Why We Needed Hillary
By Sydney Ellen Wade on November 13, 2008 at 9:05 AM in Health Care, Hillary Clinton
(Ed.: This story is written by someone I know and who has written for No Quarter before. Her story is so compelling that I asked her, if she could bear it, to write it up and share it with you. We have changed her name to protect her anonymity, but you’d recognize her name, and I will vouch that she is a real person whose story is true. Her story breaks my heart, and I cannot believe that she survived.)
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I’d call my Nurse Practitioner (NP) telling her I had been – GROSS ALERT - sitting on the toilet bleeding so profusely, dropping walnut sized blood clots, I could not get up for THREE HOURS (and I am NOT one of those people who enjoys reading for a while on the toilet). Her response was another hormone pill. I asked how I was supposed to get up to the drugstore when I could not get the bleeding to stop long enough to stand up?? END GROSSNESS.
That happened a few years back, when I was uninsured while doing an unpaid full time internship to fulfill a professional requirement. The Nurse Practitioner in question worked at a large teaching hospital in one of the largest cities on the East Coast. The scene described above was when I was in my eighth year of having my period every two weeks for a number of years, escalating to 6 months of solid bleeding before I had a hysterectomy.
In the beginning, I saw doctors in another large East Coast city, who also prescribed hormones. They did nothing. I point this out because I was not in some rural backwater somewhere. I was in the two largest cities on the East Coast, revered for their fine medical care.
The only success I had in dealing with this issue was with a homeopath, who at least got my periods to be every three weeks instead of two with his remedies. Oh, joy. But that did not address the underlying cause.
The underlying cause as it turned out was uterine fibroids, which were causing me to bleed practically non-stop, all while working two jobs, having my hemoglobin be so low I was told I needed to quite work rather than risk passing out, hitting my head, and killing myself, the NP said.
Well, that’s just joke, I told her (or words to that effect). If I don’t finish my internship, I cannot fulfill a requirement. And if I don’t work part-time, I have NO money. So, sorry – I cannot just sit at home doing nothing out of fear. And since I worked out every day (something that got harder and harder to do as the disease progressed – going up one flight of stairs left someone who did 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and a number of exercises daily, out of breath. Severely out of breath. Turns out the exercise was good for iron supplement absorption, though it never made a difference in my hemoglobin levels.
The beginning scene repeated itself over and over, culminating with me begging the NP to do an ultrasound, a request to which she never responded. After all, I was getting “free care,” and an ultrasound might just cost some money. In this case, it almost cost me my life.
I finally found another health practitioner, in another city, who listened to me. Oh, she used hormones, too (injections), but that was more in an attempt to get my blood levels to a decent enough place that she could perform surgery.
The very first time I went to her office, she did an ultrasound (or her NP did, to be specific). She called me into her office and had the talk: “Do you want to have children?”
I did want children, so much, but I was already 38, and not involved with anyone. So, I had to make the decision that would end that dream permanently. I decided to have the hysterectomy to deal with the numerous fibroids that left me using two Super Plus tampons at once, as well as a super sanitary napkin – at a time. That combo only lasted anywhere from a 1/2 hour to 2 1/2 hours or so , but what choice did I have? I wasn’t about to stay in the bathroom 24 hours a day, after all.
The surgery date was finally scheduled, and moved up after a frantic call from me while on vacation with my family. The bleeding at that point had been going on for over 5 months, and was out of control in a major way. It’s a helluva way to live – I do not recommend it. Before they took me in to the operating room, I had to sign a consent form, naturally. I don’t know what made me do this, except a sneaking suspicion – I said to keep my ovaries unless they were diseased.
Prescient, that. See, what they thought was a large fibroid was actually my right ovary, and it was cancerous. My ob/gyn said it was a miracle. Had they not done the surgery, there was little doubt what the end result would have been. Fortunately, it was isolated to that ovary, which meant I did not have to endure a lot of remedies others have in my place. I did have some resulting issues from them having to widen the incision 2 inches on both sides of the original incision, but that was a small price to pay, all things considered.
And this is but one of the reasons we needed Hillary Clinton in the White House. Had her universal health care plan been in place at the time this first started, or even later in the process, I would not have endured 8 years – EIGHT YEARS – of trying to deal with this issue. I might add, I am well-educated. I even knew the questions to ask from my academic background, still I got this kind of runaround and crap care. Imagine someone with less education, less access even than I had, more hesitancy to actually ask questions and push for care. It could have been a whole different story for them. It almost was for me.
Once again, we have squandered the opportunity to have a president who cares for the citizens of this country, and their needs. We have lost the possibility of obtaining true universal health care that would have been affordable for all people. What a sad state of affairs.
I may have survived this ordeal, but others might not have been so lucky. Others might not BE so lucky. The bottom line is this: When are we going to stop playing Russian Roulette with people’s lives by going for the “cool” choice, and not the best choice? We’ll have to wait another four years to find out the answer to that question, though, I’m afraid. Because we just did it again – cool over best. At what risk, or should I say at whose risk?
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