I would have extended the title of this entry to all of America, because my suspicion is that it is the same anywhere, except maybe in the now rare small town where one man or woman with a black bag and an actual heart still does everything. I won't bother with the tale that has gotten me most recently enraged with the money making assembly line that is modern medicine, but suffice it to be said that when I blurted out in tearful and utter frustration, to my very elderly father's arrogant twit of a doctor, that he, individually, and his other specialist colleague weren't treating the whole person, he actually laughed. I suppose it is a bit funny in a traumatically cynical sort of way.
Not only do they not listen. But heck, woe be to the person who actually challenges them, some spouse or daughter or son, who says, "He is talking to you" while they are obliviously doing some rote procedure without knowing any recent history and without a second's worth of compassion.
When I wait at the high tech urology office for my father to have his euphemistically called "treatments", administered only by techs, not a doctor, (each treatment or absence thereof, because say of an infection, is never preceded by any actual check of the man's body), I watch the largely years' crumpled characters, often with walkers, or canes, called in one of two doors, "Jones", "Smith", "Johnson", known to the staff only by their disembodied bladders. I mean that the people treating them, the people at the desks, those frozen faced automatons they call receptionists, ("Sir, you have to sign in!". Why is that so critical to the procedure I wonder?) see no person, no face, no life, no future, no past, nothing. Only the bladder and the insurance card. Ask 'em about a bill even, and they'll say, "This isn't ours." or "You have to call your insurance company." with a dismissive blankness. I have to qualify here, there was one young woman, who actually did resolve an insurance problem. I should have kissed her on the head.
I haven't been able to do much for my father against the seven headed hydras that call themselves care givers. I cannot imagine what a person alone, without even one support person, experiences. It is enough to make one want to die.
I have heard people say to me, in their perhaps appropriate defense, "They have to get hard; they see so much suffering". And I am reminded of my non-medical consumer job, and how hard it is to deal with the anger and the emotion of people who have been mistreated by a company or a profession. And, how often I have failed. "Yes, it must be hard for them," I think to myself. And then, frankly, here it is. I DON'T care what is their problem. This is my father, your father, your mother, your sister, your wife, your husband and they deserve better. Those old lives are still theirs to live. Remember your amusement at or patronizing response to their anger or their children's anger when you get to that societally useless stage. What goes around comes around inevitably since we all get old and die. You too. And sooner than you think given how quickly time passes. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when some 30 year old ignores your complaints and cries. Of course, someone will be ignoring mine so I probably won't ever get the chance.
One good thing may come out of this, and it won't likely be my father's recovery, alas, but maybe I have found my own retirement calling. Who knows. Someone must be out there advocating for these forgotten folks of a certain age; I will be looking to join them. I hope. I hope. I hope I don't forget the anger I feel and the need to redress the singularly sick system. And I don't think universal health care is the answer. I don't think Cuba or Europe does better. The answer is in the hearts of the profession. And maybe those hearts are just too hard. But what's the alternative?
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