I could dig up some statistics, tell it from a purely numerical, clinical POV but that is not what this diary is. This diary is my family's story of medical malpractice and pending financial disaster.
I have been away for a while. A little over a month ago I joined this group in the hopes I could develop some writing skills and maybe start a new career pushing fifty because after eight years of being a stay at home mom my youngest would be in school full times.
A little over a month ago we were concerned about what Scott Walker was trying to take away from our family, helping with the recall efforts and promising my children we would somehow find the money for my son's hockey and my daughter's synchronized figure skating club.
But it was not Walker that took all that away from us. It was the doctor who performed a heart surgery on my husband that messed things up so bad he was in and out of the hospital since last May for developing an irregular heartbeat, a staph infection, not having his sternum sewn up correctly, and finally a massive stroke.
Now most of the complications were inconvenient (especially to his boss, a municipality who did not want to waste money on a police officer who could only do desk work for half a year because of the hack job this doctor did), but also to us, the many visits to emergency rooms and doctors. But always, there was the expectancy that he would recover and life would eventually go on as normal. Not this time.
Now in the alternate reality that Republicans like to talk about there would be a lawsuit, we would be getting incredibly obscence amounts of money that would drive up the costs of medicine for everyone. But in the real world, the doctors know the states that give them the most immunity from lawsuits and the worst of them flock to it.
Or, in the case of my husband's surgery the doctor had a good rep but just took on too many surgeries in one day, treating patients like assembly line products. Oops, guess I made a mistake there, so sad.
So in the USA, where we pay the most money (I know we are behing Costa Rica as far as quality of care) we can expect substandard care. When my husband had the staph infection we actually had to buy our our supplies-little plastic bags that attached to tubes to 'suck' the infection out of him-direct from the supplier because they could make more money that way. At least they disposed of it, which is surprising because think of the money they could make by having us by Biohaz bags to use.
So this is health care in America. One major illness and you are tumbling down into the safety net, the net some would rail if we are dare able to afford cable TV. If we make enough money to pay bills, we may not qualify for health care. And if we have to buy health care insurace we will not make enough to pay bills. How dare my lazy husband get himself stroked? It's not the doctor's fault. We would not want to scare horrible doctors away any more than we would sweat shops.
How much changes in a month. From hockey plans, to trying to teach my husband how to read. From spending days volunteering for the recall effort to spending every free hour at the speech and physical therapists' offices.
Sorry for the rant, but I cannot stand another discussion on the stupidity of trying to do away with contraception when the very real matter of health care has not been sufficiently addressed in this country.
I hope to be able to write more. I hope to keep our home and computer. Thanks for reading