It's started. My predictions from 2008 regarding the healthcare system are here. What was once isolated to overwhelmed, understaffed, poorly funded inner city hospitals has spread to what once were the safest places on earth. . As a young nursing student practicing triage in The Bronx, I was forced to send bleeding, assaulted women back to the waiting room and people who came in to restart life through detox back to "square one" because until they have a seizure, that detox is not an emergency. I saw patients grasping their stomachs and vomiting bile, but that still didn't earn immediate admittance. . What did? Respiratory issues (we had a whole room where people could sit and take their nebs together), cardiac patients, mental status changes and severe injuries, the severity of which was judged by the triage nurse, the St.Peter of the golden gates that lead to health care. People waited huddled feverish, sick and coughing for 18 hours only to be diagnosed with TB. A cough doesn't put you high up on the emergency list. Having HIV with weight loss does, but there's no law requiring anybody to disclose that info, even if it will infect everybody they come in contact with. . Now, my rural ER experiences have been comparable. I was told by several primary care and emergency care doctors that, in a time of need, I should go to a farther specialized hospital for me. One Sat., when I'd had it with x's constant fevers and vomiting leading to weight loss and dehydration, more fevers, tachycardia, muscle joint pain etc, I spoke with the dr. On call, who also advised us to go to the larger er.
Community hospitals are quickly becoming the crossing gaurds that stop and guide you until you can make it safely to the larger hospital that can keep up with technology and give the patient exactly what they need. What's going to happen to these smaller hospitals? Will they turn to ghost buildings? And If I saw this coming, who else did and why hasn't anybody tried to alter the process?
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Baldies' Blog began originally in the UK by a 26 year old journalist with a blood cancer on a mission to inform the world about bone marrow donation.
He has since died, and I took on the cause of making cancer care more transparent for everybody.
Cancer is a disease that will touch everybody through diagnosis or affiliation: 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed and 1 in 3 woman will hear those words, "You Have Cancer."
I invite you to read how I feel along my journey and
how I am continuing to live a full life alongside my Hodgkin's lymphoma, with me controlling my cancer, not my cancer controlling me.
I hope that "Baldies' Blog" will prepare you to handle whatever life sends you, but especially if it's the message, "You Have Cancer."
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