I’ve had some experiences with the healthcare system and what I see lately scares me. In fact, it seems a misnomer to call it healthcare at all. Social media has opened my eyes to the fact that our healthcare system has some archaic practices. Then the pandemic hit and so much has changed. There have always been people who don’t care about their jobs, but it seems worse than ever.
I know all of two people who don’t take medication. I’m not talking diabetes, or medications you can’t avoid taking or you die. I’m talking about medication for anxiety, weight loss, cholesterol, mood elevators, etc. Not that some of these don’t benefit people, but at the end of my father’s life he took a lot of medication. I’m pretty good at seeing patterns. If one medication turns into issues in other parts of the body, a doctor is not likely going to change your medication. In my experience, watching friends and family over the years, the doctor will likely prescribe yet another medication. And it also seems that that’s where their money comes from; prescribing medication. How can you trust someone to care about your health knowing they make more money the more drugs they push?
And I sort of sympathize. If you are even capable of going to med school, you likely accrue a huge amount of student debt. By the time you are able to work, you’re paying that off for who knows how long. I’ve witnessed my own horrors in medicine. I had surgery to get my tubes tied around 2000. The doctor told me it would be a fairly easy surgery and the scar would be small. I was on the table about to receive anesthesia when a young male doctor asked me last minute of I would agree to an epidural, instead. I didn’t know the difference so I said fine. I was assuming my best interests were the highest priority. What I didn’t understand, because it wasn’t explained to me, was that the epidural would wear off rather quickly, and that they were pushing for that because it was cheaper. The doctor was forced to rush through my surgery because I could have awoken during the surgery. The tiny scar was a Frankenstein zipper across the top of my pelvic bone. Not ideal, but not the worst part. The worst part was waking up. Screaming. I’d just been cut wide open and sewn up and I could feel everything.
Someone I know went to a doctor. He had very clear symptoms. He had lived in an apartment with mold, suffered health-wise, but was on the mend after moving and taking olive leaf extract (an anti-fungal herb I have recommended to anyone who wants to talk health). One problem, his tonsils seemed to not be working. He’d feel well, go to the gym, get sick. Feel better, go to the gym, get sick. His tonsils would collect the toxins, but not filter them. He had pieces of icky stuff stuck in his tonsils he’d have to manually remove. Sounds simple! He went to a doctor in The Valley who prescribed him blood pressure medication. Fine, but what about his tonsils? If dawned on him that if his tonsils were removed, he probably wouldn’t need the blood pressure medication. He went back to the doctor and requested his tonsils be removed. The doctor told him tonsils don’t get removed anymore. Why? Because they used to remove tonsils when they didn’t have to decades earlier. That was his reasoning. Because it was a go-to practice, it stopped being done at all. It didn’t make sense. His tonsils were clearly not working. My friend went to another doctor and that doctor said yes, he likely needed his tonsils removed, so he schedule the surgery. The original doctor was so offended he refused to do the blood work in preparation for the surgery. This hack refused. My friend had his tonsils removed and guess what. No more issues! No more sickness. And after he weened himself off of the blood pressure medication, he was fine. His blood pressure was high as a result of getting sick.
There are so many stories. Watching the doctors and nurses care for my mother after a massive heart attack was so frustrating. The apathy, the desensitized way of speaking about her while she’s laying right there. My mother could have had blood thinner 30 minutes before she got it, but the ultrasound technician just could not stay in her lane. She questioned the nurse even though I was in the room when the doctor authorized it even though my mother had just had back surgery. I watched the nurse set the needle down and disappear for around thirty minutes before coming back in and giving her the blood thinner. She had had a mild heart attack, and I still wonder if her massive heart attack happened because that woman questioned the nurse.
When my father got sick in 2012, I flew to Texas to be with my family. I liked the head doctor, but the guy who was there most of the time was clearly a sociopath. We’re in ICU crying as my father lay there and no one knows yet what’s wrong because the nurse couldn’t find a vein when he first checked into the hospital. This guy walks in and makes a joke that is so tone deaf to the situation that I glare at him. I didn’t yet understand the problem with rubbing one of these people the wrong way while someone you love is in their care. I said something along the lines of ‘What’s wrong with you?’ and that guy made life very unsettling over the next several days. If I was the only person awaiting visits in the waiting room, he’d make the nurses keep the doors locked and ignore me. During one visit he flipped by dad’s gown up to expose his genitals. A real creep. It, honestly, terrified me to speak my mind while my mother was in ICU. I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel safe in a hospital.
Another friend’s mother went into the hospital with COVID-19 and died because the nurse forgot to turn her respirator back on.
And affordable healthcare? The best healthcare I’ve ever received, I had to pay through the nose for it. I don’t know what you call what we do in this country. I just learned that other countries are far more advanced than we are in many areas. I don’t trust doctors here. Had another friend inform a doctor he was allergic to a medication just to get prescribed the very medication he told him he was allergic to. Health-uncare is more like it.
