Under the knife...after a while.. and yes, I AM warm enough....

One argument people in the US always have against socialized medicine is they feel they will have to wait in long lines to get any medical attention at all. Today, that point became quite ironically home to me when I had to go to out patient surgery for a minor operation. Here's the recap...

My surgery, a simply removal of a benign cyst, was scheduled for 2pm. I was told to get to the outpatient surgical admitting office by 1pm so they could take my information and prep me on time. I arrived at 1pm on the dot. I was immediately taken into a small office, they made a copy of my medical insurance card and had me sign one already prepared form which took all of 5 minutes. Then I was told to sit and wait until someone came for me. About another 5 minutes passed and someone did, indeed, come for me. She took me back into the surgical prep area and placed me in a cubicle that had one small gurney in it and a side table. I was given a hospital down and some nifty paper booties to put on and told to lie on the gurney until someone else came for me. So I did.

After lying there for an hour with no one coming to get me, someone else popped in to finally give me a blanket. Then she left.

I laid there for another hour eavesdropping on the conversations of the people in the next cubicle (they were trying to think of the name of the film where Tom Hanks was lost on an island...I wanted to yell out "Cast Away" but thought that would be rude) and the nurses at the front station (who had finally decided to order sandwiches for lunch rather than go to the hospital dining room) and the lady across the way (who was complaining about her impending colonoscopy). Finally, someone popped in to ask me if I was warm enough. Yes, I was.

Another half hour went by and the first person who brought me into the cubicle in the first place came back to tell me that someone would be right with me. I was doubtful but it turned out she was right! FINALLY, a surgical nurse came in (2 1/2 hours after I was let in) and told me that she was taking me to surgery. She wheeled me (on the gurney) through some rather loud doors and down the hall. She stopped to give me a lovely blue paper hat to put on my head and then into a large room with an odd variety of hospital equipment lying around. It did NOT look anything like what you see on ER!

My cyst was on the back of my neck so she spent some time trying to figure out the best way to get me on the surgical table since I had to lie face down. She was about to lower the table and higher the gurney and have me do some kind of gymnastic roll when I suggested that I just stand up and get on the table. It was the easiest way after all and would require far less balance and effort than the "Great Flying Wallenda" act she was putting together. So I did. Not one second later the doc entered the room. I was swabbed with some ice cold betadyne to sterilize the area and we were off. Ten minutes later I was done! I was wheeled back into the cubicle, told to get dressed and I could go! I waited all that time for what turned out to be a non-event with very little discussion about what, exactly, was happening back there as they were cutting me. I tried to ask some questions afterwards like "Did he give me stitches?" and "Will I have pain when this wears off?" The nurse didn't answer me at all! Instead she asked me where I got my hair cut because she thought it was cute. What?? I was handed a piece of paper and out I went. Luckily, the paper did say I would have pain (okay, that's not the lucky part...) but told me that I could take Ibuprofen every four hours and it would take care of it.

The moral of the story is this...
I have excellent medical insurance. I know I'm one of the lucky ones but I do pay quite a bit each month out of my paycheck for it so I don't feel privileged, I just feel lucky to work somewhere that this is an option. But the argument that socializing the US medical health policies would mean long wait times and long lines doesn't hold water with me. I have never had a medical appointment where I haven't been made to wait at least an hour to see the doc even though I have scheduled my appointments in advance and this trip to surgery and my 3 hour wait time with little to no interaction with anyone shows me that regardless of insurance, I will wait. The only difference I can see is that with one, the system we have now, I pay through the nose in order to be able to get the medical attention I need and with the other I would not. So what's the issue really?

Side note...Ibuprofen is good but is NOT working to kill this pain at all. I'll live but I will complain about it. So there...