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Such sad, sad, achingly sad words. We don't care about poor or uninsured people.
My mother was in a county hospital in Ft. Worth at the end of her days (with no insurance and COPD and lung cancer at a hospital I later found out had a horrible reputation) and that hospital was a complete HELLHOLE. I know all county hospitals are not like this, but THIS one is dirty and everyone was grumpy, with little training in handling the terminally ill or how to handle hospice situations. A HELLHOLE. Gunshots and other trauma they are probably good at, but longterm illnesses just aren't their thing.
I was sitting quietly in the corner of the hospital room one day, and a tech came in and started belittling/berating the patient in the next bed. She was startled when I interrupted her. I felt so paralyzed with rage, and she was paralyzed with fear because she had been caught being vicious. And I kept thinking, this is how they are going to treat my mother when I'm not here - so I never left her side for the long days after that - I slept in chairs and rarely bathed, and I had to fight with them all the time to be able to stay with her whenever they changed room. At times I became like that character in "Terms of Endearment" screaming "just give her the fucking medicine, give her the medicine!" It was an ordeal, and I was surprised how quickly a normally well-spoken, professional-acting person like me could be reduced to a ranting, rabid individual when faced with surly hospital staff. We would point out they they needed to wash their hands (they were very sloppy about that) and they would threaten to have us removed... things like that were a common occurence.
And then some 10 days after that my family decided it was enough. We "kidnapped" my mom to take her to a very fancy private hospital (to hell with the costs) and the county hospital staff were heckling us and all trying to find security to stop us from leaving and then the administrative staff were going to bring security to physically restrain us from leaving, and then the doctors came and lectured and lectured us and then the doctor on duty signed a horrific "leaving against medical advice order" which was an out-and-out mean, vindictive move designed to prevent my mother from being able to claim Medicaid for any further medical care elsewhere. He outright said that he was going to make this move hard on us.
It was the single most stressful situation in my life, with sharp pains shooting up and down my legs and back and my whole body was physically shaking. My adrenaline gave me super strength, so I literally RAN as fast as I could pushing my mom as fast as possible in a stolen wheelchair - running to throw her into our "getaway" car waiting at the entrance. It was horrible, horrible, horrible.
And my mother was in severe pain, because the staff at the crappy hospital had refused to give her any pain medicine the whole morning once they got wind we were freakin' leaving - another vindictive move and they viciously threw that in my face, telling me it was my fault she was rocking in pain - if I wasn't going to leave with her, then she could have had her morphine. So the ride to the other hospital was the longest 40 minutes of my life - where time stood still and my thoughts and fears were in color before my face and every sound and moan my mother made was amplified to 100 decibels in my drumming ears...and then... it was like warmth and sunshine all of the sudden. We pulled up to the the private, expensive hospital, where one of my aunts worked. And there were FOUR oncology nurses including the Floor Nurse waiting for us at the front door with a portable oxygen canister and a wheelchair for my mother. And they knew her name already, and put her gently in the chair, and were speaking comfort to her -- and speaking comfort to all of us who had been in the car.
They rolled her straight to her pre-assigned room (you can do the paperwork later) and there was a surgical team and machines waiting in her room, and they installed a permanent IV in her chest right there with a portable surgical unit within 10 minutes of arriving because they knew proactively that her poor black and blue arms couldn't take anymore IVs. And then they gave her Dilaudid instead of morphine saying, "We know how to take care of cancer patients here, morphine isn't very effective with this stage of cancer". And then they left within 20 minutes but it was like a Nascar pit team had taken over to get her comfortable, and she was left there in the cleanest, quietest, most serene room with a very pretty lilac and purple color scheme, and she had a new gown, and was on oxygen, and had a catheter, and was propped up on pristine white pillows ...then she was quietly telling me that she finally felt comfortable for the first time in a year before she drifted off to sleep.
I know my aunt (a nurse there) had to pull in every string and every favor ever owed her to get my uninsured mom admitted to private cancer hospital like that. But my mom spent her last week and a half in comfort. But how many other uninsured people have not had that option and were given less than expert amenities and care? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? I can't stand it! Good medical care is a necessity like shelter and water...
Thanks for reading, tcb
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