Privatized Socialized Dehumanized and Barcoded

My temper sucks. It’s getting worse too. I don’t become violent or anything, but I sure am a grumpy fuck. I snap like a twig at the smallest thing. I see myself doing it and I hate it, but it doesn’t stop.

Nothing is getting better. I take all the medicines my doctors tell me too. I do practically everything I’m supposed to, but I’m not getting better. I’m getting worse. My hand responds less and less as time goes by. I fall down more often. I can’t pick up anything on the first try. People say things to me and I don’t understand the words. I respond to things by yelling and don’t even realize the volume of my voice.

To make matters worse, our medical system is a freakin’ joke. In my experience, doctors don’t train to work in the “Health Care” field anymore. They train to work in the “do whatever minimum needs to be done in order to get paid by the insurance company field” now. None of my doctors can tell me anything by the telephone anymore. Instead, my wife has to take time off from work so she can shuffle me from one appointment to another.

-And now for your amusement a brief interjection of what the usual appointments consists of-

• We arrive 20 min. early to the appointment.
• We sit in the waiting room reading advertisements for new medications (each with a minimum of 10 pages of listed side-effects and warnings) for over an hour
• My name is called and we are put in a small room with advertisements for even more medications with even more side-effects.
• We sit in said room for at least ½ an hour
• The doctor knocks on the door and comes in with my chart in his hands freshly pulled from the plastic chart holder thingy on the outside of the door that he has clearly not read over yet so he proceeds to familiarize himself with my case for the next 10-15 minutes in silence even though he was the one who recommended I come to see him because my problem was simply far too complex and important to be discussed over the telephone.
• He asks me the following questions:

- How are you feeling today?
• Like shit

- Any new symptoms?
• Yes. I feel more like shit than last time I saw you

- Any new medications?
• Just the new stuff you prescribed me last time that the 25 pages of warnings I read (obviously you didn’t) told me was going to make me feel like shit

- What can I do for you today?
• I dunno…you’re the one who made me schedule this appointment. Here’s a crazy thought, help me find some way to NOT feel like shit. How’s that?

• He tells me one of the following things:
- You need to see a specialist for that
- Let’s stay the course for a little while longer. The new medicines should start to work by then.

• Now I usually try to say something here
- I’ve been having a lot more pain
- I’ve had quite a few more seizures
- …finding it difficult to catch my breath
- …can’t sleep at night
- …nothing seems to be helping

and here’s my favorite response that I get from my Primary Care Physician, Cardiologist, Neuorologist, Endocrineologist, etc…

Sounds like you have Sleep Apnea.

I say, Yes it does. All of my other doctors say the same thing

Have you had a sleep test?
Well, if all twenty of my doctors, not just doctors, but SPECIALISTS that I have been officially referred to say that I have this mysterious and mystical disorder (That almost everyone has by the way) why do I need to have a sleep study?

Well, I can’t do anything about it unless you have a sleep study
first.

So let me get this straight…Every doctor in the entire state
1. knows that I have this disorder
and
2. knows that treatment of this disorder will help solve too many of my issues to list?
Why can’t we just start treating the disorder? Aren’t you a doctor? Wait wait wait…you are a SPECIALIST that I have been referred to by other doctors who are also SPECIALISTS. So that’s means what exactly?

I can only treat what I specialize in.

In other words, the insurance company will only let each SPECIALIST do exactly what they SPECIALIZE in and nothing more. Nothing. Even if these SPECIALISTS know for a proven scientific, medical fact that a large amount of the pain I am experiencing, the heart problems that I have, the anguish I have from lack of rest, etc could all be helped tremendously by treating this one area of my life with a relatively simple and common process, I still have to pay yet another SPECIALIST more co-pay’s and have my wife miss more work schlepping me all over the world and back in order to get said treatment after another three appointments and attempts at other medicines we know won’t work first? Did I also mention that this SPECIALIST is not covered by insuraunce?

Confused yet?
Aggravated yet?
Pissed off yet?

Now add on top of all this the fact that there are doctors out there who are refusing to treat children if their parents have the audacity to not have them Immunized yet. Not up for discussion. Don’t even knock on the door. If you are the kind of parent who will try to educate yourself just the smallest amount on how to care for the wellbeing of your own children, don’t come here. If you’re not going to listen to every syllable they say as the word of God, then they refuse to take you as a patient from this moment until eternity.

I understand that Doctors spend a lot of time and energy getting their degree and learning to practice the art and science of medicine. It aint an easy gig by any stretch. I understand why they might not want to be questioned at every turn because of an article that a patient might have read on WebMD. But isn’t one of the preeminent phrases in the Hippocratic Oath, “First Do No Harm”?

When doctors start acting like they can’t be questioned about anything at all, fights wholeheartedly against "Health Care". They want us to take care of ourselves so that we stay fitter/healthier/happier right? Well, removing our inquisitiveness and need to find out how to do so defeats that purpose completely. When the medical/insurance/pharmaceutical industrial machine in this country decides to dole out blanket statements like “Immunizations have no link to the rise in Autism” how dare they expect us to simply take it at face value? When each new drug commercial has more side-effects and risks than the partial symptomatic-at-best cure it might possibly offer, are we really supposed to just accept the risk as innevitable and start taking it right away?

We aren’t close to turning into a “1984” type society. We’ve been living in Huxley’s nightmare for quite some time now.

If a doctor wants me to believe the regurgitated rhetoric that Immunizations have absolutely no contributing role whatsoever in our culture’s increase in autism rates, show me one study that wasn’t funded by the Insurance/Pharmaceutical companies. Just one. They can't do that because they won't allow one to be done. Since not, then do me the common courtesy of not treating me like I have an IQ smaller than that of a bean plant because I don’t have an MD. I am not naïve enough to believe that the MMR is the only cause of autism. But you can’t be naïve enough to believe that it should be completely erased from the chemical/genetic/environmental cocktail that somehow does lurk behind its smarmy ever-evolving curtains.

Now that I have ranted a bit and digressed almost completely off track, I am still pissed off at the medical system in this country. We have this huge “debate” over health care in this country. The RIGHT says we have to fear becoming SOCIALIZED. The LEFT says we have to fear becoming PRVATIZED. Either way, what we have to really fear is being DEHUMANIZED. Unfortunately we are all just numbers to the insurance companies. The most frightening fact is that it iisn't changing any time soon and we don't seem to care enough about it anymore.

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