Medical science is advancing at the same time patient support is retreating.
It is as if we have built a Porsche that no one can maintain since no service appointments are available. Or the mechanic is too expensive to afford.
In either case, the fine Porsche hits the ditch for lack of maintenance. Similarly, patients that should be cured wither and die despite medical science since bureaucracy prevents their care.
My earache reevaluation is scheduled for April 16th. That will mark the two month anniversary of my earache developing. Two months. And we’re not even at the diagnosis stage, let alone treatment.
Letting an earache remain untreated for two months? Really?
That is not medicine.
Also this week, I had to cancel an appointment because I could not get through on the phone to an Intermountain contractor, a group called PrimeMed.
I wanted to know if my appointment was in Las Vegas or at their Pahrump location. There’s a difference.
I spent over an hour on hold the first time I called and then another hour the second time I called. I never got past being third in the queue on these two separate days.
It is not medicine when a patient cannot be treated because a low bid contractor won’t staff up so they can cut costs to make more money.
Let’s count this up:
My earache remains. My oral surgeon says it is not TMJ.
My sensitivity to sound reamins, my ENT doctor says it is unrelated to my earache.
My light sensitivity remains undiagnosed and untreated and the ophthalmologist says it will not be fixed with my cataract surgery. He can see nothing in my eyes to account for it.
My cataract surgery is yet to be done.
The numbness in my arms and the great pain in my right hand remains.
The ECT I require may not go forward since no hospital in the state apparently provides it at this time.
My nightmares and chronic insomnia remain after 33 years
This is what I want to tell all the unsympathetic nimrods who don’t answer the phone or don’t return calls or who only react when I post to social media.
Medicine is a noble profession.
The purpose of life is to advance and to do better.
Mediocrity is something abhorred and not embraced.
Pateients are patients first and then perhaps customers. Perhaps.
Anyone who is average and content with that should get out of medicine.
I expect great things from great people and great companies.
Medicine is for great people.
Work for yourself if you are happy with your miserably low expectations.
Work some weekends and nights and holidays like the rest of us.
Life does not get better if we expect less.
Read a book.
