Pale Moons In The Hallway

And a quick shot of morphine

You’ve no doubt noticed that I’ve been off the regular posting schedule here at Emeth these past handful of days.

Sorry about that, Mrs. Bailey got sick.

So, we had to take her to see ol’ Dr. Sawbones in his Cutting Factory.

Photo by Hunter Haley on Unsplash

Of course, being a good husband, I offered to take care of things for her. The way I figure it, I’ve got a sharp knife, and if I combine that with a Youtube video or two (one can learn to fix most anything with a Youtube video or two) I could get her taken care of lickety split! Alas though, she just doesn’t seem to trust my doctorin’ skills.

This despite the fact that if she let me do the surgery on our dining room table I wouldn’t, afterwards, make her walk down hallways in some gown thing that doesn’t close in the back!

In any event, Mrs. Bailey gets to come home from the Cuttin’ Factory around midday today.

She’s got five new incisions, and Augie the Wonder Dog is looking forward to jumping on each and every one of them.

All of this is a long way of saying that Mrs. Bailey’s been in the hospital.

And that we have now missed spending Valentine’s Day together for eight consecutive years. But, she’s fixed up good as new, like takin’ the car to Jiffy Lube (me, I go to Fred’s, but you get the idea) for the works, and she gets to come home today.

So, all is well, and right with the world once again.

Two things really did strike me during this experience though.

First is the apparent lack of meaningful questions that I’m told are asked in hospitals.

The story goes something like this…

I’m sound asleep in my bed, dreaming of sugar plums and rainbows, when suddenly I’m being beaten about the head and shoulders with a stick. My eyes pop open in fright to see Mrs. Bailey standing over me saying something like: “I’m darn near dead, get your lazy butt outta bed and drive me to the hospital!”

I’m sure that it went just like that.

So, I climb outa bed, throw her into the bed of the pickup and drive her there.

Time passes. Lots and lots of time.

They bring a convict in from the jail. That was interesting.

I talk to some old timer who spent his career logging around here. He tells me lots of stories of that work, each of them filled with just about as much nonsense as this particular post.

Eventually a Doc wanders in. I can’t remember, but I think her last name was Frankenstein. Anyway, she’s all dressed in black leather, she’s carrying a whip in her hand, and she’s sporting a sadistic gleam in her eye.

She says something like: “I’ve decided that I’ve got to slice you open, take out and rearrange your guts, then I’ll stuff everything back inside and you’ll be good as new. Let’s get to it.”

I share a knowing look with Mrs. Bailey, and we say: “Are you sure? Can’t she just go home with some vitamins and Ensure?”

She makes her case.

We talk it over for awhile, Mrs. Bailey and I.

Eventually we tell her, yep, let’s get it done. With extra morphine of course.

Then ol’ Sawbones says the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m not even embellishing this part. Straight up true this bit…

She says: “No one has ever questioned me like that before.”

Well, I’ve got to say, that really shocked me.

Remember up above where I spouted some nonsense about Jiffy Lube -vs- my beloved Fred’s Oil Change Joint?

Well, there’s a reason I go to Fred’s and not Jiffy Lube. Many years ago I used to go to Jiffy Lube.

And it seems to me that every damn time I went to Jiffy Lube, the Jiffy Lube dude would declare that I needed a new Air Filter or some other easily exchanged part long before the manufacturer’s replacement schedule.

See, that’s how they made extra cash. By tellin’ folks that it would be a good idea to replace some little part that didn’t need replacin’.

So, that’s why I go to Fred’s. Because the not-Fred guy just changes my oil without trying to sell me some other doodad that I don’t need.

Now, if I was a People Cutter by trade, and I wanted a nice new Porsche, I’d be just like the Jiffy Lube guy. I’d be cuttin’ out every tonsil and appendix I saw.

Way I figure it, it’s just a good idea to ask. Somethin’ like: “Does the manufacturer recommend that I change my air filter every three thousand miles?”

That’s basically what we asked the Doc.

And she claims that no one has ever actually asked her a question like that before.

That’s amazing to me.

I can’t see blind trust as ever being a good thing.

It might also point out, pretty darn clearly, to one of the reasons health care is so damn expensive here in the U.S. of A.

And that brings me to the second thing that has been ever present in my mind during this experience.

The cost of the whole deal.

Mrs. Bailey and I have no experience with this whatsoever.

For all the years I’ve known her, she’s pretty much just flatly refused to go to the doctor.

At some point during this ordeal, they asked her who her Primary Care Doctor is. She answered Dr. Chef or something like that.

As she was answering, I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, yeah, very old Dr. Chef was your grandmother’s doctor (who she maybe saw once every few years) but in all my years of knowing you, you’ve certainly never been in to see Dr. Chef.’ I let it go though. One doesn’t want to admit perhaps that one hasn’t actually been to the general practitioner in a few decades.

For me, well, I do go to the doctor. The doctor in Mexico where there is never much of a wait, the service is good, and the price is dirt cheap.

All of this is just some background to me letting you know that we do have health insurance. Health insurance that we never use.

We actually have (we think) quite exceptional health insurance. Our employment offers a broad selection of plans, some of which would cost nothing out of our own pockets, and some of which come with fairly significant premiums coming out of ye ol’ paycheck every month.

We have always bought the most expensive plan offered by our employer. The gold standard deal. For an occasion just like this one.

Because of that I imagine that this whole thing will cost us very little.

But I can’t help but wonder about the financial ruin something like this would bring to someone without insurance, or with inadequate insurance. Someone who couldn’t afford good insurance, so would therefore be plagued with crushing medical bills for the rest of his or her life.

I thought about that every time the wife grabbed a Kleenex that the hospital will probably charge two grand for. I imagine they’ll charge more for the little cup of jello they fed her for breakfast this morning than what Chevy would charge me for a new truck.

And all that’s before the actual Cuttin’ Crew gets their hands bloody.

The simple fact is that the American health care system just doesn’t work. I mean sure, if your body is broken, it’ll fix ya, and it’ll fix ya quick and good.

But, we can’t afford to pay for it. Poor and middle class individuals can’t afford to pay for it, so far too often people are broken by medical bills. Government can’t afford it either. Health care costs, Medicare, Medicaid, and the rest are driving Federal and State budgets to truly unsustainable levels.

As a society, we’ve got to get a handle on it.

At one point someone pulled the bright orange socks that they had earlier put on her feet off of them and replaced them with bright yellow socks. As I watched, they threw the orange ones into the garbage pail.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I had to restrain myself from diving into that garbage can to fetch those orange socks. I have to imagine that the hospital will bill our insurance company a few thousand dollars for them, and I thought, just for a moment, that perhaps we should frame them under glass and sell tickets to people who might want to come see the most expensive socks in the world.

When I go to the doctor in Mexico, they don’t give me any socks.

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Please don’t worry about anything here at Casa Bailey. We don’t have an ongoing problem. I’m posting this after Melinda is well on the pathway to health.

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I regret that I am unable to host Rummer and Grapes this evening. She’ll be home by that time, and I presume armed with a big stick which she will use to whack me if I don’t wait upon her at all times.