THE ILL CARE SYSTEM
A long time ago when I was in college, I remember feeling unusually fatigued. I slept through my morning classes whether it was in my seat or in my dorm room bed. Something was wrong.
Since I was too young to have my own general practitioner, I ended up asking my Mom’s doctor why I might be feeling this way. He said that as a college kid, I probably wasn’t eating right or getting enough rest. But I was persistent.
“Nope. Something is wrong,” I said. I intuitively knew my own body.
So he agreed to take a blood test, after which time he profusely apologized. I had hypoglycemia (low blood sugar.)
Twenty-five years later, this scenario repeated itself with a different doctor, only this time it had an interesting twist.
“I’m tired all the time,” I said.
“I think you are depressed,” the female doctor replied.
“Nope. I’m not depressed. I’m tired,” I responded, a bit irritated that she was slapping a label on me and seemed excited about shoving a pill down my throat, when all I wanted to do was find out why I could fall asleep standing up. “I don’t want to be on anti-depressants and feel like a cotton ball.”
“A lot of people are on them,” she said. “I take them too.” Her eyes glazed over and she grinned at me.
“Good for you,” I said, as I left her office, wondering if sometimes we get depressed when we are told that we are.
I tried another doctor shortly after that and she also wanted to write off my fatigue to depression.
“Just please take a blood test,” I told her. “That’s what insurance is for, isn’t it?”
She did, and I got a call to meet with her immediately.
“Your glucose test showed 44,” she said, frowning at me. “That is near comatose.”
“At least I’m not depressed,” I said smugly, as I left her office.
A few years after that, I was suffering with headaches. The neurologist suggested anti-depressants too.
“We prescribe them for migraines,” he explained.
“But I’m not depressed,” I argued (again.)
I finally acquiesced and agreed to try a few samples. During that time, my legs went unshaved, I didn’t want to cook or do much of anything else. But I had a perpetual goofy smile on my face. I wasn’t sure if my headaches were gone because I couldn’t feel my head. I saw a commercial about the medication I was taking and it featured an egg (or a cotton ball) happily and gingerly bouncing along. Yep, that was me, but I wasn’t living. I was a happy little egg, existing. I would soon welcome my headaches back with open hands that were anxiously ready to rub my aching skull.
Fast forward a few more years. I told an endocrinologist that I felt that something might be wrong with my thyroid.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“It is not,” I replied. “Check again, please.” I was insistent (again.)
She finally did and she found two antibodies for a particular thyroid disease called Hashimoto’s. I didn’t want to be right, but I was.
The whole point to all of this is that if we pay attention to the signs in our own bodies, we know when we don’t feel good and we know when something is wrong.
This is a very different experience from being told (and programmed) that we are depressed or have every acronymial (my word) disease imaginable. They do this so that we can more easily remember what they have told us we have.
We could have an MPD that made us SAD. We could have an IUD that gave us PID. We could have COPD and hyperventilate and then be diagnosed with PTSD. We could have IBS (I Betcha it’s Stress.)
We could have ED. Well, I couldn’t unless ED stood for extra-dimensional disease, but then that would be EDD. And to me, the mere thought of EDD or any government office is depressing. I’m getting another migraine just thinking about it.
We have determined that our kids have ADD and ADHD and now we adults have it too. Our elderly are overmedicated and not because the pills will help them, but because they might help us deal with them more easily.
My Dad died when I was fourteen which was bad for me. He was only forty-four which was worse for him. He died of a heart attack, so I had always wondered if I would follow in his footsteps (or heartbeats.) I made it to forty-five and beyond, but not without high cholesterol counts in spite of the fact that I exercised daily and had great triglycerides.
I wasn’t feeling bad, but due to so-called genetic predisposition and the fact that I was getting older, the doctors wanted to do a coronary calcium score test. It’s interesting how when we ask them to check, they refuse, but when they want to run a test, they insist. I’m sorry that I agreed to it because they told me that I was in the 90% risk for females for heart disease. Great. Now I need an anti-depressant. Not only that, but as they scanned, they saw other stuff like multiple hemangiomas on the liver, which are fine unless someone punches me or I get into a car accident and bleed out. Oh goody. And kidney stones too, and although I have never felt the little buggers, now I’m afraid to pee. Stop looking inside of me.
The bottom line is that we have become an overmedicated, acronymial society. It’s no wonder that we are hypochrondriacal. We are told that we need Vytorin to keep cholesterol down and Viagra to keep other things up. We are then warned of contraindications and have to take another pill to offset the side effects of the others we are taking for the problems that we are now feeling bad about that we didn’t even know we had.
There is a reason for this. It’s not our health care system. It’s called big business and it is perpetuating an ill care system. Usual and customary? I think not.
Let me tell you how this works. A few years back, I was laid off the day that I returned to work from angio surgery. I definitely had a heart, although it might not be working so well, but the company I worked for obviously did not. A blockage in my LAD (here we go again) was found. To make sure I didn’t forget what this was even if the acronym slipped my mind, the doc said, “Think Tim Russert.” It’s also called the widowmaker. Hello Dad, here I come. I’ve been told to avoid stress. Right.
My Cobra benefits just ran out, so I applied for an individual health insurance plan. I was told that I was not eligible because of pre-existing conditions. I might be able to get a temporary plan while they determined if I could get a HIPPA plan (hippa, hippa hoorah at $756 per month), but I would only be insured if I got hit by a bus and not if anything happened that was already wrong. Huh?
So the health insurance system is designed for the healthy? Ah, I understand now. If I’m ill, and with pharmaceutical commercials inundating my prime time TV hours, I have been convinced that I have PTSD, IBS, ADHD, and I’m MAD about it, I cannot get insurance unless I am willing to pay nearly $800 per month. This might be a stupid question, but if I was healthy, why would I need insurance?
But wait! My doctors have told me that I should not be working. I applied for disability and in spite of the documentation from multiple doctors and the fact that I had worked since I was fourteen years old (around the same time that Dad had passed away), I had to wait seven months for my claim to be approved so I had no income. Thank God that I had a nest egg, not to be confused with the Zoloft or Paxil eggs.
I often wonder, if they hadn’t found all of this that was wrong with me, how would I be feeling? I still might be a little tired because of my low blood sugar and Pacman antibodies attacking my thyroid, but I could be eating better and a nap wouldn’t hurt now and then.
It’s strange how we think it’s a miracle when we are healed. If we were deprogrammed, de-medicated, and listened to our own bodies, it might be a miracle that we ever got sick at all.
I would rather live a shorter life without fear, pills, panic, and programming than a longer one with them. I don’t miss being poked and prodded, the multiple doctor visits, and being over-irradiated and probed like Cavity Sam in Milton-Bradley’s Operation game. Now that I don’t have health insurance, it makes me concentrate on being healthy instead of worrying about being ill.
This just might be a blessing in disguise.
A long time ago when I was in college, I remember feeling unusually fatigued. I slept through my morning classes whether it was in my seat or in my dorm room bed. Something was wrong.
Since I was too young to have my own general practitioner, I ended up asking my Mom’s doctor why I might be feeling this way. He said that as a college kid, I probably wasn’t eating right or getting enough rest. But I was persistent.
“Nope. Something is wrong,” I said. I intuitively knew my own body.
So he agreed to take a blood test, after which time he profusely apologized. I had hypoglycemia (low blood sugar.)
Twenty-five years later, this scenario repeated itself with a different doctor, only this time it had an interesting twist.
“I’m tired all the time,” I said.
“I think you are depressed,” the female doctor replied.
“Nope. I’m not depressed. I’m tired,” I responded, a bit irritated that she was slapping a label on me and seemed excited about shoving a pill down my throat, when all I wanted to do was find out why I could fall asleep standing up. “I don’t want to be on anti-depressants and feel like a cotton ball.”
“A lot of people are on them,” she said. “I take them too.” Her eyes glazed over and she grinned at me.
“Good for you,” I said, as I left her office, wondering if sometimes we get depressed when we are told that we are.
I tried another doctor shortly after that and she also wanted to write off my fatigue to depression.
“Just please take a blood test,” I told her. “That’s what insurance is for, isn’t it?”
She did, and I got a call to meet with her immediately.
“Your glucose test showed 44,” she said, frowning at me. “That is near comatose.”
“At least I’m not depressed,” I said smugly, as I left her office.
A few years after that, I was suffering with headaches. The neurologist suggested anti-depressants too.
“We prescribe them for migraines,” he explained.
“But I’m not depressed,” I argued (again.)
I finally acquiesced and agreed to try a few samples. During that time, my legs went unshaved, I didn’t want to cook or do much of anything else. But I had a perpetual goofy smile on my face. I wasn’t sure if my headaches were gone because I couldn’t feel my head. I saw a commercial about the medication I was taking and it featured an egg (or a cotton ball) happily and gingerly bouncing along. Yep, that was me, but I wasn’t living. I was a happy little egg, existing. I would soon welcome my headaches back with open hands that were anxiously ready to rub my aching skull.
Fast forward a few more years. I told an endocrinologist that I felt that something might be wrong with my thyroid.
“It’s fine,” she said.
“It is not,” I replied. “Check again, please.” I was insistent (again.)
She finally did and she found two antibodies for a particular thyroid disease called Hashimoto’s. I didn’t want to be right, but I was.
The whole point to all of this is that if we pay attention to the signs in our own bodies, we know when we don’t feel good and we know when something is wrong.
This is a very different experience from being told (and programmed) that we are depressed or have every acronymial (my word) disease imaginable. They do this so that we can more easily remember what they have told us we have.
We could have an MPD that made us SAD. We could have an IUD that gave us PID. We could have COPD and hyperventilate and then be diagnosed with PTSD. We could have IBS (I Betcha it’s Stress.)
We could have ED. Well, I couldn’t unless ED stood for extra-dimensional disease, but then that would be EDD. And to me, the mere thought of EDD or any government office is depressing. I’m getting another migraine just thinking about it.
We have determined that our kids have ADD and ADHD and now we adults have it too. Our elderly are overmedicated and not because the pills will help them, but because they might help us deal with them more easily.
My Dad died when I was fourteen which was bad for me. He was only forty-four which was worse for him. He died of a heart attack, so I had always wondered if I would follow in his footsteps (or heartbeats.) I made it to forty-five and beyond, but not without high cholesterol counts in spite of the fact that I exercised daily and had great triglycerides.
I wasn’t feeling bad, but due to so-called genetic predisposition and the fact that I was getting older, the doctors wanted to do a coronary calcium score test. It’s interesting how when we ask them to check, they refuse, but when they want to run a test, they insist. I’m sorry that I agreed to it because they told me that I was in the 90% risk for females for heart disease. Great. Now I need an anti-depressant. Not only that, but as they scanned, they saw other stuff like multiple hemangiomas on the liver, which are fine unless someone punches me or I get into a car accident and bleed out. Oh goody. And kidney stones too, and although I have never felt the little buggers, now I’m afraid to pee. Stop looking inside of me.
The bottom line is that we have become an overmedicated, acronymial society. It’s no wonder that we are hypochrondriacal. We are told that we need Vytorin to keep cholesterol down and Viagra to keep other things up. We are then warned of contraindications and have to take another pill to offset the side effects of the others we are taking for the problems that we are now feeling bad about that we didn’t even know we had.
There is a reason for this. It’s not our health care system. It’s called big business and it is perpetuating an ill care system. Usual and customary? I think not.
Let me tell you how this works. A few years back, I was laid off the day that I returned to work from angio surgery. I definitely had a heart, although it might not be working so well, but the company I worked for obviously did not. A blockage in my LAD (here we go again) was found. To make sure I didn’t forget what this was even if the acronym slipped my mind, the doc said, “Think Tim Russert.” It’s also called the widowmaker. Hello Dad, here I come. I’ve been told to avoid stress. Right.
My Cobra benefits just ran out, so I applied for an individual health insurance plan. I was told that I was not eligible because of pre-existing conditions. I might be able to get a temporary plan while they determined if I could get a HIPPA plan (hippa, hippa hoorah at $756 per month), but I would only be insured if I got hit by a bus and not if anything happened that was already wrong. Huh?
So the health insurance system is designed for the healthy? Ah, I understand now. If I’m ill, and with pharmaceutical commercials inundating my prime time TV hours, I have been convinced that I have PTSD, IBS, ADHD, and I’m MAD about it, I cannot get insurance unless I am willing to pay nearly $800 per month. This might be a stupid question, but if I was healthy, why would I need insurance?
But wait! My doctors have told me that I should not be working. I applied for disability and in spite of the documentation from multiple doctors and the fact that I had worked since I was fourteen years old (around the same time that Dad had passed away), I had to wait seven months for my claim to be approved so I had no income. Thank God that I had a nest egg, not to be confused with the Zoloft or Paxil eggs.
I often wonder, if they hadn’t found all of this that was wrong with me, how would I be feeling? I still might be a little tired because of my low blood sugar and Pacman antibodies attacking my thyroid, but I could be eating better and a nap wouldn’t hurt now and then.
It’s strange how we think it’s a miracle when we are healed. If we were deprogrammed, de-medicated, and listened to our own bodies, it might be a miracle that we ever got sick at all.
I would rather live a shorter life without fear, pills, panic, and programming than a longer one with them. I don’t miss being poked and prodded, the multiple doctor visits, and being over-irradiated and probed like Cavity Sam in Milton-Bradley’s Operation game. Now that I don’t have health insurance, it makes me concentrate on being healthy instead of worrying about being ill.
This just might be a blessing in disguise.
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