| so in these conferences, you're always waiting for the surprise-- what'd they miss? what'd they miss?-- so bear that in mind.
this was a 38 year old diabetic with high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, and a brother who died of a heart attack at age 42. so he's working outside at his construction job when he gets this horrible chest pain. let's call that day "day 1".
(everybody's thinking heart attack, right?)
so they call an ambulance and the ambulance
(takes his to the hospital where they find out he's having a massive heart attack and save his life, right?)
no. they send him home and tell him he got too hot on the job. maybe now would be a good time to discuss the fact that where he was working they don't get health insurance. oh, and they don't have public hospitals, just private ones. maybe the paramedics mentioned to him how much it would cost if he decided to go to the hospital with his horrible chest pain.
so a couple of days later (day 3) he still has that chest pain and decides to go to the hospital.
(a public hospital, right?)
no, a private hospital. so they find out he's having a massive heart attack.
(so they fix him, right?)
no, they don't have to fix him, they just have to stabilize him. remember, he can't pay.
they figure out he's having a massive heart attack and tell him to go to the public hospital.
then they send him home.
so he shows up at the public hospital
(that's us!)
on day nine.
and on day ten he dies.
and now we sit in an auditorium painstakingly going over all his films, all his EKGs, his cardiac catheterization... experts hand the microphone to other experts and talk and talk and talk and in the end we decided that we did the right thing. and i keep waiting for them to say nine days too late.
and i'm writing over and over on my little sheet of paper (so i don't lose it and shout at the top of my lungs-- the mistake here is that he was poor, that he didn't go to the hospital nine days before we met him, that his job didn't provide health insurance, that the city he worked in didn't have public hospitals, that the private hospital kicked him out without fixing him, that... why aren't we talking about this?) and i draw little pictures of him walking out of the ambulance, walking out of the hospital in the other city, walking back to his life a smiling stick figure with medicine for his diabetes and medicine for his high blood pressure and a brand new artery for his heart, walking into a better world. |
