Anything that’s wrong with our medical machine is a direct result of government involvement. The cost issues are the result of licensing which limits competition and the whole racket is enforced with guns and jails, just like everything else government does – just good ol’ coercion, plain and simple.
Regardless that’s not the point of this blog. As I sit in my hospital bed, after what I presume is the normal poking and prodding – man they need a lot of blood, mostly I presume for liability reasons – there’s no way I can dispute that the actual care I’m getting is excellent. To the extent that it’s good could (with some effort) no doubt be correlated to the extent that there’s still some level of free market capitalism left within the system. It makes me glad that Obamunism healthcare hasn’t been fully injected into the system yet because I need good care.
Without going into my specific health issues suffice it to say that ten seconds after I arrived at the ER reception desk, I was spirited into a treatment room with a Nurse. A barrage of questions ensued. You’d thought I’d been dropped into the middle of the Spanish Inquisition. While in the ER, I saw a respiratory therapist, two nurses, two phlebotomist and a doctor. Each of them who poked, prodded and asked a lot of the same questions. The ER doc had had access to state of the art technology enabling him to pull all of my prior chart notes, x-rays, cat-scans and pharmacy records from various locales all over the Valley.
This is where you see how well technology and healthcare work together with people and patients. They have a system and they follow it perfectly. You ever watch the inner workings of a watch – one with a clear back-plate? The people here at St. Lukes are just like that – really, really competent. Everyone knows just what they’re suppose to do and each person follows the system to a tee. Even better they do it cheerfully. They want to be here and it shows. They smile, they’re nice and they sincerely care about you. You can’t fake that. What could nationalized healthcare do this type of system but screw it up? What needs fixed except to expand the competition in order to make it affordable.
Two hours after arrival, my test results were back and had been moved to my room and I was talking to the head pulmonologist who has carefully examined all my records, explained the most likely of the three things causes of my illness and he put me on a course of action to pin-down the source of the problem. Of course this requires more nasty, expensive invasive testing procedures but depending upon the results we’ll probably know something. Finally after six months of not knowing, we’re likely to have an answer. It’s the not knowing that’s really hard. You begin to wonder, “Is this it? Is this the thing that’s going to get me or am I just being a baby here? Am I being overly melodramatic?”
It wasn’t until I finally shifted to a new doc that I really got the serious butt kicking that I needed. After ordering a whole new battery of tests and carefully examining them my new doc looked me in the eye and said “you are a very sick person (he emphasized the word “very”) and I’m trying to decide whether to admit you to the hospital right now . . .” you get the idea. He took responsibility and made me recognize the seriousness of my problem. By the way if you ever need a really good pneumonologist Dr. Brian Goltry is it. Possibly I should have take action months ago but I’m 51 and haven’t been to the doc since I was ten years old. I haven’t been sick more than about five consecutive days in my entire life.
You might think if you’re seriously ill you’d know it but I don’t think that’s the way it usually presents itself. For me, I felt pretty good between short periods of acute lung issues. I’d take inhaler medications and the symptoms would dissipate. At first it took several hours for the symptoms to reappear, then four, then two then finally every hour until I finally couldn’t get around it – I really had a problem. Even on the way to the hospital I told my wife, “Hey I feel pretty good. All they’re going to do is increase my dosage and charge me $1000. Let’s just do that our selves. Maybe we should turn around and go home.” Fortunately we didn’t. Marline was very patient with me. During the previous night she dressed three separate times to take me to the ER. Each time I cancelled at the last minute. The last time she just remained dressed and slept in her clothes. In the morning, I thought I everything was going to be OK when the mother of all coughing episodes struck.
If you’ve never had a serious coughing episode you couldn’t know. It’s sudden; it’ violent. Every muscle in your body shakes. I mean every muscle. It looks like a convulsion. You cough out exhaling in one continuous cough but can’t suck air in until you’re about to black out. Then somehow you’re able to control yourself enough to inhale but the problem is you need to be doing this in a controlled manner using an inhaler in order to get medication into your lungs and it’s extremely difficult. As far as I can tell there’s really no way to remain calm during these events. It’s a full-on panic. If you can’t find your inhaler, which happened to me, then the episode escalates into pure pandemonium – pulling drawers open onto the floor, groping for light switches, trying to remember where you left that precious little rescue device. To make matters worse this type of coughing damages the heart and sure enough, one of my blood tests confirmed the presence of a certain enzyme indicating just that. They tell me it’s probably inconsequential but as far as I’m concerned I’d rather have every last corpuscle of my heart muscle intact, thank you. So now I’m on all sorts of other monitors just to make certain I don’t croak from a heart attack while I’m here.
That’s the medical story but another story underlies the physical. It always does. There’s a spiritual side to every story. The story of God, His love and the relationship of others. That is the subject of Part II – coming to a blog soon.
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