“Wow,” said the doctor.
That’s not what I expect a doctor to say while peering into my ear, of all places. “What?” I asked.
“You have really heavy scarring in there,” she said cheerily. “You must have had a ton of untreated ear infections as a child!”
Had I? I remembered being sick a lot, and there had been times of excruciating ear pain—“Oh?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I’m surprised you don’t have any hearing loss, or balance or vertigo issues. The scarring’s so bad, the cilia in your inner ear, you know—probably not too many of those left.”
Goodness, that explained a lot…I left the doctor’s office feeling kind of dazed. All my life I’ve suffered awful, debilitating motion sickness—even as an adult, after most other people I knew outgrew getting carsick in the back seat on the way to Grandma’s house, I never did. Over the years I’d become the master of what little I could do to mitigate it and also of hiding it from others (to a point—my face turning greenish-white wasn’t something I could ever manage to hide, but luckily that degree of nausea takes hours of continuous motion to achieve and I avoid hours of it whenever possible). My first husband was remarkably unkind about it, insisting it was all in my head and cutting me no slack whatsoever over it in the apparent belief that if it wasn’t coddled, I’d snap out of it.
(Needless to say, that never did work…all it did was make me feel unloved and violently nauseated, as opposed to just violently nauseated. Oh, well.)
When I started junior high, we had a gymnastics section in PE class. How it worked out for the boys I don’t know, but it was a real class divider for the girls. See, girls from nice families got gymnastics classes and gymnastics camps as a matter of course, usually for several years in earlier childhood—us poor girls? Not so much. And there it was, laid out for all to see. And for me, it’d always been even worse—your average poor girl had usually figured out on her own how to do a simple cartwheel as part of the normal childhood process. Sadly, not I—I could never manage one; not because I lacked athleticism, I was always a fast runner and a good catcher, for instance—but because I lacked balance. The very worst, most humiliating part of the gymnastics section, of course, was the balance beam. I couldn’t even get up on the goddamn thing. I mean it—as part of even the simplest routine, we had to do a running mount of some description. I could jump up to it, but I couldn’t catch my balance once up there. I fell off. Immediately and inevitably, every single time. I wasn’t normally a laughingstock—at that time I was generally considered a nice, quiet, smart girl in the semi-official peer rankings—but even the kindest of the other girls couldn’t help letting a few giggles escape whenever it was my turn to give it a try.
Years later, during my first Army physical, the medic informed me that I had significant high-frequency hearing loss. I remember staring at him in surprise and saying, Huh? I hadn’t noticed—“Well, you’re probably used to it,” he said. “You’ve probably had it for years. But it does prevent you from being qualified for some military jobs, so I gotta make a note of it in your records—sorry!”
Well, at least I finally knew why…
…and, about four years ago, one of my best friend’s sisters died from a brain tumor. She died because, among other things, she couldn’t afford chemotherapy to the tune of $5000 a month, and neither could the rest of her extended family, though everyone chipped in for as long as they could. She died because the tumor made it impossible for her to work (it first made itself known by giving her a seizure in her boss’s office), so she lost her job and the health insurance that came with it, and was unable to get any other health insurance because her tumor was a “pre-existing condition.” She wasn’t able to get Medicaid because her husband was employed. But if he quit his job so she could get it, then he and she and their three children wouldn’t have been able to live at all—no money, no home, no food, no clothing—
So she died, literally in my friend’s arms, weighing about 70 pounds, suffering from senile dementia at the age of 39, incontinent and in agony. She left two daughters and a son, ages 18, 16 and 13, behind, and a husband who became a widower at 45.
So these reasons, among others, are why I think it’s really hysterical when people start shrieking about how the government is trying to take away your health care choices! and shouldn’t it be between your doctor and you..!? This is not to pooh-pooh all their concerns; some of them are legitimate—it’s impossible not to be continually horrified at the ever-increasing monster that is the federal budget deficit, for instance. But there seems to be an amazing ignorance of the fact that many of their fellow Americans currently have only the choice of permanent physical disability or death, and the only decision their doctor is willing to make is to refuse them treatment of any description. Or perhaps it’s only indifference—which doesn’t incline me towards extending any sympathy in return, eh? I do wonder which one it is, at times. I hope it’s not the latter.
What I wish is that the Democrats would realize those arguments, while they may have worked at scaring enough people a decade and a half ago, are completely irrelevant to the vast majority of the population. So many people don’t even have insurance, and have never had insurance, or have had the kind that basically covers nothing, that arguing against any government-run insurance is like speaking in Greek. So the government’s gonna run insurance, so what? Does that mean I can go to the doctor? Great! Or there’s the millions and millions who have dealt with the obnoxious premium increases, their employers changing carriers every year, constantly cutting coverage, and losing employment so they either have the oh-so-fun choice (hey, it’s a choice damnit!) of paying half their paycheck to COBRA or having no insurance.
Seriously, the WORST people to make any kind of national health care policy are Congress. They HAVE single-payer and have absolutely no idea what it’s like for those of us in the free-market insurance industry. But oh scary scary, you don’t want our insurance, we might take away those wonderful choices of death and miserable, life-sucking disability. Aren’t choices great!
A good friend of mine is an air force brat and says he loves his gov’t health care. He’s diabetic and has had a few surgeries, so he’s actually used it too. Only had a problem once, getting a prescription covered, and that got cleared up fast. I had appendicitis a couple years ago, meanwhile, and had to pay about a third of the bill myself – $4000, and i just finished paying the last of it (to a collections agency) a couple months ago. The current system is bullshit, unless you get a government paycheck. Not that I haven’t tried that – the MN Air National Guard turned me down because of ADHD.
TRH
I choose to be charitable and assume it’s just a certain willful blindness. How else do you explain this Oscar-scene performance?
Notice I said “Oscar-scene”, not “Oscar-worthy”– as in, the scene you put in the movie hoping it will get you a nomination. My read is that you can actually see the gears grinding in Glenn Beck’s head where he’s deciding, “yes, I’m going to try to push these emotions further”. Yet, I have no doubt that, in his mind, no heretical thoughts about how maybe single-payer really *would* be a better way… are ever allowed past his internal censor into his conscious thoughts. In other words… willful blindness.
This was an excellent post, Lisa.
[...] How I Grew Up Without Health Insurance, or Emergency Rooms Don’t Do Chemotherapy – I’ve seen similiar stories like this but they always get to me. [...]
Just wanted to say thank you for sharing your story. I grew up with the same experience – countless ear infections untreated because it wasn’t an affordable option, and severe scarring that’s caused several doctors to comment. I’m lucky that my hearing is fully intact, but to this day I cannot conceive of doing a cartwheel, struggled forever with a balance beam in school, and will always get dizzy / lose balance with the mildest of blows to the head.
I agree that our cases are testament to when the system fails to work, and it’s refreshing to hear someone else tell exactly the same tale – nice to not be the only one.
“Don’t you want dissent on the Glenn Beck Radio Program?
Okay, i do, I just don’t want, to use {what you say} pinheads”.
Have they even heard of rational discussion at fox? Or intelligent debate? I am infuriated, on the one hand that the republican voices in the media are this psychotic and outrageous (I pray that they are misrepresentative, that there exist people who really truly do believe in just smaller government and lower taxes…not that they’d be right, but at least that they’d be moderate), and on the other hand that the democratic House, Senate and White House have so miserably failed to punish with righteous fury said republican party for their transgressions over the last 8 years. What the hell is the point of a filibuster-proof majority if they aren’t going to force the other side of the aisle to watch every terrible thing they have worked towards for so long burned to the ground?
Where the hell is the justice for the angry liberal? Am I the only angry person? And most importantly, will they get this fucking health care thing figured out before late April of next year when I turn 24 and am almost assuredly dropped from my mother’s health insurance?
TRH
Lisa, I’m so sorry to hear about your friend. I cannot believe that a compassionate society would just let someone die that way.
My mother was also diagnosed with a brain tumour. She received three surgeries (performed in an MRI-equipped operating theatre), many months of chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. She also lived in a government-funded hospice for the last two years of her life. Total cost to our family? Nothing. I am certain that in the US she would have been dead within a year, but here, she lived for seven years after her diagnosis, which allowed her to see her oldest child complete university and see her youngest graduate from high school.
Her sister (my aunt) also had a brain tumour. She made it nine years, also under a government system that even paid for palliative care in her home so she could still see her daughter and be a mom as much as possible. Her daughter was only a year old when she was diagnosed.
I also had chronic ear infections as a kid, but thanks to my parents being able to access a doctor no matter what, my balance is excellent and my hearing is pretty normal for a woman my age.
It’s incredible what being born Canadian instead of American has meant for my long-term health and for the quality of care my mother and aunt received. And yet some Canadians want to toss out our system to imitate the American model.
Oh, as for the taxes issue? We actually don’t pay taxes much differently than folks in the US, and somehow we still afford universal healthcare (plus we don’t pay insurance premiums for it).
Bird, that’s all well and good, but what the Canadians DON’T have is the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, and a new moon mission in the works?
Also, would you like a delicious pork sandwich?
TRH
[...] to employer provided coverage, and unlikely to be able to afford individual coverage. The result is kids without coverage ending up with chronic problems, people dying because they can’t afford coverage, people going bankrupt over medical bills, [...]
The F-22 Raptor – a plane so heavily compromised that it’s already obsolescent and the V-22 – a flying coffin onto which they’ve had to bolt a retractable cannon because it had so many defensive blind-spots.
Yep – I’ll have that delicious pork sarnie thanks!!
God bless the NHS is all I can say. So many GOPs seem to have sucked up the nonsense that’s peddled about socialised healthcare. Sure it’s expensive, and it doesn’t always work efficiently, but who fancies having an ‘Enron’ deciding on what’s the best treatment course for anything more serious than common flu?
Incidentally, I didn’t realise that I was short-sighted until I went for Army Air Corps testing as a teenager. Talk about being gutted. I had to settle for the PBI!
The problem with the HMO is that the government give them $100 to administer the health care of a patients. The HMO take $80 to his pocket and give the rest to the patient.
We have to get rid of the middle men (the HMO) and the government should run the health care system like before the 80’s.
The Veteran Affairs system is good example of socialize medicine run by the federal government. If a veteran get sick, he just have to get to the emergency room and no matter how costly the treatment for X diagnosis, he does not have to pay a dime. I have seen veterans with treatments estimate in $100,000 and he never pay anything. So, if Congress say that socialize medicine is bad, then they are contradicting themselves.
Sorry for my English.