I’m sitting at the hospital providing backup for the admission physician and thought I’d use this time to share a couple of recent stories concerning health care.
Ms. xAoAx is a really sweet old woman who I’ve cared for in the hospital several times over the last 12 months. She has had a mysterious abdominal pain that all of us knew would turn out to be cancer but for whatever reason we could not make the diagnosis–until today. I sat down with her and the family and shared the news. Tomorrow I suspect she will elect to enter hospice.
Now this does not mean her cancer is not treatable; god knows there are hospitals (including mine) that will continue the fight; ”when others give up, we don’t–you don’t have an expiration date stamped on your foot…” What it means is that I and the family and patient have spent long periods in discussion and she understands her prognosis and the likely hood she will not be with us in 2 months with or without treatment. More interesting yet, she had already made this decision; even without the biopsy results, she knew.
This is so often the case with cancer and other end of life processes. Somehow the patients always know and very often they have accepted thier fate. Where the problem comes in is when family is involved. Family doesnt want to lose their loved one and the patient often does not want to quit for the family.
In Ms. xAoAx’s case, her daughter understands that, even though she is suffering too (more so now?), her role is to help her mother with this transition, to be her support and to sit by her when the inevitable comes. This young woman has no idea how refreshing her attitude is as most families tend to wrap themselves in their grief, ignoring the obvious, often dragging the poor patient though fruitless tests and treatments.
Not this time, thank god!
My Brother is 51 with a crappy job and no family & no insurance. Yeah, he has made some really dumbass decisions in the past but I love him and he is still the hardest working, most honorable (and hardheaded) person I know.
I called him today and told him that the only good thing about Obamacare is that I don’t have to worry about him not having insurance anymore (or my sister having to pay for it). What he told me next knocked me for a loop.
My brother and I have argued a bit since I decided to turn away from the darkside (democratic politics). He has always been Dem and was even a bigger fan of Clinton than I was. When I commented about Obamacare he said “To hell with that!”
It seems by die-hard-dem brother has become very disenchanted with the methods of policy making, the outright lies and subversive agenda of the democratic party. Interestingly, he says he still is a democrat but now believes his party has been taken over by “wackjob socialists” trying to destroy the constitution.
Now I’ve gotto admit, despite how we turned out, my brother is way smarter than I’ll ever be (he could never focus on a task when younger–way before everyone was being treated for ADD) and when he says “radical” stuff like this, its scary. He thinks there is a revolution going on before our eyes and if the american people don’t wake up, we could lose our democracy.
If you’ve read my stuff, you know I believe the same thing, except we have not lost our right to vote and as long as we have this right we can fix things again.
My brother disagrees; he says if people are stupid enough to “ban water” (thank you John Stossel) and ignore FACTUAL climate warming research, they’re stupid enough to give away even this right.
You know, they may not have to, efforts underway to bolster the socialist vote (ACORN, immigration reform…) plus the existing obamazombies may be all they need.
Maybe, any way, my brother says he has never taken a government hand out and never will. “I got myself into this; its my responsibility…”
Now thats the american way.
(Next time, perhaps we’ll talk about my sister. She is the exact opposite, has pretty nice house, newer car than mine, doesn’t have to work, and all thanks to the US tax payer. Wanna guess who her hero is?)
Comments