A is for Access to Affordable Healthcare

Accessible healthcare has been in the news a lot lately. This is just one story of a recent challenge of accessing appropriate healthcare that I am choosing to share. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, should ever have to choose between food/shelter and healthcare. This is not an acceptable definition of accessible healthcare!

Approximately five weeks ago, my neurosurgeon decided I could finally return to physical (and other) therapies, after three months of post-operative healing time, following multiple simultaneous neurosurgical interventions in my cervical spine (neck). Alas, I had no way to get there, so it took me all this time to figure out how I would get there and to save the money to ensure I could get there and back three times a week, at a minimum. So two weeks ago, I finally scheduled the first of the three therapy evaluation appointments.

Most often when we think of someone being in the hospital, we think instantly of their physical health. However, mental health can play an important role in healing physical issues as well. The mental health aspect of healthcare, when it comes to physical maladies is often overlooked, or simply not thought of as often as it should be. I am a firm believer that every patient who has been admitted to the hospital should receive, at the very least, a cursory mental health examination. By doing so, properly trained staff may well be able to predict the need for further psychological or even psychiatric interventions.

Most of us go about our daily lives oblivious to the dangers lurking all around us during nearly every second of our seemingly routine and maybe even mundane existence. While some of you may well find this post to be morbid and unnecessary. I assure you from personal experience on multiple levels, many of them personal and very close to home, this is a topic that must be addressed.

This is a very difficult, yet sobering and absolutely necessary topic. The hard truth of life, is that we are all dying a little bit every day. From the time we are born, we are in effect, also on the path to our inevitable death. Sure, we don’t have an expiration date stamped on the bottom of our feet, nor should we live life in fear of what could happen to us, or how and when we will die. However, we certainly must be aware that horrible things happen to good people each and every day. While we must not allow ourselves to live in fear of these life changing events, we also cannot afford to bury our head in the sand and pretend that they simply do not exist, or that they only happen to other people, not to us.

Despite having worked in EMS, as well as in hospitals on medical/surgical floors; Skilled Nursing Facilities, Emergency Departments, Operating Rooms and many roles over my years before becoming ill, and the fact that I now have extensive knowledge and experience being a patient, I have once again learned what I think is a valuable lesson that some of us forget over our time in service to others in healthcare. And the fact of the matter is that all patients are NOT created equal!