HEALTHCARE BULLY PREYS ON THE WEAKEST

 

Any coherent healthcare bully debate needs to go beyond the numbers, the insurance companies.

Beyond drug company research and development that puts the BIG in Big Pharma.

It’s about who the healthcare bully reaches for in the debate. The most vulnerable, of course. The population currently undergoing severe medical treatment.

I’ll use cancer treatment as an example.

Like a pawn in their own game during treatment, cancer patients bounce between news from Washington and Obamacare, and news from Oregon about the Providence downsize.

From recent eavesdropping I can say it’s distressing to the healing process.

On the front lines fighting the healthcare bully stand the good people at OHSU Knight Cancer Institute – Tualatin, and St.Vincent Radiation Oncology.

Their patients come in droves.

I showed up three days after President Trump’s inauguration. It felt like I had a target on my back instead of my neck for HPV16 tongue cancer.

Turned out to be a great conversation starter.

The first radiation felt like the starting gun in a race with no finish line, running with the pack in cancer waiting rooms.

I used the race analogy day to day in the marathon of chemoradiation. So did the nurses and techs.

It helped with questions like, “Is this really a good idea?”

On days when the healthcare bully won I focused on the team, the big team. America. My America. Your America. That America.

By the way, you don’t need a tattoo and a mullet to talk about America like it means something more, something mystical. And you don’t need hpv16 tongue cancer. But…

In my chemo-fogged mind it mattered that some college kid in North Carolina knew about Oregon. I wanted that Virginia Polyface Farms farmer to take notice of the people here.

America has roots that seek a healthy nation and I tapped in to fight healthcare bully.

It helped, even for someone with roots including an Army tour, Manhattan at midnight, sleeping on an interstate roadside in Wyoming, cataloging twenty years of history with the Oregon Historical Society, and a still married dad before cancer treatment.

It helped a lot. Yes, it felt weird, but it was real.

I felt America on my side to fight healthcare bully.

Like every conflict in the history of conflict, break the opponent down to strengths and weaknesses and match them up with yours.

What people in dire medical treatment want is consistency, a team that pulls together and shows up big.

When you come out winners with a successful cure, a ‘complete response’ to treatment, it’s a win for the schedulers you see every day, the technicians laser-sighting the right spot, the doctors and nurses who keep it all rolling.

It’s a win for the 9-5 crew of building engineers and maintenance crews who might go to work and not notice patients after a while, but we notice them.

We want them to know our win against cancer is their win, a huge step for mankind.

It’s a win for the human spirit when death knocks and no one answers, a win paid in the same sweat, courage, and preparation it takes to win anything in this world.

Despite the fearful news and treatment trauma I put on my game show face in a room full of people for seven weeks. Some in hospital gowns, some not. Some laugh, some not.

Some wore pants, other not. The people without gowns were drivers.

Every face in the room carried the sort of hope seen in paintings of the Saints.

For an hour a day they show up for radiation and the win.

Those moments in the waiting room show them at their most vulnerable, just like you’d be. Just like me. It’s the moments before healthcare bully lands damaging blows.

It’s coming right up and we take it. We want it. We want it all. And we want it now.

There’s an incredible belief in the radiation waiting rooms, a camaraderie of the soul.

I saw the look in everyone around the puzzle table, the snack basket, and in front of the television.

Sometimes I had to look hard to find the fight against healthcare bully, but not too hard.

From my time in those rooms, I found a healthcare bully debate from three thousand miles away does not improve morale.

See, cancer treatment, at least the chemoradiation version I saw, is a timing thing. Once you start you need to stay on schedule.

I asked about it. The treatment is designed to kill cancer cells, allow our immune system to kill cancer cells, and every other combination of kill cancer cells on the menu.

The other part of killing evil ass cancer cells is killing good guy cells. That’s one of the alarming, under-sold, under appreciated part of cancer hitting a younger demographic.

Looking at you, Millennials.

Yes, the cure rate for HPV16 tongue cancer is 90%. So you’ve got that going for you.

Before you jump for the nearest hand santizer, the HPV virus runs about 90% of the population who’ve actually had sex. With someone else. Coincidence?

The downside of curing an early cancer like HPV16 is living so long with the side effects of cancer treatment. It’s a real thing, a real healthcare bully to fight the rest of your life. You know I’m looking forward to it.

The weight of cancer treatment is hard enough, but when a nation seems to turns its back on this most vulnerable population, it gets personal.

Try watching the congressional healthcare debate on a cancer waiting room TV.

Except for the single outburst, it was a room full of STFU.