This Is Why I Never Go to the Doctor
A few weeks ago I had dinner with my dad to catch up and give him some company while my mom was out of town. We dined at a great Japanese restaurant in Marina Del Rey, and I decided to try the Mackerel Shioyaki. It was delicious, and bony. In fact, I managed to get a bone stuck in my throat. No big deal, I thought, surely it will come out with some rice or water. Nope. I went home thinking it would come out on its own.
Two hours later, with an extremely sore throat and an unwanted fish bone, I was at the grocery store buying every possible thing to try based on home remedies listed online. At home, I tried it all: water, rice, sticky rice, bananas, marshmallows, vinegar (yes, I drank straight vinegar), bread… I tried upside down, right side up, and on my side. I tried until I literally could not eat or drink anymore. And still, the fish bone remained stubbornly stuck.
At this point you might be laughing, and I too thought it ridiculous that such a simple thing could be an actual medical problem. But after deciding to sleep on it, I woke up barely able to swallow and decided it was time to seek professional help. I went to my primary care physician’s office as soon as they opened, but was told that the ENT was out for the day and none of the other doctors could help me (apparently no one else is allowed anywhere near an endoscope because reasons). The front desk person gave me a helpful list of all the ENTs in the area and suggested calling them to get an appointment. So I did. I called 19 individual ENT offices representing 24 ENTs and not a single one could or would see me in less than 2 days. OK, I thought, I’ll try urgent care.
At the urgent care office down the street, the wait was a mere 45 minutes after filling out insurance information. The nurses took my blood pressure, weighed me, and sat me in an office to wait for a doctor. The doctor arrived after 10 minutes, and was nice and appreciative of my situation. She looked in my throat for a minute and then promptly stated that she couldn’t help — the urgent care office didn’t even have an endoscope and they weren’t trained to remove objects from throats. Had I tried an ENT? Yes? Oh, well then I’d have to go to the emergency room. Alarm bells started going off in my mind.
If you haven’t been to an emergency room in America, don’t go. Ever. The three times I’ve been (twice for myself, once accompanying a friend) have all been uniquely terrible, but this time took the cake. Imagine a waiting area that seats 100 people, filled with 120 . At least one of them is bleeding, another is wailing in Spanish every 30 seconds, another looks comatose, and at least half are muttering about waiting so long. There’s a one-person bathroom constantly in use, and the smell of disinfectant and sickness permeates everything. Now imagine being there for three and a half hours before your name is called. But wait, your name was only called so they could take your patient information and immediately collect your copay before any services are rendered. That’s an American emergency room.
After 4 hours, a doctor somewhere in the machine that was a hospital decided that I needed an X-ray despite me telling the technician that I could tell them exactly where the bone was stuck, since it scraped my throat every time I so much as talked. Nope, have to get an X-ray because reasons. Great, so we took an X-ray, and then I waited another hour next to a man on a gurney surrounded by EMTs who were waiting for… something. The man was on a gurney because the hospital literally had no beds available. I made friends with another man who had been at the hospital for 5 hours with his wife trying to get her some painkillers to help deal with her cancer. He suggested I should just grab the nearby fire hose and spray my throat with it to get out of there. I agreed.
Eventually, a new doctor found me. They couldn’t see anything on the X-ray — was I sure the bone was still in there? I swallowed painfully. Yes, pretty damn sure. Had I tried bread? I somehow didn’t scream. Well, she said, since I wasn’t having difficulty breathing they were going to send me home with some Mylanta and get an appointment with an ENT the next day, how did that sound? It sounded like healthcare in America — a promise full of failure. Before I could leave, a nurse took my blood pressure. She commented that it was a little high. Hmm, I wonder why.
After seven and a half hours of bouncing around the healthcare system, I went home in worse shape than I started, having wasted an entire day of my life. Before bed, having not eaten anything all day and with a rapidly swelling throat, I decided to endure the pain and chug a protein shake to get some calories. The bone moved, and then it went down — a minor miracle I attribute to a throat so swollen it probably pushed the bone out on its own. My ordeal was over, until the bill showed up yesterday. Between co-pays and uncovered expenses, my lost day in which no one actually helped me cost $298.30 (update: thanks to yet another bill the total is now $369.43). What does it say when it would have been cheaper and faster to order an endoscope and forceps on Amazon and fix the problem myself than to try and get a doctor to actually help me? ‘Murica.
What If?
What if I hadn’t been able to take a day off work to fight through the healthcare machine? What if I couldn’t afford $300 of medical expenses after insurance? What if I didn’t have insurance? What if I had a more severe medical problem? These are questions with hard answers that people come face-to-face with every day in America.
The sad thing is, this experience is far from uncommon, and also far from the worst you will find. The internet is full of horror stories told by people trying every day to pull some sanity out of a system that is terribly broken. Sadly, I don’t know how to fix it, but I know something is wrong and it’s time we had a serious conversation about it, because America and Americans deserve better.
