Thanksgiving scene I shouldn't have to witness (healthcare diary)
Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 11:55:02 AM PDT
Fresh of one of the most family-oriented holidays of the year, I'm sure all of you will know exactly what I'm talking about with the following scene:
Half a dozen extended family members crowded in a small living room trying to accomplish a task nobody really knows how to do. At least twice as many proposals as people. And somehow everybody gets to thinking that if they just repeat their idea often enough, at loud enough volume, it will become the best idea. Total chaos. "Too many cooks," as they say.
Except we're not arguing about how to tell if the turkey is done, or what the best route to the movie theater through holiday traffic jams. We're arguing about how you're supposed to put an I.V. into somebody's arm.
Yes, that's right. An I.V. In my father-in-law's arm. He needs his daily super-dose of intravenous antibiotics to rid his heart valve of a nasty infection that almost took his life just a couple weeks ago.
It started with what seemed like a bad cold. Eventually he grew so weak that he was bedridden. But he still went to work painting houses. He would have his workers drive him to the worksite, then he would lie down on a paint tarp on the front lawn and do his best to continue to direct things. My generation finds this to be utter lunacy, but we also know his generation is just like that. He survived a war--barely--during his childhood, then moved to America to offer a better life to his children. Living through a war close up does something to people. It makes them to go work when their hearts are all but failed.
Eventually all he could keep down was Pedialyte and we finally persuaded him to go to the hospital. Heart valve infection, very lethal (for obvious reasons), massive intravenous antibiotics needed, after the infection clears up evaluate for permanant damage that would require surgery. After a short stay in the hospital, he is cleared to leave and finish the course of I.V. antibiotics at home.
As you already know, this is where the story gets heartbreakingly frustrating.
At first, he had a nurse that would come daily to hook up his I.V. and monitor him for the approx. 20 minutes it took for the antibiotics to drip down through the tubes into a catheter in his arm. But apparently the company that employs the nurse was having issues with my father-in-law's insurance (a private supplement to Medicare). My father-in-law tried to sort it out, spending endless precious Thanksgiving-weekend family time on the phone, on hold. Partly because who the heck can figure out that insurance B.S., and partly, I'm sure, because English isn't his first language, it didn't get sorted out.
So the nurse stopped coming. On her last visit, she tried her best to teach my sister-in-law what to do. But my father-in-law wasn't there at the time (she came unscheduled, who knows if her employer even sent her or if she just took pity on us) so it couldn't be a complete demonstration.
And that brings us to the day after Thanksgiving.
We're in the living room at each other's throats about how to put an I.V. in my father-in-law's arm. Oops! I dropped that! Now what? Do you think if I wipe it off with this alcohol wipe it will be ok? Bubbles, look at all those bubbles in the tube, there were never any bubbles in there when the nurse did it, were there? Sh*t! The liquid's all over the floor! Damn it, I thought I saw the nurse do that to prime it.
Then we get back to those pesky bubbles. Somebody suggests that if you flick the tube where a bubble is with your finger, the bubble goes away. Some other people start in on flicking different parts of the length of tube, while others are still arguing about the spill and other ideas for fixing the bubbles. Then somebody else yells out that, hey, the flicking thing just makes tons of microscopic bubbles. Others look at their segments and, sure enough, all that all the flickers have done is make tons of little bubbles. More arguing and blaming. Somebody yells from another room something about what they just read on wikipedia about I.V.s. The surreality of practicing medicine using wikipedia is making my head spin. I turn away.
Then I notice that the 2 year old is missing. Arg! Can't find her anywhere. Finally find her cowering under a blanket upstairs in my in-law's bed. She's crying. I try to get her to say what's wrong but she won't. But I know. "Harabaji's going to be ok," I tell her. She blankly repeats it back, but she's far from sure. "Harabaji need to go to the doctor," she says. "Doctor fix it all better." Due to some birth defect problems with her brother, we've had plenty of talks about how doctors "fix it all better." If only it were that simple. (By the way, insurance issues for her brother are the subject of a previous Calitics diary, rant: I hate my health insurance co.)
My FIL is still alive so I guess we did alright. (Everyone says first few minutes after they finally hooked him up were, well, tense. Thankfully I missed that part, upstairs consoling the 2-year-old. sigh.)
People, if you watched Sicko and bawled through at least part of it (who didn't??) then you know I'm not the only one who has had to witness an awful scene like this. You know that more than one 2-year-old has been traumatized from absorbing the worry of the adults around her. All this agony was caused by the fact that congress chose to privatize the Rx part of Medicare, thus leaving my FIL's care in the hands of corporations with every reason to deny care and hedge up the way with Kafakaesque policies. This is America! We are so much better than this!! When are we going to fix this? What will it take? What can we DO?? Give me your ideas because I need to get this anger out by DOING something or else I'll go crazy.
cross-posted at Calitics
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