On My Soapbox

What an ordeal down here with the medical profession, insurance and all these elderly, sick people.  Today I took my dad to the doctor because he has spots on his arms that are getting infected.  The doctor took a biopsy, as he thinks it may be skin cancer. Also, because this doctor is their family doctor, recommended to my dad that my mother shouldn't be transferred back to the nursing home she was in because he thought she may have contracted MRSA from there.  So my dad frantically tried cancelling the transport order that was originally made for her without luck.  Apparently the rehab center that the doctor recommended, my dad's insurance didn't cover.  So after a lot of phone calls back and forth, and my dad getting very frustrated and angry, my mom will still be transported back to the original rehab facility that she was in. 

I can't imagine how these folks manuever through their insurance companies, the medical facilities and Medicare - it was all very confusing to me.  In the end, you get put where your insurance covers, and if you don't have insurance, well, you get put wherever the state says you do.  In a lot of ways, these people, are at the mercy of  Medicare and any other supplement insurance policies they may or may not have.  And if they are unfortunate to be on Medicaid, well, I guess they take what they can get.  The more I see it, and the closer I get to this age, the angrier I get at our health care system.  Yes, I'm thankful for what we have, but why can't it be more forgiving as in Canada or in Europe?  What aggravates me is that if you have a lot of money, you get the best in care; if you are less fortunate, you are at the mercy of your insurance company - or worse, if you have no insurance at all, you literally go without healthcare.  That is imperatively wrong.  In this day and age, and living in one of the wealthiest nations on earth, EVERYONE should be entitled to healthcare - young and old, rich and poor - no matter what your status in life.  It should be a basic, human right.  No one can convince me otherwise.

So I took a long nap this afternoon, because when I get frustrated, I also get tired.  And when I can't change a situation, I would rather sleep through it.  I've always been for the underdog no matter who or what it is - always.  When we were kids, the typical evening meal was something like this:  Richard sat at one end of the black, formica, rectangle table, my mother sat at the other end, Danny and I sat next to each other and my dad sat across from us.  When we tried talking to my mom or each other, my dad would slam his fist down on the table and tell us to “shut up and eat.”  We couldn’t say a word at the dinner table, especially when my dad had a hard day.  Danny did a lot of whining (he was the youngest) and my dad would become irate at him, call him a “sissy” and to “quit acting like a girl,” etc., and eventually Danny would start crying.  I, being the one always to defend my little brother, and every underdog I ever knew, would snap at my dad and tell him to leave him alone -- which was extraordinarly stupid on my part.  My dad would tell me to shut up, which, of course I wasn’t intelligent enough to do, and then demanded I go to my room.  I then would get up from the table, go down the hallway to my bedroom, and slam my door shut.  The next sound I would hear is my father’s chair being shoved away from the table, as he proceeded to come barreling after me in a fit of rage.  I don’t remember him ever hitting me, but there were times when he would pick me up by the collar of my shirt, put me up against the wall and yell directly in my face until I started crying.  Interestingly, Danny has grown up to be a man much like my dad (without the temper), and probably out of the three of us, is the one my dad respects the most.

I don't want to give the impression of my dad being a mean, oppressive man.  He's actually helped me so many countless times in my lifetime that I could never repay him.  He was raised by a very overbearing mother and passive father, and so I think he overcompensated when he raised us.  He wanted to be the head of the house because his own father wasn't.  And so, my brothers and I were raised by a strict, and seemingly cold, father.  He didn't know how to show emotion and felt that was a sign of weakness anyway.  That's changed somewhat over the years.  In fact, he just confided in me the other day that he's afraid to die.  This is very unusual for my father.  He's never talked with me like that.  In fact, I didn't know what to say - I just let him talk.

Tonight, after leaving the nursing home, I noticed a small, elderly lady in a wheelchair staring out the exit door window.  I don't know if she was waiting for someone or just passing the time, but it was sad to me to see her there.  Many years ago, when my grandmother was dying in a nursing home, I wrote the following poem which reminded me of the lady in the wheelchair today:

The rain

it dulls my pain
of looking on age
so frail
so distant-
unacknowledgable
age;
eyes that look
beyond yet wonder
why and who
are you...
one says behind her
it's been a long
day
as if one day here
is any different
than the next.