Still sick after all these weeks

It's been over two months since I came down with a cold that triggered everything.  Three days after yet another doctor's appointment, I've been given another inhaler for my bronchitis, more pills for my high blood pressure, and the news that I might have to go to the main hospital to undergo more tests to see if something else is causing the Cough That Won't Go Away.  And the Sore Throat That Drops By Now and Then.  Or the latest: Soreness in the left side of my neck.  In short, I'm a mess, and not a week goes by before another bothersome malady makes an appearance. 

Needless to say, I'm also worried.  When I had chest X-rays at the ER a month back, the docs didn't see anything but bronchitis.  Given the bronchitis doesn't seem to be making a final exit, and I'm wheezing and coughing still, my regular doc suspects something else at work.  What is it?  Who knows. 

I just checked WebMD, and I tossed in all my symptoms.  I've managed to trim the possibilities down to twenty, ranging from a cold to tuberculosis to Legionnaire's disease.  In other words, who knows. 

Tori and I were watching Sicko this evening, and we watched how one can walk into a clinic in England or Canada and have pretty much everything taken care of for free.  Well, not free: nothing is free.  You pay taxes, which goes into health care.  An amazing concept.  But socialized medicine is evil and could lead to communism and sex with guinea pigs, so none of that here. 

I miss being well.  That never seems to happen anymore. If it's not one thing, it's another.  But at least I couldn't count on a particular malady to harass me day after day.  Nowadays, it's always something, and it's either in my chest, my throat, or both. 

Barring a medical emergency, I go back to the doctor in five weeks.  If I'm still coughing by that time, I might just move forward with my master plan: steal a healthy teenager's body and harvest what I need.  Hell, I might simply switch the brains: I won't look like the man my wife married, but at least I'll have a second chance to fuck up a relatively decent human body. 

Comments

[Sarah]

In defense of the corrupt, overbloated, horrible private healthcare system of the US: It is absolutely, hands-down, categorically the first system I would run to if I ever had any health condition that fell even the tiniest bit outside of the category of “mind numbingly boring, so insignificant I could fix it myself if my house were a bit more sterile”. Paper cuts, twisted ankles, strep throat, immunizations…give me my socialized medicine. Anything above and beyond, I want cryptic health insurance and $700 for a 10-minute-consultation doctor locked and loaded.

I love Michael Moore as much as the next bleeding heart, but living here in socialized medicine land, he neglected to mention that, at least here in good ole’ financially disastrous southern Europe, anyone who can actually afford it also has private health insurance where they go when they have anything similar to your mystery condition…though it could certainly be argued that if preventative medicine were free form the get-go, there would be way less mystery conditions to deal with. Moreover, if you are not friends with a doctor or two or three willing to call in favors to allow you jump the line when you need to see someone (otherwise it is a long, long wait), you are screwed.

Also, I am now working in the human resources management side of the healthcare industry here, and I can promise you that any doctor, nurse, radiologist, dentist, even veterinary assistant worth his or her salt who can speak even the tiniest bit of English has sent me their resume a billion times, desperate to get the hell out of here to a country where they can earn more money than a plumber or the owner of a small coffee shop.

On the other hand, my husband came home from basketball practice last week with a foot the size of a watermelon, completely black and blue. He went to the hospital the very next morning (thank you Lisbon neuroradiologist/sister-in-law's best friend/my daughter's godfather) and emerged $2.20 poorer (!!!!!) with some medicine and orders to sit down for a while. He also bought a ginormous bottle of aspirin for 80 cents.

[Sarah]

PS Get well soon!

[Ralph Loizzo]

Is It possible you have a simple case of pneumonia? I hear that's going around...

As for the documentary Sicko, yes, socialized medicine sounds wonderful. Till I realize that means putting the government in charge of more stuff, while they seem to keep f****** up everything else.

[Myke]

The US government took over a bankrupt railroad under Ford, and sold it 12 years later for (under Reagan) for $1.9 billion. And the US government nationalized all the railroads during World War I. The US goverment put people on the moon, for goodness sake. If the political will is there, then the government can run health care or an auto maker, and run it well. All this pessimism comes from too many years of Republicans, who have no interest in making government work well, running the country into the ground.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_nationalization#United_S