My mornings follow a strict routine: I battle the snooze button, check to make sure there are no spiders in my slippers before putting them on, and call Wade, my neurologist.
I’m not calling my neurologist at 7:59 every morning because I want to hear his sweet voice. I am calling because I only receive care when I am annoying, aggressive, and often threatening. It takes three unanswered calls for me to switch from “please give me a ring as soon as possible” to “if I pass away, my blood is on your hands.”
Wade’s receptionist, Crystal, recognizes my apathetic morning groan and doesn’t even ask the standard slew of questions. It’s my 12th call this week.
Healthcare shouldn’t resemble a nasty breakup with a romantic partner, but it does. Between pleading with insurance companies, accessing your own medical documentation, and navigating intricate hospital systems, taking care of yourself these days is more complex than having a rocky relationship.
This isn’t my first time being in a toxic medical relationship. Over the past eight years, I’ve developed a roster of hospitals who have likely shaved more years off my life working with them than my actual illness has.
Typically when you call a doctor’s office of any kind, you have approximately 15 seconds to recite your full legal name, your birthdate, and a one sentence synopsis of your current ailment. These seconds are vital. You have to convince whatever unlucky, minimum-wage paid employee on the other side of the phone that you need help from the person in the white coat who does not answer phones.
In an ideal world with an ideal healthcare system, patients would receive timely, effective care. Referrals would go through seamlessly. Doctors wouldn’t prescribe hormonal birth control for every single symptom in the book. Patients would treat receptionists with respect and show up for scheduled appointments. Specialists wouldn’t be booked out entire years in advance.
This is not the world we live in, and the most effective way to cope with this is to be as vigilant a patient as possible. My doctors might roll their eyes when they see me approach their table with color-coded medication lists and a binder of past discharge summaries, but I know that I have a set amount of time in which I will be given a professional’s attention. I know that if I do not plead my case expertly, I’ll be kicked to the curb like another unwanted lover. Or even worse — I’ll be kept in a friendzone of complacency and negligence.
The hardest pill to swallow isn’t an opioid or the newest antidepressant — it’s the fact that en masse, the American healthcare system does not care about people. It is just like any other system, a faceless entity that values efficiency and profit above all else. Individual companies and practitioners can care about you, but by and large, you are a piece of data. These days, you’ll be lucky to find a doctor who doesn’t treat appointments like one-night stands.
That is what makes healthcare communication issues so infuriating — it feels personal when it absolutely isn’t. The only solution is persistence. Patients should not feel guilty for calling repeatedly and documenting the wild goose chases that compose appointment arrangements and medication changes. Patients should use online portals, take down names of the individuals they speak to, and be an active participant in the lifelong pursuit of taking care of yourself. Because if we don’t, it’s clear no one else will.
