Health kill... I mean care.
The town halls are heatin' up, folks! The nation is all a twitter about this health care business and I thought I'd throw in my two cents (actually 1.2 cents, after taxes) since I've had my showdown-at-high-noon with government controlled health care. Sit back kiddies and let me paint you a portrait... actually just a little doodle... on a napkin... that has watermelon stains.
It was the summer of 1999 and I was not partying like the year it was. I was in Toronto, Canada serving a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and had been out about four months and still in my first area. I had been having abdominal pains all summer but attributed them to humidity combined with the experimental acne medication I was on before my departure. Every night I would curl up in a ball and ride out the storm. It wasn't until I had a particularly bad attack that my companion forced me to go to the emergency room to get checked out. I had never been to an emergency room before that so I thought the three and a half hours of mind-numbing waiting was probably normal. I didn't see a physician right away, they sent me right into the ultra-sound technician who, even after admitting that he wasn't allowed to say anything, diagnosed a gall stone. Well I was less than pleased at the news, but satisfied that there was news, an answer, an enemy.
The next transfer I was sent to metropolitan Toronto to be near "better doctors." The only doctor I saw, however, never admitted me into an examination room. He sat me in his office and from across his desk he told me that his advice was to tough it out and take care of it when I got home... 18 months later. At this point I was eating only saltine crackers and drinking water because anything else doubled me over like a taco shell (which, had I eaten one, would have added new depth to "you are what you eat") and was becoming fairly dainty. My mission president, who had a long and successful career as a hospital administrator behind him, told me the choice was mine, but if I decided to have surgery there was no way I was having it in Canada; evidently he could smell the inadequacy in the nationalized health care.
So back to the factory I went for some recall repairs. I only went as far as Salt Lake City and had my surgery that night. The laparoscopic procedure was so quick and efficient that even after they removed an entire organ from my abdomen I had no need to stay over night. Mere hours after being the personification of the Operation guy (who, ironically, I seem to resemble when I part my hair down the middle) I was on my way to stay with my uncle and aunt for 9 days. In fact I was up and out and all about the next day and only remembered I had had surgery when I laughed hard enough to strain my stitches. But I digress. I was informed later of the surgeon's comment that he had never seen such a diseased organ in someone my age and that had he not removed it when he did the disease would have spread to other organs with disastrous results.
The moral of this story, kids, is that when someone other than yourself holds the decision making power over your health or any other facet of your life then you are unnecessarily enslaved. When you're not responsible for the care of your own body then those are responsible have every [legal] right to dictate what you do with that body. I was profoundly blessed to have had the option to save my own life, but it must be remembered that that option existed by sheer virtue of my status as an American and the coverage of private insurance. I don't want my neighbors looking at my naturally plump body some years down the road and thinking about how part of their 48% tax rate is going toward my triple bypass (I hope I'm healthy enough to avoid that, but my neighbors likely won't know me that well and will just judgementally assume I'm gonna need one). I want to make the decisions for my health and my wife and I to make the health decisions for our own family, not the government. They can have my Snickers when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!
The End.
I can't help but feel like Fletch here when I think about what nationalized health will do to us. Moooon River!
It was the summer of 1999 and I was not partying like the year it was. I was in Toronto, Canada serving a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and had been out about four months and still in my first area. I had been having abdominal pains all summer but attributed them to humidity combined with the experimental acne medication I was on before my departure. Every night I would curl up in a ball and ride out the storm. It wasn't until I had a particularly bad attack that my companion forced me to go to the emergency room to get checked out. I had never been to an emergency room before that so I thought the three and a half hours of mind-numbing waiting was probably normal. I didn't see a physician right away, they sent me right into the ultra-sound technician who, even after admitting that he wasn't allowed to say anything, diagnosed a gall stone. Well I was less than pleased at the news, but satisfied that there was news, an answer, an enemy.
The next transfer I was sent to metropolitan Toronto to be near "better doctors." The only doctor I saw, however, never admitted me into an examination room. He sat me in his office and from across his desk he told me that his advice was to tough it out and take care of it when I got home... 18 months later. At this point I was eating only saltine crackers and drinking water because anything else doubled me over like a taco shell (which, had I eaten one, would have added new depth to "you are what you eat") and was becoming fairly dainty. My mission president, who had a long and successful career as a hospital administrator behind him, told me the choice was mine, but if I decided to have surgery there was no way I was having it in Canada; evidently he could smell the inadequacy in the nationalized health care.
So back to the factory I went for some recall repairs. I only went as far as Salt Lake City and had my surgery that night. The laparoscopic procedure was so quick and efficient that even after they removed an entire organ from my abdomen I had no need to stay over night. Mere hours after being the personification of the Operation guy (who, ironically, I seem to resemble when I part my hair down the middle) I was on my way to stay with my uncle and aunt for 9 days. In fact I was up and out and all about the next day and only remembered I had had surgery when I laughed hard enough to strain my stitches. But I digress. I was informed later of the surgeon's comment that he had never seen such a diseased organ in someone my age and that had he not removed it when he did the disease would have spread to other organs with disastrous results.
The moral of this story, kids, is that when someone other than yourself holds the decision making power over your health or any other facet of your life then you are unnecessarily enslaved. When you're not responsible for the care of your own body then those are responsible have every [legal] right to dictate what you do with that body. I was profoundly blessed to have had the option to save my own life, but it must be remembered that that option existed by sheer virtue of my status as an American and the coverage of private insurance. I don't want my neighbors looking at my naturally plump body some years down the road and thinking about how part of their 48% tax rate is going toward my triple bypass (I hope I'm healthy enough to avoid that, but my neighbors likely won't know me that well and will just judgementally assume I'm gonna need one). I want to make the decisions for my health and my wife and I to make the health decisions for our own family, not the government. They can have my Snickers when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!
The End.
I can't help but feel like Fletch here when I think about what nationalized health will do to us. Moooon River!
Good post. You hear stories similar to yours all the time in places like Canada and the U.K.