Fake Realities II

Fake Realities II - Hi everyone! - A week ago we were once more sitting around in one of our local hospitals waiting to learn what was wrong with my mother- in- law. This, of course, had not been the first but rather the third time en série. That string of hospital visits started about four weeks ago with her being rushed to the ER due to severe headaches, dizziness and slurred speech. We feared the worst and quickly received the diagnosis of her having suffered from an aneurysm in the base of her brain. While she was being monitored, the doctors were checking on her stomach and her kidneys, and of course, applied sedatives to keep her blood pressure from climbing. Thank God, the bleeding had stopped all by itself calling off the need to open her skull. She was released after days of running tests that quite frankly were not necessary. Anyways, two days later, my mother- in- law returned to the same ER claiming that she was again having most excruciating headaches and asked for morphine or Demerol. Her wish was not granted that time which didn't just upset her but eventually made her lash out badly in an adolescent- like temper tantrum. A day later, she was home again and returned to smoking two to three packs of cigarettes, drinking up to three pots of coffee, eating crap, and doing nothing but sit around idle. Thus no surprise when she was admitted for a third time demanding more morphine. And this time, no one in the ER seemed to even bother performing a medical back ground check. Instead she was immediately administered a fine cocktail which knocked her out for quite a while. My husband had it when he got word that his mum was going to be taken in for more tests that quite apparently had nothing to do with her main problem. All that time I was waiting downstairs in the canteen, but I could tell from the agitated expression on his face that the discussion which he had had with that ER doctor must have been a fairly heated one. The doctor had kept his calm during all those probing questions and even allegations up to that point when my husband simply wanted to know how much they charged his mother's insurance for every time she requested morphine, Demerol, Benadryl, etc. Now that physician clearly lost his temper and basically threw my hubby out. He then later apologized and released his patient without any further ado. The moral of this little story is not hard to grasp. Instead of linking all existing medical data -beginning with the primary physician- logically most hospitals including their ERs go about finding out about their patients' histories cluelessly. This implies that several steps are sometimes repeated multiple times generating enormous expenses every time. It looks to me that there's no real concern or care for the entire picture or the actual causes of health problems. However, when it comes to alleviating or masking the symptoms, many hospitals here seem to be all ears and consequently spare no effort and no costs - at the expense of the insurance companies, this is. Any treatment and any medical procedure or test is available, and we all know that cost- wise only the sky is the limit. I'm not saying that my mother- in- law has not been given the care she needed. On the contrary, I sometimes truly wonder if she has in fact received too much different care since her main condition has not been cured as of yet. Also I'm not going to point at her for having become hooked on prescription drugs because, after all, nobody seems to show a care in the world as far as seriously wanting to tackle her addiction problem. Taking her off some meds that are knowingly highly addictive would lead to considerably less income for many. With thousands of patients slowly being weaned off meds like these, the pharmaceutical companies would ultimately lose a lot of money, and this is surely not in their interest. The same applies to medical services of all sorts. If these were all reduced to a healthy minimum, the so desired profits would plummet into nothing, thus also a big NO, NO for any medical professional in this country. We are made to believe that the medical system is there to primarily heal us when the general intention is in fact to make and keep us sick. How sad is this?!