I suppose that I grew up being as naive as they come. I had no idea that my mother had no health insurance for our family. I just assumed that everyone went to the free clinic for vaccinations. I thought that we never went to see our doctor because we were never sick enough to warrant a visit. Looking back I realize that my mother was quite fortunate in having children who mostly sailed through life with few if any health problems. We did not have regular checkups with our family physician nor did we rush immediately to his office unless we had a serious injury. As a result I can’t recall ever actually receiving care from our doctor. I only knew him from the few times that my brothers had emergency illnesses or injuries. Later I would work for him and marvel that he even knew who I was.
Since my father-in-law moved in with us I have been stunned with his stories of regular six month visits to the doctor when he was a boy. Of course his own father was a physician so it makes sense that he would have had more contact with the medical community than others in his age group. I doubt that my mother ever saw a doctor before she became pregnant with me. Her own mother birthed her children at home with a midwife. Only once or twice in all of her eighty eight years did my grandmother ever require the services of a doctor. Once was when her appendix burst and the other was near the time of her death when her cancer became overwhelming.
Somehow I quickly modernized myself once I was married. I made yearly appointments for checkups and tests that I had never before had. My children had pediatricians and specialists who kept them hale and hearty. Now that I am older I have a veritable fleet of doctors who care for my every physical need. I sometimes joke that my social life consists of the visits with one specialist after another and the discussions of my ailments with family and friends.
I’m relatively healthy for my age but I have problems that might have been eradicated in my childhood had they ever been noticed. Scoliosis twists my spine giving me the appearance of someone who is hunched over. It also sends pain done my lower back and into my hip, leg and knee. Several doctors have wondered why that malformation was not repaired when I was young. The truth is that nobody realized that it was even there because I never went to see a doctor.
I remember my mother and my aunts telling me to stand up straight. My mother showed me how to loop a broomstick behind my back to serve as a kind of brace. None of it worked and everyone was sadly unaware that there were better methods for straightening my spine while it was still forming.
I can’t fault my mother. She was a young widow with three children and a ridiculously low income. Women were not working at parity with men in the late nineteen fifties so she had to make economic magic with what she had. That meant sacrificing a bit here and there. If my brothers and I were relatively healthy there was no need for the extra expense of a doctor. She supplemented our health with well planned meals and exercise. For the most part we came out well with her very creative ways of providing us with safe and secure and loving lives. She would often joke that we were not to worry about anything because she had a money tree in case of an emergency.
The cost of healthcare has skyrocketed in the United States and in spite of efforts to insure that every citizen has access to doctors, there are still far too many citizens who only receive medical care in emergency situations. We like to believe that we have the best system in the world but ignore the very real fact that there are still people who simply do not have enough income for regular checkups. All too often people wait until they are so ill that they are almost beyond help.
For some reason the citizens of the United States grouse over the idea of having a national program that insures healthcare for everyone even as we watch our system become more and broken and out of reach for far too many people. The wealthy are able to pay concierge fees to doctors who are at their beck and call while most Americans must rely on emergency rooms for their medical needs. We seem to fret over the idea of having to wait for months for care in a nationalized system and then wait for months to see specialists in our own system. We don’t want to pay the taxes that would give universal care to everyone and then grouse when we are faced with rising bills for health insurance that still leaves us with huge detectable and skyrocketing costs when we do need medical care.
Years ago a friend from Germany who was acquainted with my family story compared and contrasted the life of his mother and mine. The picture that he painted told of his mother living a life filled with the security and assurances that her medical needs would be met. On the other hand my mother was anxious about potential need for medical care for all of her life. The result was that she continued to skimp on visits and medications that might have sent her strict budget into the red. She did not have the luxury of being worry free like my friend’s mother. It made me realize just how broken our system actually is.
I don’t know if we will ever have the resolve to give up some of our luxury perks to create a healthcare system that works for everyone. I think we are still a long way off from the kind of care that other nations provide. It is my hope that one day we will realize what a gift it would be to know that everyone has access to the medical care that they need and deserve. I hope I get to see that time before I am gone but I’m not willing to hold my breath.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 