The garage at the University of Chicago Hospital sells discount booklets for parking in their facility. I should have bought one for this month. This is what’s on my May calendar:
5/1 Physical Therapy
5/9 Gastroenterologist
5/13 Primary Care physician
5/19 Physical Therapist
5/23 Orthopedics
5/27 Endocrinologist
Appointment not yet made – Dermatologist
Rosellen could expand the list even further with her own set of appointments.
For decades, there were long stretches when the list for a whole year wouldn’t contain more than my annual checkup with our PCP. Many people are not as lucky in those earlier years, but statistically the overall expenditure on health care is much heavier on the back end than the front as the machinery begins to break down and we confront our mortality head on. That’s why it’s hard to imagine how people managed before Medicare and even more unimaginable how some legislators have struggled mightily to wrestle that benefit away from this most vulnerable segment of our population.
I’m incredibly grateful thatthere’s not a single thing on my list that is immediately life threatening, but every bit of it affects the quality of my daily life. Let me walk you through each of the items. First, there’s my PCP, whom I love. She’s attentive, gentle and, parenthetically, 45 or so years younger than I. She scours my lab results for warning signs, schedules appointments with specialists, keeps my prescriptions up to date and offers comprehensible and sensible advice.
The physical therapy and Orthopedics appointments are related to a short-term problem. I woke up one morning with pain in my right shoulder. It’s such a complicated joint that is involved in more kinds of movement than any other joint, everything from opening doors to unscrewing jar lids. The physical therapy hasn’t helped much so far, and if that continues to be the case, I’ve scheduled a steroid shot. Definitely not Code Red but still disruptive during both sleeping and waking hours.
Then there are the more long-term problems that require periodic monitoring. Late in life, I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, so there’s regular blood work to see whether I’m absorbing the necessary nutrients, as well as occasional endoscopies to check the condition of my upper abdominal area. This is also the department responsible for my colonoscopies. I am happy to announce that on my most recent visit, I was granted my graduation certificate from colonoscopy school. I am at the age when there’s more risk than benefit to the procedure.
The endocrinology appointments focus on the state of my bones. I have osteoporosis, which is also related to my Celiac condition.
Finally, I’m inclined to developing pre-cancerous skin conditions, gifts from the sun to which I got an excess of exposure at some points in my life, so periodic checks.
Now this is definitely TMI for most of you, but I present it because it offers a picture of what a robust health care program looks like, thanks to my insurance, which is, by the way, a Medicare Advantage policy, not always the best option for everyone; but it works for me because all my care is concentrated at the hospital. I’ve never been denied any service my doctors have recommended. Sadly, there are too many people who don’t have access to this kind of support.
Finally, looking at the current senseless campaign to cut medical research programs, we can see how short-sighted that is. So much of the medical treatment I’ve described above is based on research that has created procedures, systems, materials and medications that I’m benefitting from. That natural pipeline of innovation and implementation is being disrupted, endangering many future lives. To quote a phrase from our agrarian past, we are eating the seed corn by shedding researchers to Europe and elsewhere, not only capsizing their lives but giving away our treasure, which will be impossible to replicate.
I’m just a tiny speck in a vast health care sea, but we have the capacity to do for everyone what is being done for me. The number of older citizens continues to grow. We owe them a rewarding life at the back end.
