Sarah and the baby are visiting. Babies are wonderful and exhausting. I have no idea how Sarah manages by herself.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are." -- The Talmud
The American healthcare system is unjust and deadly. It's time for change.
Single-payer and health care justice — and what may seem to be a few distractions at times but in fact aren't. Because it's all connected.
"We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are." -- The Talmud
Paul Hannum's story
The American healthcare system is unjust and deadly. It's time for change.
Paul thought he'd eaten something bad. Or maybe it was the stomach flu.
The next day, he strategized with my other brother, Curtis, about whether it would be less expensive in the long run to go to an emergency room or to a doctor.
Paul was self-employed, and with preexisting conditions and a baby on the way, couldn't afford health insurance for himself, although he made sure his pregnant fiancée and their baby were covered.
He was a hard-working photographer, caterer, and film-maker — he played "Snake" in "The Real Old Testament," a mockumentary he created together with Curtis that won several awards at film festivals around the world.
Tuesday at dawn, he and Sarah finally went in to the nearby UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. Classic appendicitis. But when they gave him a CAT-scan the doctor decided that maybe it was diverticulitis. So even though he'd been vomiting for two days, they sent him home with antibiotics he couldn't keep down and advice to follow up at the county hospital, in a far-away and unfamiliar part of town.
Standard procedure, we've been told, would have been to admit Paul, since diverticulitis and appendicitis are so easily misdiagnosed for one another, and because that mistake can be deadly.
Sarah brought Paul back to the Santa Monica medical center Tuesday night. They gave him another CAT-scan and talked some more about transferring him to county. They didn't, however, compare the two cat scans, which showed a dramatic and frightening disintegration of Paul's condition.
Paul finally went into surgery Wednesday morning. His ruptured appendix was the worst the surgeon had ever seen.
Paul died at age 45 a little after midnight, August 3, 2006.
I cannot explain how much we miss him. We were not ready to say good-bye.
His baby daughter was two and a half months after his death.
We so need healthcare reform in this country that will allow the United States to join the rest of the developed world. The solution, a single-payer system, is as obvious as civil rights.
Paul shouldn't have died.
Healthcare Reform sites
- American Medical Student Association: UHC page
- American Patients for Universal Health Care
- Americans for Health Care
- Archimedes Movement
- Campaign for America's Future
- Cover the Uninsured
- Everybody In, Nobody Out
- Health Care for All Colorado
- Health Care Talk
- Healthcare-NOW
- Our Healthcare Future
- Physicians for a National Health Program
- Republicans for Single-Payer
- Single-Payer Healthcare Blog
- Single-Payer: Answers and Facts
- Universal Health Care Action Network
Blogging Buddies
Best blogs
Colorado Blogs
Reform Blogs
Ave Cassandra Archive
- November 2014 (1)
- July 2011 (2)
- June 2011 (3)
- July 2009 (8)
- June 2009 (4)
- June 2008 (8)
- May 2008 (22)
- March 2008 (4)
- February 2008 (29)
- January 2008 (101)
- December 2007 (9)
- November 2007 (5)
- October 2007 (9)
- September 2007 (14)
- August 2007 (19)
- July 2007 (8)
- June 2007 (27)
- May 2007 (16)
- April 2007 (26)
- March 2007 (36)
- February 2007 (38)
- January 2007 (92)
- December 2006 (5)
Labels
- 2008 Democratic candidates
- American Medical Association
- Bernie Sanders
- California healthcare
- Canadian healthcare
- Cartoons
- Catholic Church
- Colorado healthcare
- Colorado politicians
- Colorado's 208 commission
- common good
- Democratic platform
- Donna and Larry Smith
- Eat the Rich
- economics
- emergency room waits
- ERISA
- Europe
- European health care systems
- European medical research
- Ezra Klein
- family planning
- for-profit healthcare
- framing
- George Bush
- global warming
- globalization
- Health Care Costs
- Health Care for All Colorado
- health insurance
- health-care reform
- healthcare costs
- healthcare reform
- hospital industry
- HR 676
- Hybrid Healthcare Reform and Systems
- immigrants
- insurance reform
- international healthcare comparisons
- Iraq
- libertarians
- Maggie Mahar
- Making Change Happen
- mandates
- Market Reform and HSAs
- Massachusetts health
- Max Baucus
- Medicaid
- Medicare
- Michael Moore
- Nataline Sarkisyan
- Nathan Wilkes
- newspapers endorsing single-payer
- Obama
- Paul Hannum
- Paul Krugman
- Paul Wellstone
- personal
- Pharmaceutical Industry
- physicians
- poetry
- politics
- polls
- Portland
- private health insurance
- Public health
- public option
- RAND
- religious/moral considerations
- right-wing
- Risk pools
- Robert Kennedy
- Rocky White
- SCHIP
- Sicko
- single-payer
- Single-payer Cost Savings
- Single-payer nuts and bolts
- Single-payer overview
- small business
- State plans
- sustainability
- The Uninsured
- U.S. Health Disparities
- U.S. healthcare
- underinsured
- unions
- young invincibles
About Me
- Kristen Marie Hannum
- I finished writing my first historical fiction novel, The Magician, in April 2009. I'm now at work on something completely different, Caveman, about a Denver dentist running for governor.
I wrote for The Catholic Sentinel for 16 years, and love the Church anyway, in particular the Church of Archbishop Romero and Dorothy Day; of Rerum Novarum and Catholic Relief Services. As one woman once told me, "It's a matter of heart, not head."
No comments:
Post a Comment