No new news...

It's nice that the New York Times has seen fit to address the problem of uninsured twenty-somethings. And from the tone and timing of the article, you'd think this was a new phenomenon. Or maybe it's just that the writer and editor of the piece never lived in the city (or anywhere else for that matter) without employer-paid health insurance because what the piece most lacks is a good sense of perspective.

This isn't NEW news. A lot of us struggled through the booming nineties without health insurance — it was too damn expensive then too, especially on the intermittent pay of the freelance life. Grad school wasn't much better with expensive health insurance that offered too little coverage.

The fact is our "system" treats quality, affordable health coverage as a privilege and a reward rather than a right — no matter what age you are, what you do, or what city you live in.

my aching back

The first real injury I remember to my back came on an ice-slicked 6th Avenue, coming home from The Stoned Crow late one night about ten years ago. I imagine the spill was one of those comic moments when you're suspended mid-air for a moment before crashing to the ground. A cabbie stopped and asked if I was all right. I could barely breathe even the next day when I went to work--sitting all day at a computer in an agency bullpen. I had back issues before that too, but this is the first obvious injury I remember. The next came a year or so later when I hit a parked car while riding my bike. After that injury, I took the time to see a chiropractor who pointed out how messed up my back actually was at that point. Too much stress, too many locked-up muscles.

Sad to say, I never fully dealt with these things. My cavalier, invincible attitude is coming back to haunt me now. It's about time, I guess, as part of this lifehacking I'm doing to begin to take care of my body too.

I'm not getting any younger, right?

removal

In nine hours, I will be at the hospital. They will be prepping me for the removal of the "foreign object." I will not get to keep the "foreign object." It will be taken for forensic purposes. If they convict Tyrone Singleton or someone else for the crime, I may get it then. Who knows...

The whole "foreign object" thing is really amusing to me. Why do we have to be so euphemistic with language? (And I don't just mean in this instance.) Why not just describe what the object is? Does it remove the reality so that the physician does not have to consider the circumstances as s/he performs the procedure? So that it is all just a procedure?

I ponder this partly because the process has been so fascinating. At no point in this process, from the shooting to the doctors' follow-ups, have I had any control. I have been told when my appointments will be--even if they don't jive with my life--and when my appointments will not be. I understand that the trauma circuit is a difficult gig, but that doesn't really seem like an excuse for treating patients like commodities with no restrictions of their own, as though we do not have to worry about our own schedules. It's patently absurd. I have to compromise my work timelines with my clients' schedules. Why should physicians be able to to insist that everyone work around their schedules?

Then again, I have only met my attending physician once--the night I was shot. I've seen other doctors and residents since, but not met the man who is supposedly responsible for me since that night. It's as if I am no more a person than the alias I was given for my stay in the hospital--Mr. Plum is a phantasm, not a real person with real worries, and therefore can be manipulated like a marionette.

Not quite... At least I got them to move the surgery reporting time from 5:30 to 8:45.