Those of you who have followed me know that I’ve had a medical problem for the past three months. You have also probably seen how I made fun of the medical staff that took my blood calling them daytime vampires. I have to say, all of them were good at their job and deserve praise. I promise not to pick on them, but I have a few words about medical care in this country.
Starting with the hospital, I can’t see why they think they are making anyone better with the food they serve. Oh, there are some good things on the menu, though their goodness is reduced a little bit by the fact that much of the food is mass produced and condiments are full of seed oils and high fructose corn syrup. Their salad, for instance, was a reasonably good and somewhat nutritious choice, though the vegetables were commercial and probably raised with insecticides and other chemicals your body doesn’t need, and the dressing probably was made with seed oils and possibly high fructose corn syrup. My biggest concern was the ingredients of some other items one could order.
Chips. You could order chips cooked in canola and soda with 34 grams of high fructose corn syrup per serving. The jelly they served and some of the condiments such as sweet relish all had high amounts of high fructose corn syrup. White bread with its lack of fiber and added vitamins was also available along with ice cream, pie, cake, and cookies.
The main courses were a little better, but most had that “been mass produced” sort of flavor. I understand the cooks have a lot on their hands and need all the help they can get, so why don’t they hire more cooks and make more nutritious food from scratch?
Moving on from the cafeteria to the ER, the service there was pretty good considering both times I have been admitted to the ER, a number of ambulances have come in. This last time was memorable, however, and my only bitch is that they don’t take suggestions from patients. I was stuck in ER for 5 hours waiting for a bed. About an hour after I came in, the room next to me was given to a screamer. He called out for help and kept yelling unintelligible things at the top of his voice. At one point, a staff member came in to check on me and I said, “Thorazine, give him some Thorazine.”
I wasn’t listened to as I am not medically trained, and it was probably against their policies to do such a thing. The result was that I had to listen to this person who was clearly out of his mind scream.
Enough of picking on the hospital. They are there to solve whatever is happening at the moment then push you out so they can put another patient in that bed. What about the rest of the health care system? Is it any better at giving you the care you need? Horse biscuits! When I was discharged, I was told to make a follow-up appointment with my regular provider. I called them up and the earliest they could give me was May 13. I called them on the 11th of January. I could have died in that time!
Of course, there is always the 7-11 of medical care- the med offices that take you in and process you quickly or the ER. At the quickie med I went to, I encountered a doctor who was clearly full of preconceived suppositions. For instance, I told him I was having to get up at night and urinate every couple of hours, and he put that together with my age and presupposed that I had prostrate problems. I don’t. This urination at night was new.
Let’s go to scheduling a visit. No one could figure out what was wrong with me, so I was scheduled to have several tests done. In order to do this, I had to see a rheumatologist, podiatrist, pulmonologist, a celiac specialist and a urologist.
Before I get into the details, I want to publicly thank my daughter, who is in the medical field herself, for making most of these appointments. She surely has more patience and persistence than I do. What follows is mostly what she went through. I was too weak at the time to hold the phone for that long, but even so, I would have gone ballistic having to go through what she did to schedule me for all these visits.
First, there were the phone calls that made you listen to flute music. Then the recording that came on to tell you that, “We are experiencing a higher-than-normal call volume. Leave your name and number and we will hold your place in line and call you back.” Of course, the call back sometimes didn’t come. Then there was the fact that most of the specialists I needed to see were either retiring or had too many patients to accept another. Did I mention the appointments that were cancelled because the scheduler did not check the surgery list and the doctor had surgery when your appointment was scheduled? How about the time I drove 25 miles to find out that the appointment I had on my calendar was not in the computer and they would not be able to see me for two weeks?
Well, I will spare you the details. It is now March 27, 2025, and I got out of the hospital January 10, 2025. We have learned that I have an intolerance to gluten and am suffering from an autoimmune disease that affects the capillaries in my legs. We haven’t been able to get an appointment with a urologist yet, and there is no specific diagnosis that covers all of my symptoms. I have been on an elimination diet that eliminates most of what I like but my body seems to be healing itself as I am able to walk the dogs and drive myself to appointments and shopping.
My story illuminates the state of medical care in Oregon at this time. I have talked to friends in other states, and most are experiencing the same thing. I think we should all be alarmed by this report. This country pays the most for medical care of any country in the world, yet we get care with the worst outcomes. We desperately need to figure out why this is so and fix it. For the money we pay, we should all have top of the line medical care when we need it.