Anyone who thinks U.S. medicine is the best in the world is either a complete moron or a loon on par with the homeless guy out in front of the grocery store down the street who thinks he's a grapefruit. Not that there aren't a few good doctors and nurses out there, maybe even the occasional great hospital, I'm talking our system of delivering medical care.
Unfortunately, I've become aware of how dysfunctional U.S. medicine is from first-hand experience. It's nothing serious, a routine surgery to fix a potential problem with the plumbing. In fact, preventative maintenance seems to be a concept for the hospital. During the pre-op exam, where the hospital decides whether I'm healthy enough to survive the surgery, three people said to me, "You don't look sick, why are you here?" After the second time I started asking myself the same question.
Maybe this preventative surgery really is a bad idea. After all, if I canceled the surgery I'd sleep like a baby and wake up with a vaguely distant feeling that maybe I should still get it done, some day. Maybe I get cancer some day, maybe not. In this case the odds are in my favor. There's an 86 percent chance this procedure is medially unnecessary. The downside is the 14 percent chance that there is something bad going on in there is really, epically, life-shortening bad.
Everyone involved in the process has an angle. The first doctor that recommended the procedure made it sound like the operation was a piece of cake and I'd be in and out no problem. That rosy description was something less than the messy reality. At a follow-up consult to try and get the whole story I learned I'd be losing 18 inches of my large intestine. It took two visits to pry that little detail out of him.
I went to see the surgeon and he was a little more descriptive on the office visit. It took two follow-up calls to learn little details like I'd be in the hospital three days, that I'd be waking up with drain tubes coming out of unnatural places and, by the way, it'll be 2 - 3 months before I'm back to normal activity. To get that I had to call back and back and know the right questions to ask. What pisses me off is he was prepared let me wake up to that surprise in post-op, not even mentally prepared for the reality.
Getting advance copies of the paperwork they wanted me to sign from the hospital was mission impossible, even with my doctor calling the business office to arrange it. Hospitals really don't want you to take time to read what you're signing, yet those contracts are giving them a lot of power over you and possibly your financial future. You should read them and understand what you're signing. I make margin notes and sometimes amend the text to clarify the meaning, like limiting compensation to contract insurance rates and requiring insurance pre-approval for anything other than emergency lifesaving services.
If you're new to the facility and procedures, no one can understand your apprehension and no one has time to explain anything. Talk to your doctor they say. Well, it sometimes takes three days to hear back from one of them, if at all.
So you're supposed to navigate this labyrinth, trusting what you hear from your doctors and trusting your health to massive corporations trying to screw each other over for a margin. You're constantly making decisions with half the information you really need and it's hard to get an honest opinion. My doctors get paid for the services they provide, so they want to do stuff. The insurance company gets paid by not letting them do stuff. So no one is really on your side; there's no one to look at my case and take the time to explain what other options I have to surgery and how big the risk if I do wait.
So I wander from waiting room to waiting room in pre-op, wondering why, if I'm not sick, am I there. Always feeling like there are options available I should understand but no one is telling me about because no one is getting paid to research the alternatives. And always the certain knowledge that there is a small but non-zero chance that I don't wake up at all. People die during "routine" surgeries all the time, the other writers I work with have been forwarding me those stories all week. So, if I'm not sick, is it worth the scars, the pain, the risk of complications and the small risk of dying?
This whole situation sucks and I'm lucky enough to have good insurance and be working with great doctors. If it's this bad with good doctors, what are other people going through? I shudder to think.