Think COVID-19 is Bad? Getting Sick in the US is Worse

Imagine you wake up one day and everything is gone.

I mean everything — most of your belongings, your pets, your family, your job, your income, your freedom, your mobility, and your independence.

No, it’s not Covid-19, it’s from a stroke at the young age of 54. (Well, relatively young.)

I woke up in May and my right side had something wrong with it. It seems obvious that a nurse should know what was wrong even if I was retired. But I couldn’t understand my lack of balance and I couldn’t understand why I had fallen at the top of my steps.

I live alone so I yelled for help till the neighbor nurse came. I remember sitting there looking around as she called 911 and the paramedics came. Miraculously she convinced me to go to the hospital despite the costs.

First, I went to the local emergency room and was shipped to a hospital in Kansas City since we’re only a small town in Kansas. I spent a couple of days there before being shipped to their rehab unit in another town on the outskirts of Kansas City. There, as the therapy department tried to make me more independent, the nursing department tried to make me more dependent.

You know, more pliable. Less work. Less work for them.

They put alarms in my chair — and though I never fell since initially having the stroke — and despite my requests not to put up all the rails on the bed, the few times I got in the bed they locked me in with all four rails. They had cameras in the room. (Has anyone heard of HIPAA?)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Hey, she’s had a stroke. Her body isn’t working so her mind probably isn’t working, either.

Wrong.

My mind was intact completely and I knew everything that was going on. God forbid if I stood to try to strengthen my legs while I was in the chair. (And yes, I slept most nights in the chair because I didn’t like getting in the bed and being locked in. Not to mention they had no idea what to do for leg cramps when I got my feet elevated in the bed and the swelling went down.)

They told me I needed “to be safe.” They told me I needed to “sit down.” They wrote on the board that I was “impulsive.” They tried to give me antidepressant drugs and sleeping pills to make me more sedate.

No, I need to get strong to try to get back some semblance of my life. Yes, I am depressed. My family didn’t even call after I had gone to rehab. I read on Facebook that my brother had told my neighbor to get rid of my cat without consulting me. My other cat died while I was in the hospital and no one bothered to tell me.

Then the other one escaped when I got home from my landlord, was out in the wild four weeks, and had to be put down two weeks later from liver failure probably brought on by not eating well for four weeks.

I’ve had them about nine years. They were my sole companions. They were much more than pets to me. The last part of my previous life was gone.

I was devastated. I still am a couple of months later.

My family and I had a rocky relationship but this was the final straw. My sister who was an hour and a half away spent the week traveling on a pleasure trip to Indiana to see my brother, my brother initially tried to help over the phone but then lectured me about how his wife would overcome such diverse health problems. Yeah, she did, but she can walk and talk and feed herself.

And he barely knows me after 10 years of no communication.

I could barely even feed myself. I could barely walk. I couldn’t take a shower. I couldn’t even wipe myself after going to the bathroom.

And my other sister who lives several states away didn’t come. The one I had been close to for the last couple of years. The one who doesn’t work. The one who forgot me when it came to her first wedding because I wasn’t Jehovah’s Witness.

That was when I swore I was done with them. I can’t spend my entire life feeling bad like they make me feel when I am in contact with them.

So I got rid of them all. At least now I know I am alone. Sometimes we have to choose our family over blood.

But what should really make you mad? Not how I was treated at the hospital. Not how I was treated by my family. But how, in the richest country in the world (or so they claim) having a stroke means financial ruin.

It is a moral disgrace that one life-altering healthcare problem can ruin us. Medicaid has turned me down. Turned me down even though I can barely walk. Turned me down even though I can’t get in the shower. Turned me down even though I have no income. Turned me down even though I can’t wipe myself when I go to the bathroom. (Thank God for bidets.)

I was struggling to make my credit card payments when I realized I’m going to have to file bankruptcy anyway. What’s the point?

That’s what this country has come to. It sucks to be ill. It sucks to be you. Hurry up and die would you?

Sorry, I have no plans to lay down in die today. I will probably be homeless before this is through. I will file bankruptcy before this is over.

But I’m not giving up. At least not today.

Meanwhile, people are yelling about being told to wear a mask. I think you need a little perspective. And I think you need to wear your damn mask.