Could Have, Would Have, Should Have

Navigating a fractured heathcare system with a fractured finger

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Six months ago I fell on some stone steps at a friend's house and broke my a finger.  I won't go into the details of the accident; suffice to say that, because of a myriad of circumstances, I did not get good medical care. In fact, it’s possible that the care I did receive had made things worse. I don’t know yet.

To begin at the beginning: First of all, I had to drive myself to the emergency room with a broken hand. It happened at around 9pm on a Friday night and the friend I was staying with (and dogsitting for, starting the following morning) chose not to come to my aid, because that would have meant having to cut short her an important family dinner party.  (This, in hindsight, was quite traumatizing, but I tend to normalize and accept anyone’s unwillingness to offer me support, so therein lies my first mistake. I simply accepted that no one would offer me support and went forward on my own.) Then, the emergency room I had to drive myself to (Northern Dutchess---which is supposed to be the "only good one" in my area) told me they had "no doctor available" to treat me.  They told me this after making me wait for at least three hours in a reclining chair in a freezing hallway lined with reclining chairs and disgruntled-looking people who were also waiting to be seen.  (The facility was freezing because hospitals these days place their comfort of their medical equipment over the comfort of their patients.).  Why were were kept in the hallway and not admitted into treatment rooms is still a mystery to me--perhaps because we weren't true emergencies in the eyes of the medical system?--but the whole scene reminded me of that episode in Brideshead Revisited where Charles visits Sebastian in an abysmal charity hospital in Morocco and the hallways are lined with suffering poor people.  There, at Northern Dutchess, I could hear an old man repeating "help" over and over again from one of the actual treatment rooms.  And this was in Rhinebeck! (I have since learned from multiple members of the medical community itself that Northern Dutchess is no longer considered to be the go-to emergency room in our area. But that's another story.)

Anyway, they sat me in that uncomfortable chair in that freezing hallway and said someone would be with me "shortly." So I plugged in my earbuds and pressed play on a 58-minute version of Robert Slap's classic calming-song "Eternal Om" and began to silently chant the Medicine Buddha mantra as well as a mantra for pain-relief.  The song repeated three times before I was taken in for an x-ray,  and I was told I had a "serious break" in my finger.  I was told it had "almost snapped clean off."  Then I was sent back to the reclining chair and to the moaning man and another round of "Eternal Om," until a nurse--actually three nurses--finally came to tell me that they had no doctors available and that I was being released.  I wondered why I suddenly had three nurses standing in front of me when there had been none for the past four hours. Was this the new midnight shift? One of them wrapped a soft bandage around my finger--without splinting it--and told me it was imperative that I make sure I saw a specialist within three days, but she said this to me on a Friday night.

Meanwhile, I was still in a semi-traumatized state, so I didn't question anything.  I did not question the lack of treatment, the lack of a splint.  When our systems are in shock, our minds aren't exactly keen to the logic of things. Or lack thereof.  

This is why it's beneficial to have a friend or family member--basically anyone not in shock-- drive you to the hospital when you've broken a bone. A friend might have, for instance, demanded that I be seen by a doctor.  A friend might have demanded that they set my bone and properly splint it. A friend might have demanded that they give me a pain-killer (not that I would have taken it--I had my mantra).

But I was exhausted by that point, and demoralized, and still in shock (but not in too much pain) so I drove myself back to my friend's house. She and her family had already gone to sleep. I noticed that they hadn't even left an outside light on for me, even though I just broken a bone tripping up their uneven stone steps.  Then I noticed that I noticed this and decided to just let that all go. My friend has her own stuff going on and very often we can’t see past our own stuff. 

It did not even occur to me at that point to drive myself down to NYC to see a proper doctor. NYC is home to the reputedly best orthopedic hospital in the world: Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). But, as I keep saying, I was already traumatized by the accident itself; I was already traumatized by the fact that neither my friend nor anyone at that dinner party offered to help me; I was traumatized by Northern Dutchess Hospital’s inability to provide adequate treatment; so my mindset was that of someone who had been triggered right back into an old and pervasive thought-pattern of unworthiness. I was in the mindset if: I am not worth helping. 

And remember: if our minds are looping though the belief that I am not worth helping, this--at a vibratory level--makes it less likely that people will feel drawn to help.