So I have an ulcer. I dry heave at least once a day and I haven’t eaten in 21 days. (Please do not give me advice, I hate it, I don’t want medical advice from people over the internet. At best, if you do, I’ll respond with a “thanks.”)
I’m in a somewhat smaller town, not really small, about 80,000 people maybe. There is exactly one gastroenterologist in this town. I went to him when I hadn’t eaten in 6 days. For a $50 copay, he said to take some Mylanta along with the Protonix I was already taking and call him in two weeks if I wasn’t better. So I call him yesterday. I talk to the nurse. I tell her all my symptoms, none of which have changed. She sounds very concerned.
I hear nothing all day. This morning, I call again. The doctor hasn’t even gotten to my information. So the nurse sends a message that I called again, which he probably also won’t see.
I have tried to get a second opinion, or just another prescription for something, but there is not a single gastroenterologist within a 90 minute drive that would see me within three months. I’m pretty sure if I don’t eat for three months, I’ll be pretty dead. I mean, I’m living on Ensure and Gatorade, but I doubt that will get me to three more months.
Oh, and this is the second time this has happened. The first time, I had to take a bunch of tests like a CT scan and an X-Ray and a blood panel and they found nothing. I had a scheduled colonoscopy anyway, so they just went down my throat as well and that’s when they found the ulcer. No one even suggested an ulcer before that.
Why am I saying all of this? I’m not even complaining about all of this. I’m complaining about the fact that this has cost me almost $2000 already and I feel lucky because I have good insurance. I’m not poor, but I don’t really have $2000 to spare. I’m paying it off in installments, but god damn, I have to pay all of this money and they have stopped even giving a shit about me.
What would someone in my position without insurance even do? Die? That’s what conservatives fucking want.
We need universal healthcare and a complete overhaul of the healthcare system now.
And any time you hear someone complain about how long a wait you have in Canada or the UK to see someone to help you and how America has the best healthcare system in the world and how people from other countries come here for treatment, send them to this post before telling them to get fucked.
TL;DR No one gives a shit about you in American healthcare except maybe the nurses and all they do is suck money out of your bank account.
You’re the person that made the “shitting out the neck of their shirt” comment that had me dying laughing. 🤣
I’ve started just getting bloodwork done out of pocket instead of: going to a doctor, getting the blood work order, going to the lab, getting the draw, making an appointment with the doctor again, returning, and then getting the results.
Now I just pay $50, get the results myself, and then go to a doctor if I need to address something in the results that I can’t figure out by googling. I know it’s absurd, and I have insurance, but to get one blood test is an hour to go to the doctor, wait, go to the clinic room, wait, talk to the doctor for 5min, leave, go to the lab, repeat, then go back to the doctor abs do it again. It ends up being like 3-4 hours over multiple days and in the middle of the workday. For the doctor, it’s two 5min conversations that are PART of their workday.
So, yeah. I tend to just run my own diagnostic blood tests and Google. That’s how inconvenient and frustrating the medical system is even WITH insurance.
And, to be clear, I don’t suggest anyone else do this.