Doing Pot
Note: This newsletter is about my personal experiences only. It is not to be be construed to be or in any way be affiliated with dispensing any medical personnel, medical advice, nor prescriptions.
Dear Friends, after all these decades since the ‘60s, I have finally gone to pot, literally. But let me back up.
I finally escaped the Home for Wayward Writers and Others. It was over seven weeks since I had been returned from corporate health care to my little writer’s cottage in the woods.
(Wo)Man vs. Corporate Health Care
Meanwhile I phased out the oxy-something mega pain pills. But I did need a replacement of some kind. After all, the femoral ball at the top of my leg is still crushed from the fall. What to do? What to do?
During my last weekend at The Home, something rather awful occurred. Worse, my general practioner said my experience was commonplace.
It happened like this:
‘For the last 40 hours I have been waiting for my oxy-something pain prescription. I’m beyond bent out of shape with frustration, anger, and of course pain.
‘When I worked at a major medical center the closest I got to medicine was making up the wrong answers on the tests the nurses in our Education Department gave to other nurses.
‘I was the face of the computer, handling change and people problems. But even I know I should get my pain pill sooner than 40 hours and counting.
‘So what is the problem?
‘Even the nicer rehab units have two humongous systemic flaws.
‘In spite of the linen tablecloths and quick-response call buttons in rehab, make no mistake. This is a huge corporation. Like the sharks they all are, rehab and nursing home CEOs and owners continually move about in search of ways to slice costs thinner and thinner. So staff levels are way down.
‘The second problem is that each area within the bricks and mortar is subcontracted out. Food service is subcontracted. And even in the weeks I was at The Home, two of the four meal offerings just dropped off the menu.
‘Subconrracted Physical and Occupational Therapies are nowhere as effctive as they were five years ago. In addition, the length of treatment is totally dependent upon how long a person's insurance will pay for the care.
‘Is 20 days long enough to recover movement after a stroke? Regain strength after a serious accident? Be stable after a fall? No. But all this is completely dependent upon how good our insurance is, meaning what it will cover. Medicare covers 20 days.
‘Nearly all the nursing staff works for an agency. That means ample opportunities for a nurse to lose patient continuity. Was it her fault that she didn't look ahead and order pain prescriptions that ran out over the weekend?
‘I saw probably 25 different nurses during my stay, some only once. So was it another first-time nurse's fault she couldn't open the computer system to distribute drugs up to and including Tylenol.
‘The staff has been cut. Jobs have been obliterated or combined. Now the certified nursing assistants (CNAs) wake people, get them showered and dressed and to breakfast, make beds, and take care of urin samples. Now they handle food delivery and clogged plumbing.
‘I have to ask my CNA to ask my nurse if I can have an oxy-something. Then my nurse has to get a doctor's order, which may never come over a weekend. Then the nurse has to let the contracted pharmacy deliver my pain pills’. Delivery can take four or more hours.
‘And along the way something can and will frequently go wrong. The process in my case had to start all over. And this is commonplace.
‘But we, the ones in serious pain, should not suffer and get ground up in the gears of corporate health care.’
We should not entrust the corporate care machines to be the guardians of our loved ones’ health care.
Oh, and about that oxy-something replacement. Pot has transformed itself from crude joints into serious pain-busting gummy bears and reversed my pain 90%!