Episode 48: I Am Not Alone Down the Rabbit Hole: THE ATLANTIC's "Doctors Tell All--And It's Bad"

The Atlantic recently published an essay by a patient (also the daughter of a patient) whose experiences in today's health care system are as corrosive as those I've been pondering in The Mary Dell Show since Day One.

In fact, the author, Meghan O'Rourke, uses the same metaphor that I have for years for that health care system: "In the hospital, I always felt like Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party: I had woken up in a world that seemed utterly logical to its inhabitants, but quite mad to me." Those words are nearly verbatim from one of my Down the Rabbit Hole episodes published long ago.

Original illustration of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party
in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

O'Rourke also compares the amount of blood she gives to the stores of a vampire, as I did after having phlebotomies (blood letting) as treatment for my polycythemia. And how many times have I compared "essential or idiopathic this or that" to doctor-speak for physicians' not knowing what the hell is going on?  As, in fact, she does as well.

O'Rourke invokes the same phrase I often complain about when describing life Down the Rabbit Hole of today's medical system, one dispensed by that System like sugar pills:  "patient-centered care." That, I'm afraid, is a stark euphemism for "the patient comes last."

And O'Rourke agrees:  "For a system that invokes 'patient-centered care' as a mantra, modern medicine is startingly inattentive--at times actively indifferent--to patients' needs."

Well, isn't that exactly what I've been saying all along here?  In fact, the article started to get to me--it was as if O'Rourke had pulled phrases right out of my own record, though I'm not accusing her of doing that. It's simply, I suppose, that another literate patient has been given the run-around I have, and the same allusions and phrases occurred to her.

Big surprise.  All patients are being given that run-around.  Nearly every patient in today's health care system will fall down that Rabbit Hole.

Episode 40: On Invisible Disease, OR Breathless Sex and No Longer in a Good Way

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Episode 39: Big Clue for Mary Dell, MD (Medical Detective): Suffocating Again - or, Rather, Drowning

Air. Precious, sacred air.

My previous episode on this invisible but all-present substance in which we are all immersed, and upon which we all depend, is Episode 25: Down the Rabbit Hole and Suffocating.

Sadly, my body's lack of air continues, which is why I'm revisiting the topic. It's been a rough weekend.

I was so happy to have the artist's permission to include his image of Sacred Wind--nothing I've seen captures my current feelings about air quite so well:

Thanks so much to Douglas A. Sirois for permission to use this beautiful image, one that captures my feeling about the sacredness of air, especially given my increasing lack of the element in which we are immersed and dead without! The artist has many spiritual and fantasy illustrations I love!
www.dougsirois.com
douglas.sirois@verizon.net
http://dsiroisillustration.blogspot.com/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4223178/

Be prepared if you choose to stay with this Episode: There's a lot of yucky stuff here. That's what happens when one discusses his or her illness: there's lots of yucky stuff. But if we're going to be real, we have to be real, so on we go.

For over a year now I've suspected that my blood and, hence, my organs and tissues, have been under-oxygenated. This can be referred to as hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the body's tissues, usually due to hypoxemia, lack of oxygen in the blood), or oxygen desaturation.

Episode 25: Down the Rabbit Hole and Suffocating

Air.

The breath of life.

We are immersed in its invisible currents, and it travels throughout our bodies to bring life to each cell, our lungs infusing our blood with that precious O, and our blood cells in organs along the route suck it up, this life-giving element without which they, and we, will die.

Air.

How easy it is to take for granted, to forget about its ubiquitous and necessary presence in each moment we know ourselves to exist.

Thanks so much to Douglas A. Sirois for permission to use this beautiful image, one that captures my feeling about the sacredness of air, especially given my increasing lack of the element in which we are immersed and dead without! The artist has many spiritual and fantasy illustrations I love!
www.dougsirois.com
douglas.sirois@verizon.net
http://dsiroisillustration.blogspot.com/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4223178/

So.  Why is it that my cells are not getting enough air?  That is the medical question of the day, the hour, the year. In fact, dyspnea—shortness of breath—began noticeably for me over Christmas and New Year’s while traveling to Europe and Switzerland. Actually, it was more like utter exhaustion than shortness of breath—the shortness of breath came because I was trying to get that precious air to the muscles that threatened to give out beneath me.

Air didn’t seem so invisible to me that day.  Of course, I couldn’t see it, but I could visualize its little superhero blobs traveling newly oxygenated from my lungs through the arteries, greeted with joy and celebration by the thirsty cells waiting in muscle and tendon and bone and organ, the parts of us that need that bloody, airy drink to keep going.