“The Art of Medicine Consists of Amusing the Patient While Nature Cures the Disease.” --Voltaire

Jill, post surgery. I don't
think she smiled the rest of
the day. 

My wife just went under the knife.  For two years now, she has been living with chronic pain in her knee after a bizarre accident backstage in her auditorium. The surgeon didn't find much. A little scar tissue and some laxity in her PCL, but nothing that would explain the constant pain, and he did little to soothe our fears that her pain wouldn't be ongoing.

My wife isn't a wimp. She has a higher pain tolerance than I do, so when we heard that almost nothing was out-of-whack, we were met with a strange emotion: disappointment.

That injury changed our life. We like to be active athletically, and she's been handicapped, and it has stymied my activities as well. Because it's a worker's comp. case, we felt like they slowed down her recovery to a snails pace, and gave us the cheapest, least effective (READ: cheap), treatment options available.

Okay, maybe finding "very little" is better
than dealing with this.  

So when we finally demanded this arthroscopic surgery, it felt like a victory. Answers. "Something is wrong, I don't care if you can't find it on your MRIs or fancy imaging machines, her body isn't functioning right!" Then to hear that there wasn't much there physically, and maybe the damage is in the nerves...well, that just sucks.

It's hard to be an advocate for yourself.  To demand better treatment from subpar, or indifferent, medical practitioners. It's hard to get good service in the one area it should be guaranteed: quality of life.

My own doctor abruptly quit the practice this month. I've shared a little of our antagonisms in a few blogs, but realistically, he was what I needed. A no-nonsense, tell it like it is, guy, who was determined to get to root of my problematic innards while caring nothing for how I felt on the inside.

Yes, he had terrible bedside manners. The man was an ass. An Indo-American gaandu. If he is Hindu, I think he will be reincarnated as a donkey. Can I make it any clearer how unfriendly the man was?

As a parting gift, he failed to send my prescriptions in to the pharmacy. I finally had some medications that kept me mostly pain free, and now I can't receive them, because my doctor took a leave of absence, and they can't approve a RX without a practicing doctor. I can hear him in on the beaches of the Ganges saying, "Take that you fat bastard!"

I think if I take a leave of absence from teaching, I'm going to learn the sitar. 

It's fine. I don't want medicine. I never did. I hate medicine. I want to get better. I want a cure, not a daily pill. But it's America, and cures are shielded by dollar bills and corporate crutches.

It's amazing how many people on both sides of the political spectrum agree that our health care system is messed up, but can't ever seem to get together and solve any of these problems. I'm so tired of partisanship stopping progress that I'm ready to oust everyone. Vote opposite of whoever is in office.  Obamacare won't solve our medical problems, but than again, what is the opposition offering ... continuing with the status quo, which has seen medical costs inflate over 50% since the year 2000?

We are the richest nation in the world, we pay five times what any other nation pays for similar services in the medical field, and yet 36 nations enjoy better health care services than we do! We are basically a third world country, health wise.  How many of us avoid the doctor, because we don't want to pay a co-pay, let alone be treated like we are inconveniencing our doctor? How many of us go years without seeing a doctor, because we can't afford it?

Why do we accept such cut rate medical care at extortionist prices? Because we are in pain, and they know it.

So we limp on, limbs against the gauze wrap, subconsciously yearning for a pain remedy.

(Sorry F. Scott, that was pathetic).