(Dear President Obama,
Last night, I was encouraged by a 15 year old to write you a letter. I promised him that I would do so immediately because I was so impressed with an engaged 15 year old who cared enough to ask me to do this. We need several thousand more teenagers just like him! Since I planned to write the following on DKos today, I am simply forwarding you a copy of my current experience from today.)
Many of you know me as a DK oldschooler and a snarky one-liner with a dry sense of humor. And so I have been, since 2004. I'm also a passionate Yelllow Dog who rotated through various positions in YD beginning when I was old enough to participate and ending when I aged out.
I'm also a working RN, which is how I acquire my bread and butter. I work for an inner city hospital in the Southwest--a Catholic "St. Elsewhere" that cares for the poor and uninsured. I love it, and wouldn't work anywhere else in this town.
More after the jump:
This past July 16, I was at my home reading when I developed a sudden, severe headache that became intermittent over the hours after it started. It was so severe that I was drenched with sweat when it passed each time. Because I am a medical professional, it is my business to know that a new, severe headache in a 50 year old female is an ominous sign, so I made an emergency appointment with my primary provider, a nurse practitioner who saw no problem at all with a new, severe headache in a 50 year old female. Fortunately, my ENT, who I consulted immediately, disagreed with my primary and sent me for imaging.
They say that denial has protective features against shock, and this experience is a clear, illustrative example: I thought that this problem, which occurred near my ear and was combined with sounds in my ear, represented a carotid bruit, and would require surgical correction, which I was terrified of having. It never occurred to me consciously that I had a brain tumor. At all. When the ENT called the next day to tell me that I had one near my cerebellum, and that I needed to find a neurosurgeon to remove it immediately, I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I didn't take another breath for four days. I didn't tell anyone what was happening.
Part of my reaction came from the fact that I am a single mom with a daughter in college--and I had just advised my boss the week before that I would be resigning in August to move out of state. In a perfect world, changing employment and moving would have nothing at all do do with my health status, but as we all know, we don't live in that perfect world yet, and I had to turn down the job that I had accepted and cancel my move because naturally, I need to stay on my insurance plan. My employer was gracious and simply placed me on medical leave instead.
I was very fortunate to know the perfect neurosurgeon, and so I was worked up rather quickly (because of his pending out of office time) and went to the OR on 8/19/09. I was released home two days later because I was doing so well. The next week, I developed complications and had to be readmitted for a redo of the surgery, and I left the hospital on 8/28.
Yesterday, September 7, I started to experience loud ringing in my right ear and a severe, pounding headache on standing up. These are frightening, but common complications of the surgery that I had. I called my doctor's office this morning to see if I might be seen by whoever is covering for my doctor while he is out on vacation, since I am immediately postop by that practice. The operators were busy, so I left a message as requested.
The appointment person called me back to say this:
"The doctors there were too busy to see me. If I were experiencing a problem, I should go to the emergency room and be seen (at a cost of thousands of dollars) versus coming in to be seen by the on call coverage for my doctor."
So, it's an office visit to prescribe a couple of meds vs. a full ER visit that will probably cost Cigna tens of thousands of dollars--a claim they will ultimately try to deny since the neurosurgery office was open and I could have gone there to be seen instead of going to the ER...
I am just one patient on one day and this is just one incident from the millions of patients who will be seen in all clinical venues in the US on this 8th day in September of 2009.
I just found $10,000 by accident, and you can trust me on this one:
I can find more in almost every chart in every hospital and clinic in this country. This type of waste is almost routine, and it adds up to billions of dollars a year. When President Obama says that we can save billions and finance a Public Option by appropriately and responsibly managing healthcare, take my word for this: he's right. If we appoint nurse case managers for every patient to oversee the appropriateness and quality of care, she will more than pay for her annual salary in the first month of the year.
Si, Se Puede! Yes we can! Let's do it Now!
