I’m still waiting to get an appointment with a cardiologist. It has been three weeks after I was told that I have some real issues in that department.
Certainly, there are some good things about medical care in this country. We probably have some of the best and most advanced medicine in the world, if you can pay for it. However, it is uneven in its availability.
We don’t have a system, but a mishmash of providers and insurance companies, government and private payment programs. Each one has a catalog of what’s covered and what’s not that takes an army of office staff to keep up with.
The goal of electronic records to make your information available to you and each of your providers has been a failure. Different systems are still being used.
The fact that I am still waiting for a response from a huge university cardiology group indicates that prompt, personal care is the exception, not the rule.
I am not a patient patient. My primary care doctor expressed great concern and a sense of urgency about my condition, and I can’t even get a returned phone call from a huge provider with a large staff of doctors. Something is wrong.
At times I am indignant. At times I am anxious and begin to imagine symptoms I don’t have. At times I am distracted, and it all is pushed to the back of my mind.
Waiting is a bitch. I have no idea about the tests or procedures that will be performed on me, or how long it all will take, or how we should plan for anything.
It’s all new to me having enjoyed good health most of my life.
What do you do when you are troubled by something but unable to do anything about it?
You can worry yourself sick about it.
You can wear out your family or friends by talking about it all the time.
Or you can make peace with it through prayer and faith and immerse yourself in life each day.
This waiting, this helplessness, reminds me that it not only relates to our personal life, but also the interpersonal.
How many times have we wanted something for somebody more than they seemed to want it themselves? These are the people who keep falling into the same hole, rather it is addiction, money management, or accepting treatment for mental illness.
They ask for help. We help them. Then they fall again and again. We cannot fix them, no matter what we do. They have to take the necessary steps for themselves.
I was a pastor for two decades and was confronted with this dilemma repeatedly, but there are no magic words. There isn’t enough money. There are no life-altering seminars. There is no magic prayer. The process of recovery usually comes gradually, one step at a time and it begins in the heart of the person who has been a victim of their own decisions.
But we can still support them, love them, and prayer for them.
