Sassywho’s post about her two ectopic pregnancies - and how she was treated like day-old shit by the ER staff - has me feeling all shaken up. Not because I’m shocked at the cruelty and mistreatment she endured; but because I’m not shocked, since I know that this kind of thing is all too common, and if anything, it’s the rule rather than the exception.
And I’m angry. And I feel powerless. I hate that feeling, anger coupled with powerlessness. It’s one of the worst, and it usually sends me spiraling down one of those “what the fuck do we do and why are we here?” tunnels - and I don’t like when my train of thought heads in that direction. I don’t like the powerlessness, because it ultimately means the anger usually ends up getting turned inward and is damaging to me, so I usually have to find some other way to deal - such as distraction by focusing on good things. Some may call it sticking my head in the sand, but I call it fucking survival. What the fuck else am I going to do? Sit here and be miserable? Like it or not, I - one person - can’t change the sorry state of healthcare in this country. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop voting for the right people, and donating to the right organizations; it just means, simply, that I don’t have the magic wand I wish I had.
But, that last paragraph was a tangent. The other thing about Sassywho’s post is that it’s quite timely. Because today when we were at the hospital, I was feeling very nervous. Obviously, I was nervous simply because I wanted Rusty to be okay, and it’s hard not to be nervous when the love of your life is having surgery. But I was also nervous for another, more insidious reason: I don’t trust hospitals. I don’t trust the medical establishment in this country, in general.
I was pretty surprised at how friendly and helpful everyone we encountered was, for the most part. Then I was irritated because something that should be the expected default came as a surprise. And, when there was that one nurse in the recovery area who behaved as if we were inconveniencing her with our presence, and seemed to be trying to shoo us out of the place as quickly as possible even though Rusty was barely lucid and in quite a bit of pain - well, I thought, “Yeah, the truth comes out.” That’s how I expect it and remember it, and have experienced it. It goes without saying that the fact that I expect rudeness and dismissiveness is fucked up.
Then I started to wonder, too, if all the other staff members we dealt with - nurses, surgeon, anesthesiologist - would have been just as nice if Rusty weren’t insured. I tried to stop myself from having that thought, because I recognized how unfair it was. And I did get the feeling that many of the people we dealt with, especially the nurses, were genuinely nice, caring people. (They might not even know about patients’ insurance status or financial situation. I don’t know how that works.)
But my mind kept going back to how my dad was treated when he was in the hospital after his stroke last year: like a second class citizen, to put it bluntly. Uninsured and without a stable source of income, they treated him as an inconvenience and a liability. They were trying to get him out of there as soon as possible, and they barely made any effort to pretend otherwise. He stayed in the hospital for a way shorter period of time than he should have. Instead of physical therapy, they photocopied some pages of exercises intended for orthopedic patients and told my mom, “Have him do these.”
My mom has never liked to admit that we’re not the middle-class suburban folks I think she thinks we’re supposed to be. She does that extra-vengeful classism thing that I guess comes out of embarrassment, or guilt, or god knows what. When we were staying at the hospital with my dad, she recounted a conversation with the hospital social worker; she had made sure to stress that while he didn’t have insurance, it wasn’t because he was “lazy” or “a bum.” You know, like those people. The other people who don’t have insurance.
Eh, another tangent there. Point being… well, I don’t know what my point is, really. Just that I distrust the medical establishment in general. This is already long enough, so I won’t even get into the time I was hospitalized for depression in 2001 as a broke, just-married college student. I hope to [insert deity here] that I never have to go to the ER for something as serious as what Sassywho went through, where I literally might die because the people working there are “jaded” and “burnt out.” Excuse the fuck out of me for not giving a good goddamn.
I don’t want to end this on such a pissed off, powerless note, because like I said earlier, I don’t like that feeling, and I don’t want to be passing it along to y’all. So I’ll go stick my head in the sand now, and you do the same if you’re so inclined. Keep voting, writing letters, and donating whatever time or money you can; beyond that? Well, life’s too short to feel powerless all the time. So find the good where you can, and enjoy every nanosecond of it.
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