In the “coiled embolisation” procedure, a catheter is inserted into a small incision made in the patient’s groin area and it’s guided up through the blood vessels to the spot in the brain where the leak has developed. A fine wire made of platinum is fed up the tube and then spun or “coiled” inside the ruptured aneurysm pocket. When successful, the tightly knitted platinum coil permanently seals off the leak in a matter of minutes. Amazing.
The coil procedure takes many hours, under most conditions, to complete. And yes, as you can imagine, the costs are astronomical. But “coiling” has a pretty good track record of success. As long as the brain doesn’t swell up—in reaction to the blood pooling inside the subarachnoid cavity—patients have a pretty good chance of living and living without massive disabilities. When they’re younger, that is. My mom was pretty old for this surgery.
But the doctors standing around her bed on the evening of June 29 had a hunch—just a gut feeling perhaps—that this little lady might have a chance against the long odds.
So they went for it. On July 1, Mom underwent the coiling surgery at OSF St. Joes.
The next morning, July 2, Mom walked down the hall of the St. Joe’s Comprehensive Care Unit—unaided. She marched right past her surgeon, Dr. Anjeet Gordhan, and never looked back.
Two months later, Mom is still truckin’ on down the road. She’s back to 95% of her previous lifestyle and abilities. Her only “loss” was a slight slurring of her speech. But she is gardening, quilting, and going out with her girlfriends again. She battles fatigue at times, but nobody in our household is complaining. She could have died, she could have been paralyzed. We’ll accept the annoyance of having to take a nap in the afternoons, believe me.
But another doctor at OSF changed my entire political viewpoint on Healthcare Reform just a few minutes after Mom did her Victory Lap around the CC Unit.
“You know, under Obamacare, your Mother would have been too old for this surgery,” the Doc told us frankly. “If we were living in Canada or Europe, a Medical Review Board would have looked at your Mom’s age—her age alone– and said, ‘Sorry. Too high a risk. Too old to make it worth the trouble and money.’ We would have been forced to deny her this surgery.”
Whoosh. Sweep. There went my politics!
Thankfully, the Doctors at Bromenn and OSF, the guys who were standing there looking at Mom, could apparently tell something about her that no distant Medical Review Board could have seen. They could also hear my desperation as I talked about her. How close we are. How bonded we are. How petrified I was at the thought of losing her. How adored she is by so many people in town–for her spunk, her service as a Bromenn Hospice volunteer for 15 years, and as a volunteer Quilter at the McLean County Historical Society.
If anyone deserved this precious—and yes, expensive—second chance, well, I thought my Mom did. And apparently, so did our team of 7 (count ‘em 7!) Neurosurgeons and other specialists.
Would a Medical Review Board under Obamacare have thought so?
Nope.
Under Obamacare, as it stands now, Mom would likely have been given a heavy dose of morphine and would have been allowed to “pass” in as little discomfort as possible while her brain swelled and systems started shutting down. No doubt she would have been a patient in her own Hospice organization for a few days until her process of dying was completed.
She would have been written off for economic reasons. The numbers–of her age, and the high hospital and surgeon charges–would have done her in.
It is for this reason that I now believe that we can never allow a system of Health Care in this country to develop where the local doctors on the scene are over-ruled by any central Big Government “Medical Review Board.”
Healthcare has to be about People—not about Numbers. Doctors have to weigh the odds, not Bean Counters.
I am a Democrat from a long line of FDR New Deal Democrats. I exist because of the New Deal –since my father’s family was desperately poor during the Depression and my mother grew up at the Lucy Morgan Home, a real-life “Little Orphan Annie” indeed. Without the New Deal Democrats of the 1930’s, my parents would have never survived childhood and I wouldn’t be here today.
But all alliances between me and the Democratic Party are off when it comes to this issue: I will never support any national health care program which strips a Dr. Gordhan of the power of saving little 81 year old women if he damn well thinks they can be saved!
So I am warning Debbie Halvorson, Dick Durbin, and Barack Obama right now: I will fight you tooth and nail if your Democrat-led health care reforms go there. I don’t care how you folks manage to bring about reform, but you’re not going to do it with any system dominated by Medical Review Boards.
No, I don’t care about the “greater good,” or the “overall picture.” No, I don’t care about the “economics” of your proposed system. I care about My Mom, and I care about all the Moms and all the other Families in this country who may one day suddenly find themselves in this kind of nightmare. No, Federal Government, you’re not going to use mere numbers and statistics to determine whether our Moms live or die.
I would be prepared to become Sarah Palin’s next “Joe the Plumber” icon on this issue, if I had to, to get the message across to my Democrat Congresswoman and Senator in Washington, and my Democrat President.
That “Grandma” is my Mom.
And oh, no you’re not pulling my Mom’s plug!