Musings about hospitals…

I’ve gotten into a routine the past several days. Get up, get the breakfast routine over and done with, sit down and before starting to work, “do my hospital visits.” Three friends and their families are dealing with significant health crises (Rolf, my colleague who just underwent cancer surgery, Louie, my brother-in-law who received a liver transplant, Bob, my former student who underwent open heart surgery). They’re all patients at a Mayo Clinic (two in Rochester, one in Jacksonville), and they all have some kind of “care” page (two are using CaringBridges, and one uses CarePages). (They are also all doing well at the moment, thanks be to God.) (And prayers continue to be welcomed!)

I certainly would NOT be able to visit each one of them every day, even if I were living in St. Paul right now. I know that this internet "visiting" isn't at all the same as seeing someone in person, but it's also much better than not connecting at all. And in an interesting kind of way, it creates a small sort of virtual community amongst the people who sign into the various guestbooks or message boards.

Anyway, I was thinking about hospital visits in relation to the new Michael Moore film, Sicko, which we saw a couple of days ago. It's a really powerful film -- perhaps his best, certainly his most accessible -- and it made me really angry. An anger that is further fueled by "visiting" my friends. My brother-in-law has been "discharged" from the hospital -- which means he's been sent home with my sister to the condo they've rented in Jacksonville to be close to the hospital. They went home with a pile of medications (although, they first had to fight for hours with the insurance company to even GET the medications), and a long list of things my sister is supposed to "look out for" with my brother-in-law.

Susan is not a nurse. She's a lovely, smart, caring woman -- but she's completely overwhelmed. It's been just one week since the transplant, and Louie's already "home"?!? I seriously doubt that that would be standard practice in a country where social welfare was the framework for medicine. I realize that people can recover very well at home, and that hospitals carry their own risks in terms of antibiotic-resistant germs, and so on, but still... Susan has never give a shot in her life, and now she's doing Louie's injections. She's never had to weigh food and figure out blood sugar and assess pulse, but now she's doing all of that.

ON TOP OF having very little sleep herself, worrying about my two young nieces (who are currently staying with one of my other sisters in Wisconsin), and trying to figure out whether to telecommute to save her family health insurance, or take her limited FMLA now. Watching Moore's film I was struck, over and over again, by what it would mean if my sister didn't have to worry about who was paying for what, whether in fact they WOULD pay, and how to keep the insurance flowing. And of course, I'm pretty sure that if there weren't serious incentives for insurance companies to get people out of the hospital, Louie would still be in some kind of care facility.

Here in Austria there are all sorts of facilities, including wellness centers that specialize in rest and relaxation. Several years ago I remember Oma being prescribed a couple of weeks in such a facility so that she could undergo regular massage and soaking in hot springs. Can you imagine a US health insurance company paying for something like that?!? And yet, I'd LOVE for my sister and Louie to have some time in just such a place, particularly one that could manage all of the convalescent care.

Sigh. We're not there yet in the US. But we could be. And that's one of the other really important messages of Moore's film. In a country with the resources -- both financially and in terms of care for each other -- that the US has, we should not only be able to match what Canada, or France, or England, or even (and this was a particularly poignant part of the film) Cuba has, but do better. Things have got to change, and those of us whose business it is to hope, need to share that hope over a wider context, include a wider community, and get to work on sharing resources for the common good.

Ok. Enough of my ranting for today. It's really hard for me to be this far away and not able to help my friends any more than by "visiting" them virtually. At least I can urge any and all of you who visit this blog to go and see Michael Moore's film. Bring along a friend who wouldn't otherwise go!