A Personal Experience with Healthcare Insurance

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. ~William Drummond

It was 1 AM on an ordinary September night in 2003, and I was sound asleep with a reasonably full surgery schedule to begin in 6 ½ hours, the first operation a mastectomy on a middle-aged woman with breast cancer.  I was informed that my 21-year-old daughter was on an operating table in Santa Cruz, California, 2 ½ hours away, in extremis.

She had fallen through a plate glass patio door after taking a quick break in a wooden balcony hot tub getting ready for her fourth and senior year at UC Santa Cruz the next morning.  My wife and I gathered up our youngest son, an eighth grader, quickly stopped by our other son’s apartment and explained the situation and left for the dark and pensive drive to Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz.  My oldest son’s heart went with us, but he stayed behind, as he had to play football at Sac City College the next day.

Being a surgeon and having been in this position many times before, I was forwarded into the operating room and talked with the anesthesiologist a couple of times during the drive.  She fell through the glass at about 11 PM, two brand new female roommates put pressure on her left thigh, and a young Iraq veteran roommate sinched his belt above her mid-thigh injury.  

More history indicated that an ambulance got there in the foggy night and got her to the hospital, sighting major success in getting a peripheral IV in her, and getting her there with a systolic blood pressure of at least 60.  It was decided that due to the fog, she couldn’t be life-flighted to a level 1 trauma center, but instead had to be transported to Dominican, a level 2 trauma center.  That means the crew had to be called in.

As I communicated with the anesthesiologist, he indicated that he was giving blood as fast as he could through a central line, along with pressors to support her blood pressure.  He didn’t know what was going on in the operative field, but he flatly did not know whether she was going to live.  I told him to hang in there.  

We arrived at 6:30 AM and were rushed to the waiting area outside or the OR suites, and the surgeon and anesthesiologist were alongside her after their 4 ½ hour victorious ordeal.   The anesthesiologist and I caught eyes, and he smiled as he was bagging her, headed toward the ICU.

Over the next two days, she was resuscitated from that insult.  She had received three times her blood volume, many units of blood to keep her alive.  That makes me think of the amazing people who donated their blood for her.  Her injuries included complete transection of the femoral artery and vein, and all the major muscle bellies that make ambulation possible.  The only intact structures were the femur and sciatic nerve, shielded by the bone, and some skin behind it.  The shard of glass she fell on was essentially a guillotine, and the injury nearly lethal.

Long story short, my daughter survived, and I thank God for that.  Her legs work, she’s since become a mother of my sweet granddaughter, and her and her husband have got life going on.  She never looked back.  She has no need for disability benefits.  She went on with a master’s degree in English and operates a writing lab at Sacramento City College now, and my wife and I are so, so proud of her.

This story is told to you not seeking sympathy for my daughter or myself, but to alert you as to the conditions you face in Newsom’s government healthcare system in 2024, two decades later.

In 2003, I had already made the decision to leave Newsom and his predecessors and government run healthcare in the dust and pursue a new career where people care, and where merit matters.  It wasn’t shocking for my wife and I to receive a one hundred-thousand-dollar bill for the services we received that were outside of our healthcare plan, which we paid off.

As for my daughter’s one month in hospital convalescence, we recognized the disgraceful circumstances all those dedicated people in that hospital were working under, and we did our best to thank them all.  What a group, surgeon to janitor!

My sadness now is for all the people who seek out and need medical and surgical services here in California, including you, and not getting it. The quality just isn’t there, and we need a major reviving blast of the Spirit of Healing into those amazing people who want to heal you.  

Recently, I saw the timeless quote beginning this paper by Sir William Drummond from 220 years ago that appears to tell it all when considering the deterioration of our American medical profession and the loss of character of the American people. Citizens would rather video tragedy than to lend a hand now. Why get involved?

We have succumbed to evil, greedy bigots and decided to compromise with their agenda which makes us fools, and our doctors have become immoral slaves to the system out of pure cowardice.

It is time to focus on a new and bold way to do the business of medicine, one which is affordable, competent, satisfying, safe, and common sense, where people care about each other.  It is now up to you and me.

In the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, it says, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed”, and I am truly certain that by caring for each other and our progeny, our prognosis is going to be better than ever before, and we will make our Creator proud.