Filibusted.Net

My father is a 70 year old retired New York City cab driver.  He now lives less than two miles from me in South Carolina’s upstate.  He has survived two heart attacks and a triple bypass surgery (both which occurred in his mid-forties).  He currently suffers from mild emphysema, high blood pressure, chronic leg and back pain, glaucoma, diabetes, sleep apnea, and an assortment of other problems that many 70 year old people have to deal with.  Even with his ailments, he is completely independent.  He lives alone, he drives, he takes care of his own shopping, bills, and his many monthly doctors appointments.  He is a Fox News loving ultra-conservative Catholic and I am a liberal atheist.  Boy, do we have some great debates.  When we’re not punching and counter-punching over politics and religion, we crack open a beer, grab some snacks, and enjoy America’s greatest past-time. Baseball.  Both of us were born and raised in New York.  At 11 month’s old I sat on my fathers lap and watched the Yanks win the ’78 World Series.  I’ve been hooked ever since.  I have no doubt that we are South Carolina’s biggest Yankee fans.  It’s our mutual love for baseball and the Yankees that sounded the alarm last week that something was wrong.

Last Wednesday, October 28th, the Yankees and Phillies played game one of the World Series at Yankee stadium.  Up to this point, my father and I had watched every game of the playoffs together at my house.  I spoke with him earlier that day and he told me that he didn’t feel good and was going to stay home.  He said it felt like a cold.  I asked him if he needed anything and he said no, he would see me the next day.  At this point I was mildly concerned.  My wife stopped by his house, checked his temperature, and sat with him for a bit.  She reported back that he seemed okay, he was just tired.  That put us at ease for the night.  The next day I went to work and gave him a call on my lunch break which was at one-o’clock in the afternoon.  He took a while to answer the phone and seemed confused when he finally picked up.  I asked him if he watched the game.  He said he fell asleep and asked me who won.  I understood that he was sick and it was possible that he slept through the game.  What was not comprehensible was that it was half way through the next day and he still didn’t know that the Yankees won.  I explained to my administrator that something was wrong with my father and I had to leave and check on him.  When I got to his house, he was not answering the door and I had to let myself in with my key.  What I found scared the shit out of me.  He was awake sitting on the couch.  He was trembling, breathing heavy, and he couldn’t think straight or complete a sentence.  When he tried to stand up, his legs were wobbly and he almost fell down.  I took him straight to the Emergency Room.

When we got to the ER, I had to get a wheelchair to bring him in.  The receptionist asked me for his insurance card and I gave her his Medicare card.  We waited about ten minutes before we were called back by a nurse.  She asked him some simple questions that he was unable to answer.  She took his blood pressure and was unable to get a reading.  It was that low.  The hospital staff then quickly went to work.  They hooked him up to IV’s, drew blood, and were questioning me throughly to try and figure out what was wrong.  About an hour later, when the blood work came back, they told me his Kidney’s shut down.  He was in complete Renal failure.  Hours later when they got his blood pressure stabilized, they transferred him to into the Critical Care Unit.  The doctor told me that she was surprised that he was still conscious.  She said that I shouldn’t let that fool me, and that he was fighting for his life.  I needed to get his Living Will and Medical Directive and start calling some family members.  Looking back on that, I don’t know how I didn’t break down, but I didn’t.  I stayed calm and did what I had to do.

None of that was necessary.  The doctors and nurses at St. Francis Hospital saved his life.  By Saturday, his Kidneys started to function on their own, his blood pressure was back to normal, and he wanted to watch baseball.  On Sunday, he was transferred out of CCU.  The concern now was getting his strength back.  The doctors and I decided that Physical Therapy was necessary to aid in his recovery.  The question was whether he could go home and have a therapist come in a few times a week or if he should go to a Nursing Home Facility that has a rehabilitation unit.  We all agreed that full time care was the best course of action.  This was the first time that money came up since he entered the hospital.  The hospital social worker and I looked at his coverage and found out that Medicare would cover 100% of his therapy at a Nursing Home for 20 days and 80% after that up to 100 days.  His Medicaid would pick up the difference if he needed longer than 20 days, but they predicted that he wouldn’t have to be their more than two-weeks.  We moved him into NHC yesterday (a five star nursing facility) and his therapy starts today.  He is already walking around the building on his own and is on track for a full recovery.

Government run insurance works and works well.  It was obvious in the hospital and in the nursing facility that the staff loves Medicare patients because they don’t have to worry about procedural or monetary issues.  Go figure.  Doctors and nurses want to do the jobs they were trained to do.  Saving lives and caring for patients.

Thanks to the excellent work done by the doctors and nurses at St. Francis Hospital and NHC, tonight my father and I get to watch Game 6 of the World Series together.  Thanks to Medicare, he gets to recover without the stress of how much this is all going to cost him.  That’s the way it should be.  Not just for him, but for all of us.