Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Health Care Revision

I don't know why they are rushing into some half ass mess plan with the health care thing. It's already being torn to pieces. Do they not know the reality out there now, that if you're on medicare, you are hard put to find a doctor anywhere who will take a medicare patient.

I think they plan on making things worse in that regard, because sounds like they'll pay for uninsured people by cutting medicare even further, which means even fewer doctors will take medicare patients, meaning more people might, on the books, have medical insurance, at least medicare, but be unable to access any medical care.

I suppose to politicians, however, it's all about the way things look, not reality.

If I go to the doctor, I have a very few very rushed moments. This is one reason I think the politicians and the people who discuss the issue on the news do not live in the real world. They talk about visiting with your doctor about this and that. So to me, those sorts of statements, that conjure up images of leisurely doctor visits with all the time in the world to chat, are very very funny.

I have not had a physical in probably 10 years. I tried to get one when my old doctor was still here, before he quit, but he kept having to cancel, for one reason or another, and then, in the end, he was gone. They don't have time to do physicals anymore, I was told, takes too long. They have to see too many patients. I don't know why he quit. He was well liked. I just got the letter, never a clue before that, that he was leaving for greener pastures. Took me about seven months to find another doctor who would take medicare.

My old doctor was with me before and after I left the mental health system and through some very hard times I went through, including when I was beaten on that psyche ward and my neck ruptured.

It took a very long time to get treatment for that injury. I was told it was a mental health issue. Despite increasing bodily dysfunction, I kept at trying to get resolution. I had no idea what was wrong. One side of my face starting all sorts of horrible twitches and ticks. My arms started to fail. I had electric impulses running up my spine. I had trouble walking. I was in a nightmare of agonizing pain and received no pain meds, because my doctor held that it was a mental health issue. You see, a neurologist backed him up on that.

I will never forget the heartless treatment I received in her office. I cannot believe a doctor could say such things. When an MRI was accidentally ordered, and she had the results, she told me at first I had a disc ruptured only to the left, when I could clearly see the MRI images and asked her what that was in my spinal cord then. I was no dumbshit OHP client and she had counted on that I guess. How dare I read my own MRI.

She then admitted the disc was actually ruptured into my spinal cord and compressing it by half. I asked her what I should do. She told me one day I'd be laying on the floor unable to walk or move, peeing and pooping my pants and hopefully someone would call 911. Then she walked out the door.

I felt she disliked me from the start. Her office walls were lined in drug company propaganda. The only question she wanted an answer to was why, if for decades I'd been diagnosed with all these mental illnesses, why I wasn't taking all the psyche drugs anymore. She did not seem to care about the pain I was in, or my severe spinal cord injury. She was a drug pusher I guess and angry someone was no longer taking the drugs.

I was left speechless, sitting there, and I didn't know what to do after that. They were going to let me die. And not just die, they were going to let it happen while I writhed in the severe pain I'd lived with since the injury.

That's when I clearly knew how a stray cat feels. I was a stray, unwanted, life discounted as unworthy. Her behavior that day towards me sealed my fate in a way. I began to fight for my own life. And I began to defend and help the strays. I was one of them. I know exactly what they go through.

Anyhow, my spinal cord injury and the medical crap I went through afterwards left me with very little trust of the medical profession. My own doctor apologized to me. That meant something. I miss him. He supported me leaving the mental health system fully after that and never tried to push a drug on me. He understood why I distrusted doctors so much. It wasn't just as a result of that injury, but of almost three decades of sometimes forced psychiatric drugging and local shrink negligence and abuse in the psyche system, all unneeded. I've been the recipient of far more than my share of medical malpractice.

Anyhow, the health care system is really a mess. The drug pushing has lately been a subject of close media attention after Michael Jackson's death. I would hope this scrutiny would be turned onto the psychiatric system also. The cost of over drugging patients is unbelievable. Most of those drugs only make people have worse symptoms or kill their minds. There are better ways.

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