hot and bothered

It was 86 degrees in my place when I got home last night. I had to open a huge window on the balcony, the balcony door, and turn on the AC to get to sleep. Thank goodness it's supposed to drop into the 40s at the end of the week. Then I don't have to walk around my place in shorts.

My friend was telling me about her experience yesterday with her mother-in-law (MIL). MIL has been having problems getting her blood pressure under control, and has been bopping from doctor to doctor--both here and in Moscow--all offering different remedies and advice. I'm not a doctor, but some of what I've been getting second hand ranges from utter bunk to thoroughly appalling.

So yesterday a doctors orders an ultrasound to check something out. They go to the ultrasound department at 11 am, no one is there. There is a hallway of people waiting. After 30 minutes, two techs arrive, take two people, then announce that they're no longer doing ultrasounds for the day. Fortunately, my friend and her MIL went there with a friend who knows a professor at this hospital. So they call him. He tells them to go to another ultrasound cabinet. They go there and are refused. They call this prof again, he argues with some people, then tells them to go to another ultrasound cabinet in the basement. They are refused. They call the prof again, and this time he succeeds in canjoling/threatening this cabinet to accept her.

My friend summed it up like this: "By the end of the ordeal, I concluded that if you don't have money or don't have connections, forget it--you'll die before you get the care you need."

I'll blog later about the emergency medical care her MIL got at home Saturday night. Let's say that instead of providing her evidence-based care, this private medical service did a gazillion unnecessary things in order to charge them an exorbitant amount of money. Insisting on IVs, cardiograms, etc. And then were like "Um, the patient's head hurts. Do you have any aspirin? We don't."

Do you feel better about the American medical system now?