A day devoured by locusts.

View 713 Monday, February 13, 2012

A day thoroughly devoured by locusts. I woke up with the same condition I’d had – feeling as if I were recovering, but with no energy to do much. I had resolved to get through that when the locusts arrived. First I had errands and shopping. Then Roberta, having reported her symptoms to her physician, was advised to go out to the clinic. She’s got what I have but she got it a bit later than I did and it’s been pretty severe, and there seemed to be some other problems, and, anyway I put the groceries away, filled the dishwasher and turned it on, and took her out to Kaiser Urgent Care. Urgent Care was stacked – it always is on a Monday – and they decided to send her over to the Emergency Room.

That was stacked too, literally people on gurneys in the hall, but they got to her fairly soon and did a lot of tests, She got one of the last rooms before the real stack up started. And then I had to go find her something to eat and she has diet restrictions so that took some time, and everyone was busy, and then there were prescriptions, so having left the house at 3 PM after two and a half hours of shopping — well, we’re back now at 2145. Some good came out of all this.

First Roberta is all right, but she did need some attention. We have the prescriptions, All will be well. Second, I found that if I have to I can do things meaning that I need to focus a bit more will power on getting things done. I may not feel wonderful, but I am not disabled. Almost, but not quite yet, anyway.

Third, I know how to solve the American health care problem. Well, not really: the “solution “ would be to clone Kaiser often enough that everyone can get in on it. Alas, I have no idea how to do that. Kaiser is unique among bureaucracies in that I have yet to meet a typical bureaucrat there, someone more concerned with the rules than with just doing what the outfit was made for, which is to make people feel better. Sure some people are nicer and more efficient than others, but none of them seem to have that bureaucratic attitude that proclaims “I don’t care. I don’t have to.” Everyone was harried, it couldn’t have been much busier, there were lots of extraneous distractions, including us since the ER was somewhat more power care than we needed – and it would be hard for the people I met there to have been more cheerful or helpful. Of course any attempt to simply expand the organization would very likely ruin it. It ain’t broke. Don’t fix it.

I am no expert on health care systems. I have no ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of making other people pay for people’s health care. It seems to me that what people get free they despise, and the economic principle that there is no limit to demand of a free good holds in spades with big casino in the health care field. Kaiser’s co-payments are enough that I’d prefer not to have made them, but not so stiff I can’t afford them; seems about the right level to me.

And finally I came back to find that the subscriptions and renewals are coming in. If you haven’t subscribed, this would be a good time to do it. If you haven’t renewed in a while, this would be a good time to do that. This is Pledge Drive Week, and I won’t let you forget it.

Now I’m going to go relax. I had an In ‘N Out burger for dinner, and got the no-bread wrap version for Roberta. Good stuff.