Medicine wants the shirt off your back
(This Brew
column first published Sunday February 23, 2003)
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| That sick and getting nowhere feeling facing Trinbago "health care." |
However, when
it comes to out and out pain, to quote Selma Hayek’s flu-ridden character in
the flick The Faculty, “There are not
enough drugs in the world.”
I truly
thought I was at death’s doorstep the other day; hence why housewives
(insultingly termed “idle” by those who couldn’t do in a week what one good
housewife achieves in a day) had to take a side while I waxed introspective
about illness, and being heavy-hearted about the health sector impasse.
Sympathy
expressed, empathy aside, it isn’t until the proverbial ordure hits the fan
that people truly appreciate the horrors to be met when choice is not an option
in any given situation. I had to spend some $500. for a very capable doctor to
stick needles in selective parts of my bum (It’s like I’m tattooing you,” he
uttered pithily, and I ho-hoed to humour him, lest he take it out on my
posterior).
Government
talks about affordable health care for all. In two words, “My eye!”
When the doc
mentioned nursing home, kachings! started sounding off in my brain. I imagined
the donsai I didn’t have going down the drain on something as insignificant as
my life, when there were taxes to be paid.
Wealth or no health
“I don’t have
that kind of money,” muttered I, who didn’t even have a first-born son to hand
over to some dealer of souls in exchange for the needed dough.
“Then it’s
casualty for you.” At which even the good doctor could not muffle his own
haw-haw co-mingling with collective snorts of cynicism.
“Doc,” I gave
him the best I’ll-do-anything look I could muster on short notice, writhing in
lucid agony, “there must be something you can do.”
Which is when
he gave me the fourth shot, loaded me up with tablets (the kind you pop, not
the Ten Commandments kind, though the list of “don’ts” I got, too, was sort of
like a “Thou shall not this and that) and sent me home, “To see.”
As I
guh-nashed my teeth all through that infinite night, I though of people who did
not have a handy grand lying around for such medical emergencies; people who
nonetheless paid taxes, yet could not “enjoy” the luxury of going to a public
health facility for something resembling the fair to fine treatment I’d
received upon the advent of doling out my hard-earned cash.
I wondered:
“Where do doctors go for treatment? What if the majority of doctors were women,
or mostly from lower-income backgrounds, or mostly Trini-Chinee, would this
whole stand-off be playing out quite differently?”
I wondered:
“What kind of place is this where a person who has a broken leg can’t get
medical attention because it’s not ‘extreme’ or unless he has the bucks to pay
a private doctor to plaster? And when someone is so bent double with agony that
you consider running into a wall to concuss yourself just for relief, could you
have the presence of mind to determine if thy malady is ‘extreme’ or not?”
Overindulging relief
I wondered:
“How many people risk overdosing themselves into possible death on painkillers
(I read it only takes 45 Aspirin, after all) because they can’t step into a
hospital for help?”
Oh yes, I wondered
a great many things, before blessedly passing out. I woke the next morning to
my whispered prayer, “MotherFather-God, thank you for the absence of pain.”
I’ve never
felt so lucky in my life: to have had some money put aside for just such an
emergency. But, what about our fellow man – the not so fortunate who live
hand-to-mouth?
What of the
single mother with the bad leg who limps to work to make money to feed her
family? Does she take that money and spend it on healing her leg so she can be
sure she gets to work to make money to feed her family, while they do without
food for a few weeks? Or does she limp on and feed them – limp on until the leg
has to go and she may never limp on again?
Do we think
about our brothers’ and sisters’ wretchedness while doctors “suffer” for
“better terms”?
I don’t have
a solution here.
My best weapon
is my word. My wielding it seeks to spark some of you out there with more power.
May you have your hearts touched enough to get up and effect some better change.
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