Is there a doctor in the house...or the county?
O.k., EXTREMELY long post here, simply because more will follow in the coming weeks and it's best to know What Has Gone Before. And this is it.
So my health has never been the best. That's a given. I can't breathe when I walk a half a block. I'm hypothyroid (my thyroid simply doesn't work at all) and am unmedicated. I have high blood pressure, severely swollen legs and, possibly, a failing heart valve. And I haven't had insurance in a dog's age. Possibly longer. And once again, I am unemployed (and apparently unemployable) and looking at eviction. Go me.
But my landlord, in a last-ditch effort to hang onto whatever money he can, is encouraging me to get a doctor's note stating that I am unable to work due to health reasons. I am cooperating in this endeavor, in a last-ditch effort to hang onto my apartment long enough to secure a job and rent money. In the meantime, I figure I might wrest some kind of healthcare from the belly of the County Health Department beast.
This is looking highly unlikely. In an amusing sort of way.
My first shot was to "drop by" the health department in hopes (vain, I agree) of seeing someone as a "walk in". This wasn't going to happen. But I managed to see the "triage nurse" and convince her, by virtue of standing there breathing as I normally do, that I had to see someone soon. She made me an appointment for the very next day. Lucky me.
Except that, with school drawing near, the health department is geared up for school physicals. The regular doctors were all at local schools doing physicals there. At the main health department? They had one frantically overworked temporary fill-in doctor. Nice man, but clue-free about his "target market" apparently.
The first thing I saw was one of the nurses on staff. She proceeded to genially inspect me and tell me what she thought was wrong with me. ("Oh, it's asthma. I've seen it before. Ah, high blood pressure. It makes sense, the way you're breathing. I knew it was high blood pressure. Swollen legs? Hmmm...that could be the hypothyroidism, but it could be the high blood pressure, too. Probably not the asthma, though.") She finally wrote everything she could find to write down on my chart and bustled away, leaving me to my own devices.
I didn't steal any of their equipment. Just want that on the record.
After that...I waited. I had told them that I had a job interview at 1 p.m. (this was at 10 a.m.) and that I had to catch two busses to get to it. This was a noble effort to get myself seen in some kind of reasonable time frame. They all nodded wisely and agreed that I needed to be seen as soon as possible.
Apparently, nobody bothered to tell the doctor, so I waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally the Great Man appeared. He was a nice enough guy, actually. He asked me intelligent questions, listened to my answers and listened to my chest and heart. He sort of, kind of, but not quite, looked at my swollen legs (well, he eyeballed my ankles a bit) and clucked with Genuine Concern. And then he got out his little prescription pad and went to town.
Now, I'm broke. I kind of made that clear to them at the outset. I'm unemployed, looking at eviction and totally broke. As in no money. (O.k., I had about $70 in the bank at that point, $50 of which was already spoken for...by a law firm.) I told the people at the desk that. I told the nurse that. I told the doctor that. I was speaking in clear and concise English. B-R-O-K-E. No job. No paycheck. No money.
I got a prescription for high blood pressure medication. I got a prescription for a chest x-ray. I got a prescription for a echocardiogram. I got an appointment to come back in two weeks for a follow-up on the blood work he also ordered.
And that's where it got amusing. Just downright hysterical, if you want the truth.
See, I'm not getting unemployment yet. Or food stamps. Or any kind of public aid. There's a "wait time" for any of that. Right now, I'm looking at three weeks. But the Health Department wants "proof of income". I explain that I'm unemployed and currently not getting benefits. Well, they ask, how am I living? Who's paying my rent? Who am I living with?
Reasonable questions, all of them. As is my answer. I'm not living with anyone. I'm waiting to be evicted. I'm eating the food in my apartment until it runs out. Next question?
Hmmm...they say. Well, I can sign an affidavit, basically stating that, on my own recognizance, I'm a Poor Person. But this, I am told, is the last time I can do this. Supposedly, I've done this twice before and I can only do it three times.
Now I don't recall doing it twice before, but I went to the county health department a year ago for bronchitis, and wasn't employed at the time and probably filled out the same form then and just don't recall it. I'm pretty sure, however, that I only went there once. But it might have been twice. My memory isn't foolproof.
With the affidavit signed, they will only charge me $10 for this visit. Yay. Except I still owed them $10 for the last visit a year ago (and they keep sending me dun notices on it), so I already spent $10 that morning to pay the overdue bill. I only have $12 left and I'm not giving them that at this point. Emergencies must be taken into account.
That's o.k., they'll bill me. Nice of them. And they will do the blood work at their office the following day. I'll be charged for the visit, of course. And no $10 co-pay this time. Full price. But I will get the blood work done.
So, on top of the new bill I'll be getting, I've got three prescriptions, a round of blood work and another two visits to pay for. And no money to pay for any of it. Hmmm...
But there's no time to figure it out, because everyone has been meandering around for so long I barely have time to throw my clothes on and scamper out to the bus stop, huffing and puffing and gasping for air...just in time to see the bus pull away and roll down the street without me.
Now I'm really stuck. I have less than an hour to get to my interview, the bus only runs once an hour and the bus I missed still has to take me to another bus that will take me to my interview. No way I'm going to make it there by bus now. And nobody else in my immediate family who is free at that hour has a running car.
I'm screwed.
But I'm also determined. I take my life, and my last $10 bill, in my hands and find a pay phone and call a cab. I make it to the interview. But by this time, I'm so stressed out, I blow an easy Excel test. Unless it really was their Excel program being wonky. In any case, I don't get the job. That was $10 wasted. Of course, the walk back to the regular bus stop is so long that I realize I'd have been dead within a week after taking the job. I can't walk that far anymore and still expect to be able to breathe.
I finally make it home and check my prescriptions and then call the health department back again. The triage nurse is gone for the day, but the cheerful voice on the other end tries to answer my questions anyway.
No, they can't pay for my x-ray. I'll have to do that. Yes, they have an x-ray machine, but it's only for TB tests. They can't use it for anything else. Yes, they used to send people to the local hospital, but that was years ago. They don't do that anymore and the local hospital will bill me the full amount if I go there.
No, they don't help with the echocardiogram. In fact, they don't have any idea where I'd get that done. But it's expensive. And good luck with that.
No, they don't know how much the high blood pressure meds cost, but I can call around and find out. No, they don't have samples to give out. They're really sorry about that.
I hang up and call a friend to kvetch about the whole thing. He is sympathetic. I am supposed to meet him the next day, and I explain about having to do the blood work in the morning before I can meet him. He is strangely amused and intrigued by the Byzantine nature of my medical encounters and decides to meet me at the health department when he gets into town. He expects to show up about when I'm finishing up with the blood tests and suggests that we confront the bureaucracy together.
I love my friends, I really do.
I get the blood work done and even get an EKG (my mistake, I thought the prescription said EKG, but it was ECG...oops!) and walk into the waiting room to find my friend there, smiling cheerfully. But first I have some forms to fill out.
Yep, those "personal recognizance" forms again. Interestingly, the lab nurse hands me the forms and warns me that this is "the last time" I can use these forms, because I've used them twice before and I can only do this three times. I sign the form without comment at this point. My daddy raised a pair of pure idiots, but no fools that I'm aware of.
We exit the first floor lab waiting room and head for the second floor, on the advice of the nurse in charge of the lab area, who suggests we'll get our answers up on the floor where I saw the doctor yesterday.
Up on the second floor, a confused-looking nurse tries to locate my file. It's downstairs in the lab area. They agree to send it up. The confused-looking nurse's boss shows up and snaps that our questions should be answered downstairs, not up there. And why, she demands to know, didn't I bother finding any of this out the day before when I was there?
I shake my head, decline to answer and we head downstairs. My friend, Mike, decides to stop into the dental clinic to see if he can get an appointment to have his broken tooth checked. It seems the back of one of his teeth broke off and the VA, where he gets his medical care, doesn't do teeth. I continue downstairs and speak to someone at the desk, who hands me a number and advises me to have a seat. "Someone" will be with me shortly.
They have an interesting definition of "shortly". But then, they have an interesting definition of "public healthcare" also.
Eventually, Mike returns with a cheerful grin. It seems that the dental clinic agrees that his broken tooth constitutes an emergency. And his lack of funds (he works part time and sporadically, which is better than me, but he has a small family to support, and I don't) qualifies him for the service. So he got an appointment...in two months.
And if anything goes wrong, he can get another appointment...in another two months.
I'm glad he's amused. I'd have been foaming at the mouth at that point. We sit there for awhile longer and finally I'm called up to see the triage nurse again. She looks at Mike suspiciously and is concerned that he's not a relative. At first I think she's going to make him go away, but she relents at my insistence that I don't mind his presence at such a "private" moment. (It's not like I'm gonna disrobe right there in a hallway, now is it?)
I explain my predicament, in detail. She is patient and seems to have a rudimentary sense of humor, a rare gift at this institution, it would seem. But she shakes her head sadly.
No, the county health department no longer has an agreement with the local hospitals to do x-rays. Yes, they have an x-ray machine, but it's only for TB tests. She thinks that there's a lab in the next town over that has a "discount" program for county health department patients. I should probably try them. She's really sorry, but there's nothing she can do to help me with that. But I should call them and make an appointment. Really.
No, the health department can't help with the echocardiogram. Yes, it's a really important test and will probably tell the doctor a lot about what's really going on, but they don't do it there, they don't have the equipment. It's a really expensive test. I should call around, but she doesn't think anybody will give me any kind of help with it.
The medicine might not be so bad, she thinks. The health department can help with that, but only once. If I do it now, I might need it later and it wouldn't be available, so she suggests I find out what the medicine actually costs. They won't help for anything under $10, of course, so if it's only $10, or just slightly more, I might not want to have them help. Also, according to my chart, when the blood tests come back, I'll probably be put on Synthroid, so I might want to wait and see. Because Synthroid has gone up in the past few years since I took it last and it will definitely cost more than $10.
Of course I want to point out to her that the "one time only" help I could get won't really help me with two medications that will be ongoing for, quite possibly the rest of my life. But I refrain. Nobly. And with some difficulty.
She suggests calling K-Mart, because their pharmaceuticals are usually the lowest priced. "Not in every case," she admits, but usually. She even calls them herself, just to check. Turns out the blood pressure meds aren't that high, only about $10.65 for a month's supply. Oh good. 'Cause the Synthroid will be between $13 - $15, which means, tops, I'll only have $25 in medicine to buy each month...on no income whatsoever.
She looks us over carefully, thoughtfully, even. Then she folds her hands and finally gives us a suggestion.
We can, she suggests, go to Cook County.
Apparently, when my county was first incorporated, it was mainly farmland. The residents of that beknighted age didn't feel they needed a county hospital. Now that it's largely a highly populated, suburban area, they still don't feel the need and have no plans to incorporate a county hospital. Ever.
Which means that all the hospitals in my county are privately owned and run. None of them have any legal obligation to treat patients who can't pay.
But Cook County has a county hospital. It's charter states that it must treat patients, even if they can't pay. So, she suggests, I can go to Cook County and get my tests run. And they can't charge me.
But I can't tell them who sent me. "Because," she adds in a conspiratorial whisper, "they hate us over there."
No, she's not joking. She's serious. Apparently, Cook County resents having patients from surrounding counties sent to it. It feels it has enough problems with its own indigent patients without having riffraff sent to it from elsewhere. So if I go, it's best that I don't tell them who sent me.
I consider this suggestion thoughtfully. What she seems to be suggesting is that I walk into the Cook County Hospital, hand them a prescription form for a echocardiogram, with my county health department's logo clearly printed on it, and ask for the test, but I can't tell them who sent me.
But how, I ask her, would I get the results from the tests to the doctor at their clinic? She smiles and admits she really has no idea how I'd work that out. But she wishes me luck and really suggests I call that lab one town over about the x-rays. And I should go pick up that medicine as soon as possible, too. And I have an appointment in two weeks, so I need to get all this done before then. And good luck to me.
She's nice, if a relatively clue-free zone, so I smile and thank her. And we leave.
Mike suggests going to Cook County anyway, and just presenting myself as a patient and seeing what they'll do. I think about it and decide that I'll try to work it out in my county first, but, if I can't, I'll try Cook County. And I'll call the Chicago Tribune and offer them the story afterward.
Hey, I could make a few bucks. It might help pay some of the bills I seem to be running up here.
In the meantime, I call the lab one town over to see if I can get in and to see what their "discount" is.
Turns out they don't have a "discount".
However, what they do is bill the county health department. That would mean the county health department would pass the bill, and their "discount" on to me. This is not good news. But I call the health department.
The bright young thing on the phone has no clue about any of this. But she does know that if I'm gonna do this at all, it absolutely has to be done today. Because my self-recognizance affidavit is only good for today. After today...I get charged full price for everything.
The lab closes at 4:30. It's 3:45 p.m. I have no car. There's no way a bus will get me there. I can't afford a cab. So I do what I hate more than anything else.
I call my father.
My 89-year-old father. Who hates to drive more than a few blocks. But he is the only family member at the moment who has a working car and who is not at work himself at that hour. He yells, he moans, he snarls. He shows up in 15 minutes.
I love my father. I hate myself at this point, but I do love him.
At the lab, I fill out their paperwork. Yes, I am assured, they will bill the county health department. But I still have to put myself down as the "responsible party". It's just a form, ma-am. Really, no need to worry.
Right.
I leave my father in the waiting room, watching the Cubs play. They're winning. I seriously doubt I am.
Twenty minutes later, we're out of there and headed home. I now have an EKG and an x-ray on my bill that I'm not sure how I'm paying for. I have another doctor's appointment coming up in two weeks that I'm not sure how I'm paying for. I'm not even sure what doctor I'm seeing, since the "regular" doctors will be back and the doctor I saw the day before isn't there anymore. I have two prescriptions, one for medicine and one for a test, that I can't afford to have filled (the echocardiogram, I find out, costs $585 at the local hospital). I have $50 in the bank that is supposed to go to an attorney, according to a court order that I'm apparently going to have to ignore at this point.
I have a landlord who's waiting for a doctor to certify that I can't work, so he can stick me in one of his Section 8 units instead of evicting me.
It's a good thing I have a sense of humor and find this all at least slightly amusing.
I'm in the process of doing research into Ways And Means of Getting Things Done. I haven't found any ways and means yet, but I'm not done looking.
I'll keep you posted.
So my health has never been the best. That's a given. I can't breathe when I walk a half a block. I'm hypothyroid (my thyroid simply doesn't work at all) and am unmedicated. I have high blood pressure, severely swollen legs and, possibly, a failing heart valve. And I haven't had insurance in a dog's age. Possibly longer. And once again, I am unemployed (and apparently unemployable) and looking at eviction. Go me.
But my landlord, in a last-ditch effort to hang onto whatever money he can, is encouraging me to get a doctor's note stating that I am unable to work due to health reasons. I am cooperating in this endeavor, in a last-ditch effort to hang onto my apartment long enough to secure a job and rent money. In the meantime, I figure I might wrest some kind of healthcare from the belly of the County Health Department beast.
This is looking highly unlikely. In an amusing sort of way.
My first shot was to "drop by" the health department in hopes (vain, I agree) of seeing someone as a "walk in". This wasn't going to happen. But I managed to see the "triage nurse" and convince her, by virtue of standing there breathing as I normally do, that I had to see someone soon. She made me an appointment for the very next day. Lucky me.
Except that, with school drawing near, the health department is geared up for school physicals. The regular doctors were all at local schools doing physicals there. At the main health department? They had one frantically overworked temporary fill-in doctor. Nice man, but clue-free about his "target market" apparently.
The first thing I saw was one of the nurses on staff. She proceeded to genially inspect me and tell me what she thought was wrong with me. ("Oh, it's asthma. I've seen it before. Ah, high blood pressure. It makes sense, the way you're breathing. I knew it was high blood pressure. Swollen legs? Hmmm...that could be the hypothyroidism, but it could be the high blood pressure, too. Probably not the asthma, though.") She finally wrote everything she could find to write down on my chart and bustled away, leaving me to my own devices.
I didn't steal any of their equipment. Just want that on the record.
After that...I waited. I had told them that I had a job interview at 1 p.m. (this was at 10 a.m.) and that I had to catch two busses to get to it. This was a noble effort to get myself seen in some kind of reasonable time frame. They all nodded wisely and agreed that I needed to be seen as soon as possible.
Apparently, nobody bothered to tell the doctor, so I waited. And waited. And waited.
Finally the Great Man appeared. He was a nice enough guy, actually. He asked me intelligent questions, listened to my answers and listened to my chest and heart. He sort of, kind of, but not quite, looked at my swollen legs (well, he eyeballed my ankles a bit) and clucked with Genuine Concern. And then he got out his little prescription pad and went to town.
Now, I'm broke. I kind of made that clear to them at the outset. I'm unemployed, looking at eviction and totally broke. As in no money. (O.k., I had about $70 in the bank at that point, $50 of which was already spoken for...by a law firm.) I told the people at the desk that. I told the nurse that. I told the doctor that. I was speaking in clear and concise English. B-R-O-K-E. No job. No paycheck. No money.
I got a prescription for high blood pressure medication. I got a prescription for a chest x-ray. I got a prescription for a echocardiogram. I got an appointment to come back in two weeks for a follow-up on the blood work he also ordered.
And that's where it got amusing. Just downright hysterical, if you want the truth.
See, I'm not getting unemployment yet. Or food stamps. Or any kind of public aid. There's a "wait time" for any of that. Right now, I'm looking at three weeks. But the Health Department wants "proof of income". I explain that I'm unemployed and currently not getting benefits. Well, they ask, how am I living? Who's paying my rent? Who am I living with?
Reasonable questions, all of them. As is my answer. I'm not living with anyone. I'm waiting to be evicted. I'm eating the food in my apartment until it runs out. Next question?
Hmmm...they say. Well, I can sign an affidavit, basically stating that, on my own recognizance, I'm a Poor Person. But this, I am told, is the last time I can do this. Supposedly, I've done this twice before and I can only do it three times.
Now I don't recall doing it twice before, but I went to the county health department a year ago for bronchitis, and wasn't employed at the time and probably filled out the same form then and just don't recall it. I'm pretty sure, however, that I only went there once. But it might have been twice. My memory isn't foolproof.
With the affidavit signed, they will only charge me $10 for this visit. Yay. Except I still owed them $10 for the last visit a year ago (and they keep sending me dun notices on it), so I already spent $10 that morning to pay the overdue bill. I only have $12 left and I'm not giving them that at this point. Emergencies must be taken into account.
That's o.k., they'll bill me. Nice of them. And they will do the blood work at their office the following day. I'll be charged for the visit, of course. And no $10 co-pay this time. Full price. But I will get the blood work done.
So, on top of the new bill I'll be getting, I've got three prescriptions, a round of blood work and another two visits to pay for. And no money to pay for any of it. Hmmm...
But there's no time to figure it out, because everyone has been meandering around for so long I barely have time to throw my clothes on and scamper out to the bus stop, huffing and puffing and gasping for air...just in time to see the bus pull away and roll down the street without me.
Now I'm really stuck. I have less than an hour to get to my interview, the bus only runs once an hour and the bus I missed still has to take me to another bus that will take me to my interview. No way I'm going to make it there by bus now. And nobody else in my immediate family who is free at that hour has a running car.
I'm screwed.
But I'm also determined. I take my life, and my last $10 bill, in my hands and find a pay phone and call a cab. I make it to the interview. But by this time, I'm so stressed out, I blow an easy Excel test. Unless it really was their Excel program being wonky. In any case, I don't get the job. That was $10 wasted. Of course, the walk back to the regular bus stop is so long that I realize I'd have been dead within a week after taking the job. I can't walk that far anymore and still expect to be able to breathe.
I finally make it home and check my prescriptions and then call the health department back again. The triage nurse is gone for the day, but the cheerful voice on the other end tries to answer my questions anyway.
No, they can't pay for my x-ray. I'll have to do that. Yes, they have an x-ray machine, but it's only for TB tests. They can't use it for anything else. Yes, they used to send people to the local hospital, but that was years ago. They don't do that anymore and the local hospital will bill me the full amount if I go there.
No, they don't help with the echocardiogram. In fact, they don't have any idea where I'd get that done. But it's expensive. And good luck with that.
No, they don't know how much the high blood pressure meds cost, but I can call around and find out. No, they don't have samples to give out. They're really sorry about that.
I hang up and call a friend to kvetch about the whole thing. He is sympathetic. I am supposed to meet him the next day, and I explain about having to do the blood work in the morning before I can meet him. He is strangely amused and intrigued by the Byzantine nature of my medical encounters and decides to meet me at the health department when he gets into town. He expects to show up about when I'm finishing up with the blood tests and suggests that we confront the bureaucracy together.
I love my friends, I really do.
I get the blood work done and even get an EKG (my mistake, I thought the prescription said EKG, but it was ECG...oops!) and walk into the waiting room to find my friend there, smiling cheerfully. But first I have some forms to fill out.
Yep, those "personal recognizance" forms again. Interestingly, the lab nurse hands me the forms and warns me that this is "the last time" I can use these forms, because I've used them twice before and I can only do this three times. I sign the form without comment at this point. My daddy raised a pair of pure idiots, but no fools that I'm aware of.
We exit the first floor lab waiting room and head for the second floor, on the advice of the nurse in charge of the lab area, who suggests we'll get our answers up on the floor where I saw the doctor yesterday.
Up on the second floor, a confused-looking nurse tries to locate my file. It's downstairs in the lab area. They agree to send it up. The confused-looking nurse's boss shows up and snaps that our questions should be answered downstairs, not up there. And why, she demands to know, didn't I bother finding any of this out the day before when I was there?
I shake my head, decline to answer and we head downstairs. My friend, Mike, decides to stop into the dental clinic to see if he can get an appointment to have his broken tooth checked. It seems the back of one of his teeth broke off and the VA, where he gets his medical care, doesn't do teeth. I continue downstairs and speak to someone at the desk, who hands me a number and advises me to have a seat. "Someone" will be with me shortly.
They have an interesting definition of "shortly". But then, they have an interesting definition of "public healthcare" also.
Eventually, Mike returns with a cheerful grin. It seems that the dental clinic agrees that his broken tooth constitutes an emergency. And his lack of funds (he works part time and sporadically, which is better than me, but he has a small family to support, and I don't) qualifies him for the service. So he got an appointment...in two months.
And if anything goes wrong, he can get another appointment...in another two months.
I'm glad he's amused. I'd have been foaming at the mouth at that point. We sit there for awhile longer and finally I'm called up to see the triage nurse again. She looks at Mike suspiciously and is concerned that he's not a relative. At first I think she's going to make him go away, but she relents at my insistence that I don't mind his presence at such a "private" moment. (It's not like I'm gonna disrobe right there in a hallway, now is it?)
I explain my predicament, in detail. She is patient and seems to have a rudimentary sense of humor, a rare gift at this institution, it would seem. But she shakes her head sadly.
No, the county health department no longer has an agreement with the local hospitals to do x-rays. Yes, they have an x-ray machine, but it's only for TB tests. She thinks that there's a lab in the next town over that has a "discount" program for county health department patients. I should probably try them. She's really sorry, but there's nothing she can do to help me with that. But I should call them and make an appointment. Really.
No, the health department can't help with the echocardiogram. Yes, it's a really important test and will probably tell the doctor a lot about what's really going on, but they don't do it there, they don't have the equipment. It's a really expensive test. I should call around, but she doesn't think anybody will give me any kind of help with it.
The medicine might not be so bad, she thinks. The health department can help with that, but only once. If I do it now, I might need it later and it wouldn't be available, so she suggests I find out what the medicine actually costs. They won't help for anything under $10, of course, so if it's only $10, or just slightly more, I might not want to have them help. Also, according to my chart, when the blood tests come back, I'll probably be put on Synthroid, so I might want to wait and see. Because Synthroid has gone up in the past few years since I took it last and it will definitely cost more than $10.
Of course I want to point out to her that the "one time only" help I could get won't really help me with two medications that will be ongoing for, quite possibly the rest of my life. But I refrain. Nobly. And with some difficulty.
She suggests calling K-Mart, because their pharmaceuticals are usually the lowest priced. "Not in every case," she admits, but usually. She even calls them herself, just to check. Turns out the blood pressure meds aren't that high, only about $10.65 for a month's supply. Oh good. 'Cause the Synthroid will be between $13 - $15, which means, tops, I'll only have $25 in medicine to buy each month...on no income whatsoever.
She looks us over carefully, thoughtfully, even. Then she folds her hands and finally gives us a suggestion.
We can, she suggests, go to Cook County.
Apparently, when my county was first incorporated, it was mainly farmland. The residents of that beknighted age didn't feel they needed a county hospital. Now that it's largely a highly populated, suburban area, they still don't feel the need and have no plans to incorporate a county hospital. Ever.
Which means that all the hospitals in my county are privately owned and run. None of them have any legal obligation to treat patients who can't pay.
But Cook County has a county hospital. It's charter states that it must treat patients, even if they can't pay. So, she suggests, I can go to Cook County and get my tests run. And they can't charge me.
But I can't tell them who sent me. "Because," she adds in a conspiratorial whisper, "they hate us over there."
No, she's not joking. She's serious. Apparently, Cook County resents having patients from surrounding counties sent to it. It feels it has enough problems with its own indigent patients without having riffraff sent to it from elsewhere. So if I go, it's best that I don't tell them who sent me.
I consider this suggestion thoughtfully. What she seems to be suggesting is that I walk into the Cook County Hospital, hand them a prescription form for a echocardiogram, with my county health department's logo clearly printed on it, and ask for the test, but I can't tell them who sent me.
But how, I ask her, would I get the results from the tests to the doctor at their clinic? She smiles and admits she really has no idea how I'd work that out. But she wishes me luck and really suggests I call that lab one town over about the x-rays. And I should go pick up that medicine as soon as possible, too. And I have an appointment in two weeks, so I need to get all this done before then. And good luck to me.
She's nice, if a relatively clue-free zone, so I smile and thank her. And we leave.
Mike suggests going to Cook County anyway, and just presenting myself as a patient and seeing what they'll do. I think about it and decide that I'll try to work it out in my county first, but, if I can't, I'll try Cook County. And I'll call the Chicago Tribune and offer them the story afterward.
Hey, I could make a few bucks. It might help pay some of the bills I seem to be running up here.
In the meantime, I call the lab one town over to see if I can get in and to see what their "discount" is.
Turns out they don't have a "discount".
However, what they do is bill the county health department. That would mean the county health department would pass the bill, and their "discount" on to me. This is not good news. But I call the health department.
The bright young thing on the phone has no clue about any of this. But she does know that if I'm gonna do this at all, it absolutely has to be done today. Because my self-recognizance affidavit is only good for today. After today...I get charged full price for everything.
The lab closes at 4:30. It's 3:45 p.m. I have no car. There's no way a bus will get me there. I can't afford a cab. So I do what I hate more than anything else.
I call my father.
My 89-year-old father. Who hates to drive more than a few blocks. But he is the only family member at the moment who has a working car and who is not at work himself at that hour. He yells, he moans, he snarls. He shows up in 15 minutes.
I love my father. I hate myself at this point, but I do love him.
At the lab, I fill out their paperwork. Yes, I am assured, they will bill the county health department. But I still have to put myself down as the "responsible party". It's just a form, ma-am. Really, no need to worry.
Right.
I leave my father in the waiting room, watching the Cubs play. They're winning. I seriously doubt I am.
Twenty minutes later, we're out of there and headed home. I now have an EKG and an x-ray on my bill that I'm not sure how I'm paying for. I have another doctor's appointment coming up in two weeks that I'm not sure how I'm paying for. I'm not even sure what doctor I'm seeing, since the "regular" doctors will be back and the doctor I saw the day before isn't there anymore. I have two prescriptions, one for medicine and one for a test, that I can't afford to have filled (the echocardiogram, I find out, costs $585 at the local hospital). I have $50 in the bank that is supposed to go to an attorney, according to a court order that I'm apparently going to have to ignore at this point.
I have a landlord who's waiting for a doctor to certify that I can't work, so he can stick me in one of his Section 8 units instead of evicting me.
It's a good thing I have a sense of humor and find this all at least slightly amusing.
I'm in the process of doing research into Ways And Means of Getting Things Done. I haven't found any ways and means yet, but I'm not done looking.
I'll keep you posted.