What is your disease? Is it curable?”

Unfortunately there is nothing you CAN do to help me, I can no longer SURVIVE long travels.

During my stay in the army I sustained a deep “bone bruise” to my lower femur. A couple months convalescence and a few hundred bucks worth of steroids and supliments would have been sufficient to solve the problem, but beuacracy intervened. There simply weren’t enough troops to pick up after Bush the First’s mess in the middle east, and I was needed…so I was sent (over my protest).

Fast forward a year.

I was discharged from the army because the “bone bruise” had progressed to a full-blown fissure system on the surface of the bone, due to lack of immediate medical care. As the condition continues the fissures spread and multiply, slowly shattering the surface of the bone in the area of my knee joint. Eventually a piece of the bone will flake off and fall into my bloodstream…and then its all over. That piece will lodge somewhere, most likely my heart, and I die in a matter of seconds to minutes. Even if I was IN an emergency room when it happened, I could not be saved.

Vibration and impact, such as from riding in a car or even walking with a cane, accelerate the development of fissures. As well as hurts like hell.

But there IS a surgery that could save my life. They use an MRI to isolate the exact area of damaged bone, then disassemble my knee and shave the damaged portion of bone away, and reassemble my knee. As you can no doubt guess, the procedure is HIDEOUSLY expensive. Not because of the expense of the procedure, but the INSURANCE PREMIUMS that must be paid to cover it! It would also leave me with permanent scar tissue inside my knee joint, so I would not be any more mobile than I am now.

But I would live to see next xmas.

And I could survive traveling long distances.

And I might get a decent night’s sleep, instead of passing out then waking up several times as the pain spikes.

You want to know what is fucking HILARIOUS?! If I was in almost ANY industrialized country on the face of the planet, I could get this taken care of in a month. INCLUDING Russia or Cuba! Even though I am not a citizen. And yet….I could not survive the trip TO such a place, lol.

Sorry!

I did not read your entire post. Do there is anything we can do to help you?

What is your disease? Is it curable?

Mikael more is right and is doing his patriotic duty to raise the issue. The health care in this contry is a big hartless and expensive mess that certainly do no serve the citizen of this country.

A good health insurance is a system in which the healthy pay for the sicks. Personally I believe it is a great deal because I would rather pay than beeing sick. Moreover if I fall sick I can no longer pay until I am healthy again.

We have to wip it out and rebuild it from scratch. Like any system capitalism has it’s one limits and this is clearly one of them. Health care should be protected from money and profit.

Karl Max which by the way never advocated the communist system as he predicted the collapse of communist also predicted the collapse of capitalism. This colapse already occurs once leading to World War II; Remember?

Are we going to do something to save our curent system or are we going to wait for the next collapse and World War III?

BULLSHIT! Complete and total CRAP-SPEAK!

I am one of those “isolated” stories, I know dozens more personally (many of whom I am related to), and HUNDREDS more as loose associates. In fact, EVER LAST LIVING BREATHING OR DEAD PERSON I HAVE EVER TAKEN THE TIME TO TALK ABOUT THIS WITH, IS A VICTIM OF THE FOR-PROFIT HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY WITH HORROR STORIES TO TELL…an not a SINGLE good experience.

Except for three people who went to Canada for surgeries that they COULD NOT get done here in the USA. All three of them I met while sitting in a Veteran’s Affairs waiting room, trying to get services from an administration glutted by Iraq war casualties, and struggling under a budget that BushCo takes perverse pleasure in slashing year after year. The four of us needed operations to LIVE, but we had all been discharged FOR THOSE CONDITIONS before we had two years in service….so the VA won’t touch us. Fuck they CAN’T touch us, they just don’t have the manpower or cash!

And civilian healthcare system won’t even LOOK at us because of our “pre-existing conditions”. My three acquaintances could afford to take a road trip to Canada, get hitched to some friendly locals, and get their operations.

I was already married at the time. Now that I am divorced, I can’t afford the trip (hell, my health is so bad I couldn’t SURVIVE the trip).

And all this could have been solved with about $500 worth of drugs 10 years ago when the injury occurred…BEFORE it became a chronic life-threatening condition.

So I say FUCK the privatized healthcare system, FUCK Nixon for instituting it, FUCK BushCo for perpetuating it and doing his best to neuter the few precious SOCIALIZED (VA and MediCare) healthcare systems we have, and most especially FUCK EVERY SINGLE APOLOGIST LIKE GOOGLE THAT WHITE-WASHES THIS HORROR STORY OF A SYSTEM!

I have about 2-3 months left to live, and these last few months are going to be hallmarked by unimaginable pain and immobility. Wake the hell UP america, and kick the fascist elites out of power…