Rizzo has been very generous helping these families with gas cards, parking vouchers, and meal tickets, but it's obscene that they have to depend on the largess of a baseball player.