Freewrite Monday, August 31, 2009
This is first attempt at freewriting and I'm worried that none of this will make any sense. You all know I'm a poet and I'm not sure if freewriting poetry is even allowed at this point so what I am about to do is a little foreign. If you know me, you know that I do have a tendency to ramble on sometimes but I'm not going to worry about that either and so I'm just going to check the time and jump in.....here goes.......
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10:48 a.m.
I'm angry and I can't figure out who exactly I am angry at. After spending hours in the local ER last Thursday I'm here to tell anyone that doesn't think that this country needs healthcare reform that they need to go and spend time in their local emergency room. My mother is elderly and got sick Wednesday evening but suffered the whole night and didn't call me until later the next morning. I don't know what it is about my mother but she seems to think that things like this will go away on their own. She'd already called her doctor who now seems to be working 3 days a week and having 4 off. His answering service who now apparently is doing his doctoring on his days off advised my mother to go to the emergency room. Needless to say I quickly got her and took her to the nearest ER. When we walked in there were only two people there, both elderly and both visibly ill. By the time we left 2+ hours later the place was packed with men, women and children suffering everything from dog bites to the flu. Now, don't get me wrong 2+ hours is a short time as it normally goes in our local ER, I've sat there for 6-7 hours before either sick myself or comforting someone else. The reason we got in so fast might be because my mother's blood pressure was quite a bit elevated from the pain and from her lack of sleep. That and in addition to the fact that after 2 hours I approached the phyician's assistant triaging patients and asked her what her criteria was. She looked blankly at me and for a split second I really thought that she wasn't going to answer me. Then reluctantly she did and that is when I asked when she would be bringing my mother in since she was elderly, in severe pain, had been up all night and both numbers of her blood pressure were extremely elevated because of the pain and lack of sleep. In a few minutes she called my mother's name and she was finally getting the much needed attention. While I sat there in the waiting room I struck up conversations with many of the people who were in the same boat with me and found out that many of them had insurance but that THEIR doctors were off that day too... Some had insurance but the doctors they had to take their families to were so far away they couldn't travel that distance for emergency care. But most had no insurance whatsoever....none at all....nothing.....nada and that leads me right back to my second sentence. If you think that healthcare in this country is so great and doesn't need immediate reform then PLEASE go spend a couple hours in your local ER. Go anytime. Talk to the patients and the parents of the patients or the friends of those that bring them there because they have no choice. Look around and see what goes on there. Check out the level of care. See how long really ill people have to wait and wait and wait. You will be astounded, appalled, and ashamed. IF NOT, then PLEASE come here and visit our ER!
10:53 a.m.
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Comments: 35
In any case... ALL the ERs in the Detroit Metropolitan Area are crowded day and night with uninsured and underinsured people who have no "Primary Physician," who, in fact, have NO physician at all. They arrive and wait, coughing on everyone in sight, moaning in pain, vomiting and dehydrated, shaking from fatigue and fever, and they sit... hour after hour... and we sit with them. ER Doctors and Triage Nurses tell me that 85% of them could have been treated in a doctor's office, but became this ill because NO DOCTOR WOULD ACCEPT THEM FOR TREATMENT. Michigan has MI-Child for children, but the adults in families out of work, working without insurance, and for a dozen other reasons (NOT because they "chose" not to buy insurance), have NOWHERE ELSE to go!
They misdiagnose and just hand out pain pill prescriptions instead of running the right tests and really finding out what's going on. It's pure insanity. You almost have to demand specific treatment, even in my mother's case where she is covered by medicare and would have gone to see her normal doctor is he wasn't out of his officer more days a week than he's in.
When I swallowed my crown I sat there for 3 hours choking with it stuck in my throat! It's just ridiculous anyway you look at it.
You held my attention, Excellent.
Easy to read, organized. and right on target with the message.
http://www.senate.gov
Write both of your U. S. Senators, I don't care if they are Republican.
http://www.house.gov
Type in your zip code, the house site will give you your U. S. Representative.
Don't worry if your rep is Republican, tell him/her.
We want single payer health care now!
Why can't people see this?????
Everybody needs to get more pro-active with this issue. Getting Obama in office wasn't the hardest thing we are going to have to face. It's getting the old Washington cronies to wake up and realize that WE WANT CHANGE and WE WANT IT NOW....and that we are NOT going to put up with them putting BIG BUSINESS and lobbyists DIRTY MONEY first before the American people any longer....that is going to be the worst fight! Probably the fight of our lives....
Good write.
Signed....sealed and hopefully delivered SOON!