Common Sense

Apparently, a long while back since I actually had trouble finding the Nethaway column on the Trib Web site to link to.

Rowland Nethaway, senior editorialist, man who accepted National ID cards wholeheartedly, writes:

After demonizing universal heath care for generations, many traditional opponents are admitting that the fragmented U.S. health care model needs a universal solution.

The United States has long been the only industrialized nation on the planet that does not offer some form of universal health care.

For years, reform efforts to offer U.S. citizens universal health care coverage were accused of peddling socialized medicine or were communist stalking horses.

The collapse of the Berlin wall and the emergence of a global capitalist marketplace have made it difficult for political opponents of universal health care to oppose a concept embraced by free-trade nations around the world.

Another long-standing argument used by universal health care opponents has been that U.S. health care is superior to the health care provided in other nations.

That argument is difficult to sustain in view of consistent reports that American citizens have a lower life expectancy than practically every developed nation, including those with universal health care systems.

And that’s just the first part. He even points out that we have a higher infant mortality rate.

As someone who would love to not have to go shopping for health insurance in January when my mom’s coverage runs out on me, universal health care seems pretty sweet. I don’t generally need major surgery and I don’t think I’d be waiting in line 6 months for a hip replacement. I just need to go to my regular doctor (ditch Drs. Penis [I changed his name from Dickhead because Ellis and Penis sound so similar] and Makes me Hurl [His name is Dr. Hurley and I almost barfed in his trash, figure that one out for yourselves]) and have prescription medication coverage.

That last part is really important since the last two times I’ve tried to refill medicine, my insurance company has refused because I was taking “too much” and I had to wait more than a week to get my daily dose of Cymbalta and clonazepam.

So just going to the drug store with a script and getting what I need when I need it would be freakin’ awesome.

A funny little white paper over at TAPPED says pretty much the same thing. Shitty healthcare for more money here, better care for less money over there.

If my ordeal at the pain management doctor was any indication, I’m going to need plenty of healthcare in the coming future, so could some Democrats in Congress just remove that pesky “over 65″ line in Medicare and use the hundreds of billions of dollars that would be spent on Iraq and on tax cuts for millionaires to pay for it?

Could we do that?

More of that stuff you mostly don’t care about concerning my doctors visits.

By the way, anyone with chronic pain problems, I DO NOT, recomend that your go the nerve block injection route. Your pain doctor is going to tell you that narcotics are not the answer, no matter how much better you are doing on them.

Then he is going to stick six, 6, SIX!!! very large needles in the cavity between your vertebrae while your mom squeems and looks on in horror. Then your back is going to kill you, but he’ll tell you to lay down on it anyway.

Then he is going to make you walk down the hallway, without your cane while the muscle in your thigh feels like it is about to constrict the femur and break it in half like a really bad sequel to Anaconda (another really bad sequel).

The doctor is going to pronounce you cured, no matter how sick you’re feeling at the moment. The pain is going to shoot up in the place where it was hurting from that fun little tickle of a 7 to about 9.8.

To prove there is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with you, the doctor is going to grab your leg, bend it, move it, twist, pop it and the whole time you’re biting your fist to keep from screaming out in pain. The doctor’s nurse is going to look at you wihtout pity, tell you it’s alright to do that as long as you don’t break the skin, then go back to looking on absent-mindedly, realizing her job is nothing like “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Your doctor is then going to tell, because there is nothing wrong with you, to walk at least one brisk mile a day, without a cane, to bicycle at least one mile a day to get your heart rate up to 130. And that if you don’t do this, he’ll quit his treatments and make sure that no pharmacy in any contiguous state sells you Ibuprofen, let alone an opioid analgesic.

They’ll leave you to get dressed in the room, you’ll cough up some “God only knows stuff” because you really want to vomit, but your stomach is empty, into his used rubber glove trash can. You’ll have to ask your mom for help putting on your shoes. Then the doctor says “Treatment was free this time, see you next Thursday” with a smile on his face.

You go home, you take a triple dose of Vicodin to take your mind off how much you want to slit your wrists because your leg hurts so much, pop the last two Klonipin in the bottle to try and sleep, lower the Sleep Number bed number down to about 10 because the injection site is sore as hell, you get a big ice pack on your leg for the first time in months because numb is way the hell better than pain and as your are hobbling toward the bed to lay down and hope to the God you didn’t believe in until 5 minutes ago that you can just pass out and not feel anything anymore, you realize your left hip isn’t moving.

In fact, you don’t feel it. On the left side, from the waist right to where the pain starts in your thigh is completely numb, which proves the Dr. Makes me want to Hurl got his license at Asshole Tech. The first thing he ever told me about the procedure was that my leg would not go numb.

After about 8 hours, the pain starts to really subside (I don’t if its the treatment or the narcotics), after a day or so, the feeling returns to your waist and hips and your back will be a little sore for a few days but not too bad.

And you have to go through it again because your doctor doesn’t give you another option. On the bright side, he was right about one thing. My foot isn’t cold anymore. It’s still purple, but it’s not cold.