"Choose your doctor"

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Man, you yuppies crack me up; you really don't have a clue, do you? Listening to NPR this morning, heard a promo for some health insurance deal, saying, "you can choose your own doctor."

I just froze in place. What a concept! Some people actually think choosing a doctor is a right!

Most places in the world, people don't even have a choice to get medical care! Choose a doctor? Whoa!

I'm lucky as hell First Choice clinic had a vacant appointment later this month; the wait's usually almost three months for an intake! "First Choice:" should be renamed, "Only Option."

I called University Hospital, the only other place in the city which is required (otherwise, they sure wouldn't do it!) to take in Medicare and Medicaid patients. They're accepting no new intake appointments, period, and referred me on to First Choice.

"Choose a doctor?" I'm just grateful I got an appointment, this week after New Year's Day, before Easter and even Valentine's Day!

I rarely seek medical care. I only go in emergencies.

Like the time I was living in a corrugated tin "pole" barn in Pekin, IN.

I was having dizzy spells. My heart beat was irregular and sometimes painful. Lymph glands in my arm pits were swollen and painful.

My mother had a radical mastectomy, a few years before this, in which they removed the lymph nodes in her arm pits, to prevent spread of the cancer.

The real problem was exhaustion and dehydration. At least, for everything besides the lymph nodes, which I can not explain.

My landlord was selling the farm on which I was living a full four months earlier than he'd said when I contracted with him.

Every day, I walked past my half-mature garden, which had taken me long hours of hard work in the cold of March to dig out of raw pasture, to strip cabinets, floors, ceilings and wall panels out of the '72 Winnebego camper I was restoring.

I'd abandoned restoration, since I was now forced to move out in less than 30 days. I had no phone, and lived in a rural county without newspaper delivery. It was going to be nearly impossible to locate a new rental which was decent, within my price range, forty miles away down a winding country road, back toward Louisville, KY. And, since I have no credit record and my income is tight, it's going to be hard to find anybody willing to rent to a single woman with a big camper, 2 dogs and 4 cats.

I had to pack the camper, ready or not.

Forget the garden; that's history.

Twice or three times a week, I made the nearly 100 mile round trip into the small Indiana towns, just across the Ohio River from Louisville, KY, to search for an apartment. No way I could have found something up there in those rural counties!

I was working from "cain't see to cain't see:" sunrise to sunset, and well beyond. I had little food. I was living on potted meat, canned vegetables and stale French bread from the local food pantry.

I'd flop into bed, exhausted, at ten pm every night. I'd start to panic and worry and say, "don't forget to...." I couldn't afford insomnia. I needed rest. So, I taught myself to let it go. I'd say, "Rogi, that will still be a problem tomorrow morning, when the sun's up and you're working; you can worry while you work. And I could sleep then.

It was July: hot and muggy. The Winnebego necessarily stood in the sun. Oh, I brought in a box fan to blow on me, but, usually, it was just in my way and didn't help much.

So, I began having chest pains, dizziness, etc. Big surprise. There just WEREn't enough liquids for hot muggy days, working at full tilt! And my food didn't help much, although thank goodness for the SALT!

So, I showed up at the county hospital. Now, you KNOW I must have felt awful, to interrupt my work and apartment hunting, to drive 50+ miles, round trip, to a hospital I couldn't afford!

As I waited in an exam room, they brought in a man. I have no idea what had happened to him. But he was screaming and moaning in absolute agony.

I was left alone for a long time, listening to him, and I began to cry.

When the doctor finally entered and saw me crying, he became irritated. I explained and pointed to the door of the adjoining exam room. I said, "Just listen to him!" Now, the doctor's face showed out right anger, insult and contempt.

I suspect the screaming man may have been some miscrient like a drunk driver, or a crook whom the police found necessary to shoot. At any rate, I think the doctor assumed I was sympathetic with this screaming man for some other circumstance besides his screaming. The doctor knew his circumstances; the only thing I knew about the screaming man was that he was screaming.

I explained my symptoms. I explained about the lymph nodes, and about my particular concerns re: my mother's breast cancer. At the moment, I explained, the nodes did not feel inflamed. But they do, from time to time, become swollen, painful and hard as walnuts.

He roughly felt under my arm. He was not gloved and his naked and, as far as I know, unwashed fingers poked and prodded. I was sweaty; my truck had no air conditioning. I was also not freshly-shaved. It couldn't have been very appetizing for him.

Then, he roughly grabbed my breast and pinched it, deep with in the flesh, over and over. I am not prone to verbal expression of pain. People often don't know when I'm in pain, sick etc, because I don't make any noise. But he was so forceful, and it hurt so badly, that I yelped.

I know what breast exams are like. And they don't hurt.

This was an attack. I was being punished for being, I suppose, a hypochondriac, an inconvenience, an emotional female, a smart ass, and a sympathiser with the sociopath who screamed in the next room.

I made it through a few questions I knew he was only asking as a formality. He pronounced that nothing was wrong with me and told me to leave, before he had me held for a psychiatric evaluation.

I tried to report him to the hospital administration while I was there. But they wanted me to fill out extensive paper work, be contactable by phone, go through a long procedure, etc. I had to MOVE!

And, once I'd left, leave every memory of that county and those people as far in my past as I could. Pekin is an old Ku Klux Klan town. It's a very backward county, and very dangerous. If I'd known before I'd rented that farm, I'd never have moved there.

So, choose a doctor, huh?

You yuppies make me laugh!