Lightning Rod Explores The Public Option
Posted: September 25th, 2009, 8:07 am
Thanks to all of my caring and wonderful friends for their good and apparently effective prayers. After enduring considerable bodily insult and torture, I have
emerged alive from the Minotaur's maze.
My vacation to the resort of illness, nay the very cruise ship of death's own doorstep, began with the horror stories I had read and heard of sitting for hours upon hours encamped among the unwashed trying to figure a way to give the latest unknown virus the slip. Parkland Hospital is the main county hospital in Dallas County. The Emergency room at Parkland handles people from all walks of life but mostly those with no insurance or other means to pay for their health care. The ER at Parkland serves on average of 2200 patients per day, most of whom should be seeing a primary care physician. So, I imagined stressing my bladder to uncomfortable dimensions sitting for 20 hours in line to be interviewed by some harried and overworked med student. At some point the real doctor zips through the room leaving no more trail than a skeeter leaves on a martini. That was one reason I couldn't bring myself to go. I was scared. I was scared of the apparatus but also didn't like the notion of sitting in a waiting room for hours without benefit of beer and tomato juice.
The sardonic part of this tale is that beer and tomato juice were what caused me to be seeking emergency help in the first place. It is well known that I have made the beverage a minor dietary religion. Oh, it is a path, my brethren and sistern and it can be scenic but it's also a short path. I have set a bad example for you, chirren. That stuff is bad juju.
First I noticed the weight loss. I have never been a large eater but I had almost abandoned the practice entirely, depending on the beer and tomato juice as my primary food supply. I began noticing bones appear on my hands and arms that I had never seen before. My rings started falling off. At the same time, my belly began to swell. I had always had an 'innie' before and one day I noticed that I was an 'outie.' It frightened me. I resembled a stick man trying to smuggle a watermelon. So, I decided to avail myself of the best medical care plan that our country has to offer--the Emergency Room. It is usually the best care you can get in any given area and it's absolutely free. (to the patient, that is. The bill is picked up by the taxpayers.) It's the real deal when it comes to a Public Option.
I decided to approach the experience like an intrepid reporter. I would channel Hunter S. Thompson and immerse myself in my subject. But instead of choosing to go to the big city Emergency room, I picked a hospital in one of the affluent bedroom counties to the north of Dallas.
I presented myself at the check-in window at the Collin County hospital. Within five minutes I was in an examination room. They didn't ask me if I had insurance. I didn't need to present proof of citizenship. They only asked for my name so they could write it on my bracelet. The doctor determined that I should have a CAT scan. Then he asked me for a urine sample, 'before I get you to drink this contrasting agent and give you a shot of morphine to relax you." Did I hear someone mention a shot of morphine? This Public Option thing was looking better to me all the time.
They put me through the CAT scan and returned me to the examination room where I laid on the examination table enjoying the warmth of the first morphine that I had sampled in years. Enter the radiologist who had just evaluated my scan. He undrapes my distended belly and says, "you are not going anywhere tonight.' Then he pokes deliberately at my stomach with his index finger. "Here and here and here, this is fluid that is filling you up. Tomorrow we and gong to stick a needle in here, " he presses extra hard, "and we are going to drain the fluid. You will be more comfortable and we can see your liver better. Looks like there is a little bit of cirrhosis." As you can imagine, this news made my evening.
I was given a nice hospital room with a television and a button that I could push every time I wanted another shot of morphine and there I was left to ponder the lancing of my belly which was scheduled for the following morning. It made me nervous that the staff kept referring to this procedure euphemistically as my 'sonogram.' To be fair the ordeal did start off with a sonogram. They were trying to avoid impaling my gall bladder or some other vital organ. But once the mark was drawn, it was 'thrust home' and the poet only had his morphine for comfort as he watched his visceral fluid drip into a bottle. Three bottles actually. They drained me of two and a half liters before it was over. I observed the whole ritual with narcotic detachment.
During the next three days I was scanned, sampled, photographed, x-rayed, punctured no less than sixty times and had more sonograms than the octomom. Several times a day the sweet young phlebotomist would arrive at my room with her supplies arrayed in a plastic container which I came to call Dracula's Picnic Basket. She had perfect, small fingers and I fell quite in love with her. She had the touch of a fairy, a discreet mosquito, a sanguinary succubus. The diagnosis was succinct---cirrhosis of the liver caused by years of systematic abuse and abetted by Hep C. With that pronouncement I became the world's fastest teetotaler. El mundo prestimo con leche bonita. It turns out that if there is anything that the liver hates more than alcohol, it is tomato juice which is full of sodium.
I asked my internist for a prognosis. She said, "cirrhosis is not Always a terminal disease.' Somehow this was less than reassuring. But Lightning Rod was thankful to the generous taxpayers of Collin County for the Public Option. The morphine was also nice.
emerged alive from the Minotaur's maze.
My vacation to the resort of illness, nay the very cruise ship of death's own doorstep, began with the horror stories I had read and heard of sitting for hours upon hours encamped among the unwashed trying to figure a way to give the latest unknown virus the slip. Parkland Hospital is the main county hospital in Dallas County. The Emergency room at Parkland handles people from all walks of life but mostly those with no insurance or other means to pay for their health care. The ER at Parkland serves on average of 2200 patients per day, most of whom should be seeing a primary care physician. So, I imagined stressing my bladder to uncomfortable dimensions sitting for 20 hours in line to be interviewed by some harried and overworked med student. At some point the real doctor zips through the room leaving no more trail than a skeeter leaves on a martini. That was one reason I couldn't bring myself to go. I was scared. I was scared of the apparatus but also didn't like the notion of sitting in a waiting room for hours without benefit of beer and tomato juice.
The sardonic part of this tale is that beer and tomato juice were what caused me to be seeking emergency help in the first place. It is well known that I have made the beverage a minor dietary religion. Oh, it is a path, my brethren and sistern and it can be scenic but it's also a short path. I have set a bad example for you, chirren. That stuff is bad juju.
First I noticed the weight loss. I have never been a large eater but I had almost abandoned the practice entirely, depending on the beer and tomato juice as my primary food supply. I began noticing bones appear on my hands and arms that I had never seen before. My rings started falling off. At the same time, my belly began to swell. I had always had an 'innie' before and one day I noticed that I was an 'outie.' It frightened me. I resembled a stick man trying to smuggle a watermelon. So, I decided to avail myself of the best medical care plan that our country has to offer--the Emergency Room. It is usually the best care you can get in any given area and it's absolutely free. (to the patient, that is. The bill is picked up by the taxpayers.) It's the real deal when it comes to a Public Option.
I decided to approach the experience like an intrepid reporter. I would channel Hunter S. Thompson and immerse myself in my subject. But instead of choosing to go to the big city Emergency room, I picked a hospital in one of the affluent bedroom counties to the north of Dallas.
I presented myself at the check-in window at the Collin County hospital. Within five minutes I was in an examination room. They didn't ask me if I had insurance. I didn't need to present proof of citizenship. They only asked for my name so they could write it on my bracelet. The doctor determined that I should have a CAT scan. Then he asked me for a urine sample, 'before I get you to drink this contrasting agent and give you a shot of morphine to relax you." Did I hear someone mention a shot of morphine? This Public Option thing was looking better to me all the time.
They put me through the CAT scan and returned me to the examination room where I laid on the examination table enjoying the warmth of the first morphine that I had sampled in years. Enter the radiologist who had just evaluated my scan. He undrapes my distended belly and says, "you are not going anywhere tonight.' Then he pokes deliberately at my stomach with his index finger. "Here and here and here, this is fluid that is filling you up. Tomorrow we and gong to stick a needle in here, " he presses extra hard, "and we are going to drain the fluid. You will be more comfortable and we can see your liver better. Looks like there is a little bit of cirrhosis." As you can imagine, this news made my evening.
I was given a nice hospital room with a television and a button that I could push every time I wanted another shot of morphine and there I was left to ponder the lancing of my belly which was scheduled for the following morning. It made me nervous that the staff kept referring to this procedure euphemistically as my 'sonogram.' To be fair the ordeal did start off with a sonogram. They were trying to avoid impaling my gall bladder or some other vital organ. But once the mark was drawn, it was 'thrust home' and the poet only had his morphine for comfort as he watched his visceral fluid drip into a bottle. Three bottles actually. They drained me of two and a half liters before it was over. I observed the whole ritual with narcotic detachment.
During the next three days I was scanned, sampled, photographed, x-rayed, punctured no less than sixty times and had more sonograms than the octomom. Several times a day the sweet young phlebotomist would arrive at my room with her supplies arrayed in a plastic container which I came to call Dracula's Picnic Basket. She had perfect, small fingers and I fell quite in love with her. She had the touch of a fairy, a discreet mosquito, a sanguinary succubus. The diagnosis was succinct---cirrhosis of the liver caused by years of systematic abuse and abetted by Hep C. With that pronouncement I became the world's fastest teetotaler. El mundo prestimo con leche bonita. It turns out that if there is anything that the liver hates more than alcohol, it is tomato juice which is full of sodium.
I asked my internist for a prognosis. She said, "cirrhosis is not Always a terminal disease.' Somehow this was less than reassuring. But Lightning Rod was thankful to the generous taxpayers of Collin County for the Public Option. The morphine was also nice.