You have worked all your life. You start feeling ill, you try to self-medicate, you try to be brave and keep on working. But something in your body is telling you you're not healthy.
You start getting dizzy, you keep falling asleep, you alternate between body pain and numbness. You start stumbling and falling down. You finally drive off the road into a ditch.
Get out that book of providers that your employer provides you with. You are new in town, so you don't know anyone who can recommend a good doctor. Since you live in the boonies, you pick the doctor out of the book who is closest to where you live. By now your condition is so bad that you can barely walk, much less drive or work.
Go to the doctor numerous times, pay the co-pays. Get numerous tests done. EKG - abnormal. Blood Pressure - high. Blood work - some normal, some not. Asthma attacks, high cholesterol, fibromyalgia, GERD reconfirmed on endoscopy. Experience the pleasure of having a five foot instrument rammed up your butt after fasting for three days to be told there are some polyps and whatnot and signs of ulcers. However, the good doctor couldn't get any further up your colon, because even after three days of fasting, there's still some crap up there.
On another visit, have a lie-down nuclear stress test done, because doctor says you can't do the treadmill test, or you will fall down. During lie-down stress test, have an anaphalyctic reaction that needs to be brought down with shot of benedryl/epinephrine. Valium is administered to bring down panic shock reaction. Doctor calls all assistants into room to help out. Doctor looks worried. Toilet is brought into room in which you throw up numerous times, pee and crap your brains out. Lay back down and by now you are freezing, but doctor says that is necessary. Sleep it off for a few hours while your poor neighbor waits to drive you home. Doctor's procedure note states that everything went fine.
Cobra insurance runs out. Money received from generous family members as birthday and christmas gifts as well as tax return money is now spent solely at this doctor's office. Show up at same doctor on other occasions for asthma attacks, checkups, panic attacks, dizziness that is so bad you are banging into things. Show up at same doctor being so sleepy you can't stay awake, and collapse on the cot. Show up with red, infected blood shot eyes caused by severe dry eye.
Be denied by Social Security, because your conditions aren't serious enough to preclude all work. Although the doctor tells you to your face that you have some problems that need attention, his typed office notes say otherwise. Although doctor says you can't do treadmill test, according to him you can sit, stand, and walk just fine. Although you keep dropping the pen and your pocketbook because of the pain and uncoordination in holding things, your fine finger movements are just fine.
You may wonder what kind of idiot would keep going to a doctor who tells them to their face they are not fine, when they say otherwise in their office notes. Well, the reason is because this idiot, the writer, did not get the office notes until good old Uncle Sam's Social Security Administration turned said idiot down for benefits.
This idiot is now broke, sick, and disgusted with the system. In the great state of South Carolina, you only get Medicaid if you are already approved for disability or are pregnant. Time to go hit up the community health clinics, or die.
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