Other People’s Stories
We’ve been hoping to get some people to tell their own stories here — a couple of friends have told me they don’t want to be the first, or they don’t think having to stay in a job they hate because of the insurance compares to losing a kid.
All the stories are valid. People shouldn’t have to stay in jobs they hate because it’s their only access to health care.
So, I want to tell three stories I know of:
Deamonte Driver
Deamonte was 12 when he died of what began as a toothache. He had Medicaid, but because the reimbursement rates are so low, the Maryland suburb where he lived didn’t have any dentists who would agree to see him.
The tooth got worse and soon he had an abscess.
Still, his mother couldn’t find a dentist to see him.
Then the abscess became infected and the infection spread to his brain. By th time he got help, it was too late to save his life. Doctors tried, and the treatment cost about $250,000. But it failed and Deamonte died in February of 2007.
Having a dentist pull the tooth and put him on a course of antibiotic would have cost a couple hundred dollars and he would be alive and healthy now.
Susan Searcy
This is another case that got some media attention, but then the public got distracted by some celebrity gossip and it faded away.
Susan Searcy was a widow with eight grown children who put off going to the doctor for a year despite abdominal pain and blood in her stools because she didn’t have insurance and she couldn’t afford medical care.
Finally she went to see Dr. Perry Klaasen, who diagnosed her with colon cancer. Of course, the cancer had spread already. She had surgery to remove what cancer they could get and a colonostomy. But she couldn’t afford chemotherapy, so she went home. She died about 18 months after her diagnosis.
The doctor who diagnosed her also had colon cancer that had spread, but he had access to chemotherapy, so he lived another four years.
Klaasen wrote about Searcy in a one-page article for the Journal of the American Medical Association, and the story made a stir for a couple of days.
With both of these tragic stories, I had hoped something would change, but it didn’t. Maybe we need some sort of critical mass of tragic stories.
So, here’s another:
Ewart Ball
I worked with Ewart for five years until he took early retirement a couple years ago. Nice guy, talented photographer.
But Ewart made a couple of bad decisions when he retired. He was sort of rushed — he wanted to avoid being named the paper’s “mo-jo,” or mobile journalist. He would have spent his days driving around and shooting whatever photos he came across and writing short stories to go along with them to be posted on the paper’s Web site.
“I’m too old for that crap,” he said.
So he retired, and he didn’t continue his health insurance because it was too expensive.
A few months later, he was in an accident. He broke his leg, and before the doctors could do surgery, they discovered a problem with his heart. They didn’t treat the heart problem, though, because there was no way for him to pay for it.
Ewart has gotten into the VA system now, but his care isn’t well coordinated and he has developed other health problems because of the injuries he sustained in the accident. And he’s still paying off the care he got after the accident.
OK, he made a bad choice not buying insurance. But that shouldn’t mean he has to suffer the way he has the last year or so. In any other industrialized country in the world, he would have the care he needs. He worked hard all his life and he deserves to have his health problems treated.
But here, we don’t see access to the health care system as a right. If you make a rush decision, if you get divorced, if your job is shipped overseas, you’re screwed.
Just like Deamonte and Susan and Ewart and the 200,000 people who have died in the last eight years because they couldn’t get basic health care.
Tags: colon cancer, dental, health care, insurance, Medicaid, medical expenses, prevention, small business
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Have a beer in May
Stop into Altamont Brewing, 1042 Haywood Road, West Asheville, any time in May and ask for their "charity" beer of the day. Buy one and Life o' Mike gets $1. In fact, we get a buck for each one sold. So go in every day and have one to support Life o' Mike.
Thanks, Altamont!
Patient Pals & Family Friends
Life o' Mike has a peer support program for people with one or more serious or chronic medical issues or disabilities.
We aim to reduce isolation and fear among people who have conditions, including psychiatric illness, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, mild dementia or other cognitive disorder or disability, thereby reducing depression and complications as people learn to improve self-management of their medical conditions.
Patient Pals help alleviate feelings of isolation and frustration. They can help people develop a list of questions to ask the doctor and then accompany the person to the doctor to make sure all the questions are answered, taking notes to be sure the person understands the doctor’s answers.
Our trained volunteers also accompany their “Pals” to art exhibits, movies and walks outdoors, meet for coffee, call to check in and more.
Our Pals have experienced weight loss, improvement in diabetes, HIV, psoriasis, depression and more, just because they have someone who cares about them. Some relationships develop into longer-term friendships; other Pals move on to more independent lives.
Family Friends are there to help caregivers and other family members grow into their new role.
We need volunteers, who are asked to donate a minimum of one hour a week. Training is free and includes information on active listening, ways to help and when to know more help is needed.
And of course, we need funding.
To learn more, call Leslie Boyd at 828-243-6712 or e-mail lifeomike@gmail.com.
Start From Seed
Life o' Mike has a new program- Start from Seed (SFS).
SFS is a volunteer doula program aimed at providing non-medical, comprehensive support to low income, high-risk women and families of Buncombe County focusing on three areas:
1. We help new doulas with certification and training in return for their participation as a volunteer doula for SFS
2. We mentor volunteer doulas with their first few clients
3. Our volunteer doulas provide birth and postpartum doula services to low income, high risk moms, providing support and tools to empower them as a new parent.
A birth doula is a trained and experienced professional who provides continuous physical, emotional and informational support to the mother before, during and just after birth; a postpartum doula provides emotional and practical support during the postpartum period.
Start from Seed clients are referred to us from the Buncombe County Department of Health’s Nurse-Family Partnership Program, Western North Carolina Community Health Services, and Mission Hospital. The Program is intended and designed for growing clients’ inner strength and helping them gain empowerment to help them cope with the emotional, physical and mental challenges of childbirth, labor, and motherhood.
Our new moms and their infants have many needs. If you would like to help them get off to a good start, please visit our Start from Seed web site: Start from Seed, or call Program Director Chelsea Kouns at 804-814-9946.
I’m an RN, a new one to be specific, having just become licensed this summer. As a new nurse, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of people who work in the healthcare field: other nurses, doctors, therapists, and case managers. Some of these people are incredible advocates for their patients, some are not. I was fortunate enough today to meet an amazing woman who fights for her patients’ rights every day.
Nurses are required to attend a certain amount of continuing education each year in order to maintain their licenses. Today I attended a class on Diabetic Education. The woman who taught the class is an RN, a certified Diabetic Education instructor, and a Case Manager for the hospital in which I work. I was overwhelmed by what I learned from her.
She told a story of a woman with Diabetes who suffered from Hypoglycemic Unawareness. What this means is that she has no signs and symptoms when her blood sugar drops until it is so low that there are dire consequences. Her husband worked the night shift and had come home on three separate occasions to find her in a full seizure on the floor.
In cases like this, the patient can benefit from a wonderful new device which can monitor a person’s blood sugar continuously over a 72 hour period. A monitor like this could help to spot trends in a patient’s blood sugar levels which may not be obvious with traditional finger-stick testing. The FDA has approved this device and the American Diabetes Association has praised its effectiveness for certain patients. Her insurance denied her for this device, stating that it was “experimental” and “unnecessary”.
This woman was fortunate enough to have this case manager who fought tirelessly for her for several months, sending reports, evaluations, and at times, scathing letters to the insurance company until, finally, she was approved. It is quite possible that this case manager saved her life.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to have someone advocate for them in such a way, and often, even that is not enough to get the assistance that patients may need.
Here are a few statistics that I learned today (all of which can be verified on the National Institute of Health’s website, http://www.nih.gov)
* Diabetes is the 6th leading cause of death in the US among patients aged 25 and older; every 10 seconds someone dies from Diabetes.
* Direct & indirect expenditures were estimated to be $132 BILLION annually. The bulk of medical costs were related to insufficient maintenance of blood sugars and the resultant disease processes.
* Diabetes is the leading cause of blindness among people ages 20-74; 90% of this blindness could be prevented by a yearly eye exam
* Uncontrolled Diabetes can result in 2-4 times the normal occurrence of heart disease, heart attacks, and stroke
* Uncontrolled Diabetes is the leading cause of End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD)
So many illnesses that are a direct result of Diabetes could be prevented by routine, simple treatments that are denied to so many people because they are uninsured. Many people who have insurance still do not get the care they need because there are ridiculous caps and limits on supplies necessary to monitor and help maintain healthy blood sugar levels.
How much more money is this country spending on caring for these people after they develop the more serious, life-threatening diseases? How many people have to suffer dialysis, amputations, or worse?
It’s election season. Ask the important questions. Call your government representatives and ask what they are prepared to do to fix this issue. Remember, they work for us! If they can’t be bothered to acknowledge the problem and try to find a solution, then they don’t need to be in that job.
Yeah, but hey, our elected officials make sure that they are seen praying to Jesus all the time because that’s what’s important rather than actually doing something.