Almost 50 million people in America are said to be uninsured and over these past couple of weeks, I have discovered how grateful I am not to be one of them.
It all began with a call from Molly. My mother’s ear detected more than a little anxiety when she called saying she had fallen walking with her golf clubs. Seems she hit an uneven patch where grass meets parking lot, her right ankle turned, and she went down on her left knee. It’s pretty bad, mom, it hurts, but it’s just a scrape, she told me. Did you go to the school health center, did you clean it up, do you think it needs stitches, I asked. Nah, it’s fine, she reported.
I should have remembered that this is the child, who, at the age of 13, whizzed down a hill on roller blades with wild abandon. Thank goodness she was wearing a helmet and knee pads because she wiped out and fell on her head full force. The only thing she didn’t have on was elbow pads, and her right elbow took on a huge case of deep road rash, which, today, stands as a big purple reminder of her escapade. At the time, she downplayed the incident, telling me it’s just a scrape. It should have gotten medical attention immediately.
So when I arrived at school and took one look at her knee, I knew that it was more serious than she had made it out to be. Holy cow, Molly, I said, looking at it but trying not to look at it. That’s a deep cut and it needs stitches. Our planned mother-daughter afternoon turned into three hours at the emergency room in Poughkeepsie. One way not to learn about the community surrounding your school is by hanging out in the emergency room.
During our endless wait we met a young man of 22. He was nursing his right hand, saying all he needed were some pain meds so he could go back to work. He was in construction and he was one of the millions in this country who does not have health insurance.
“What did you do to it?” I asked. “I was in a bar last night. This guy insulted the girl I was with, so I took him down with a punch. It was probably that last punch to his hard head while he was down on the floor that did it. I think I broke my hand.” His hand was indeed blown up with the look of a small balloon.
To make a long story short by the time we saw the doctor, he told us that yes, Molly should have had stitches but she had waited too long and her cut had already started to heal. There is an ideal window of time to get stitches, and 24 hours is way beyond that. She’ll have a scar on her knee to remind her not to wait to get medical attention.
Meanwhile, the young man with the injured hand had come out of x-ray. His hand wasn’t just broken. One of the bones near his wrist was virtually pulverized. I heard the nurse telling him he was going to need surgery and he would be out of work for weeks. My heart went out to him. Sure, he shouldn’t have punched somebody, but how was he going to pay for his surgery? “Just give me some stuff for the pain,” he asked the nurse. “I have to go to work.”
I don’t know what happened to him after he walked out of the ER. He has a long life ahead of him to be hobbled by a damaged hand. But there are so many like him who work through the pain and neglect proper medical attention because they can’t afford it. When the insurance crisis comes down to the face of a man young enough to be your son, you understand the heartache behind the headlines.
The other call came from Bill, who had flown to Amsterdam for some course work in finance. “I had a good flight but I had a slight mishap at the hotel,” he reported. Uh oh, I thought. Slight mishap, in Bill’s lexicon, is never a good thing. I know where Molly gets her tendency to downplay her injuries.
“I think I broke my toe,” Bill said. “Why do you think that?” I asked. “Because it’s at an odd angle,” he sighed. Seems his hotel room, despite its astronomical price tag, was a teeny tiny box, like many European hotels. And being six foot two in a teeny tiny box, especially when the baseboard of the bed is on the floor and juts out, is like planting a bull in a china shop. Something is going to break.
Like Molly, he delayed getting medical attention. By the time he went to the hospital, it was 36 hours later and his toe not only was broken but dislocated. There’s not too much you can do for a broken toe, but they apparently tugged it back into place and taped it next to his other toe. It was this way that he hobbled around Amsterdam and Venice for the next 10 days.
Another long story short: Upon his return to U.S. soil, his toe still wasn’t feeling quite right, so we went to the orthopedist, where we found out that the doctor in Amsterdam had fixed it but not completely. His toe had to be re-broken and reset. Ouch.
Did I mention Will is in an arm cast for the next month and Katie almost had to go to the emergency room this week? But that’s a story for another day. All I can say is that our insurance card has been working overtime. And again, I am so grateful that we have insurance. You can surely understand why.
Watch Your Tongue
It seems I struck a huge chord with my last column about rude behavior in any language. The following comes from a friend who is Vietnamese:
“I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone to a nail salon where they will comment on my weight, how rough my hands are, or make fun of my outfit. I always politely thank them in Vietnamese and push a penny across the desk as a tip, just as a final F-U.”
Another friend told me she had gone to the same nail salon I’d been going to, but stopped going there years ago because she suspected they were talking about her behind her back even though she couldn’t understand what they were saying. She felt vindicated that my column confirmed her suspicions.
The other story comes from my friend whose son has been taking Japanese since middle school. He is Caucasian, and now, in college, dating a girl who is Japanese. He had arrived at her home to pick her up for their evening out, when he heard her big sister deliver a warning as she walked out the door, something about behaving herself or she would tell their mother. Carefully, he leaned over to the sister and told her that he had understood everything she said, and of course he promised to behave. The sister was floored.
In today’s global, multilingual world, chances are someone is going to understand what you’re saying, no matter what language you are speaking. So listen to your mother when she reminds you that if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say it at all.
