This'd Be Funny If It Didnt Hurt So Much (Part One)

One Man’s Recent Journey with Socialized Medicine

“What do we do now, I don’t know how to put that back in?”
As I stood on the tarmac of the Helena Airport in Montana this past June, those were the words of one EMT to the other as my catheter fell out onto the ground. I’m a 63 year old former Marine sniper, Vietnam vet, and patient of the VA Healthcare System, America’s only real socialized medicine to date. I was about to leave Montana VA Healthcare, where quite frankly I’ve received excellent care, and enter the Salt Lake VA Healthcare system. As one of my former snipers from Dallas said, with a snide laugh, “You’re in my world now buddy!”
I was being moved by air ambulance from the Montana VA hospital to the one in Salt Lake City. My grey haired Urologists in Montana had done what they could for me, after two operations for kidney stones and the resultant complications when my right kidney was blocked, they deemed it an emergency and I was about to board my plane heading south. I told the two EMT’s who were holding me up how to replace my catheter and they moved me closer to the plane.
When I first saw the plane I was flat out on the gurney, wondering how they were going to get me into that thing. For a minute I thought I was back in Nam, at the old Phu Bai hanger. The plane was a small prop job with the flip down door and as I looked inside I could see a shiny metal bench where the seats had been and that was obviously where I was about to be placed.
I was weak from two back to back operations in a week, surprised at my quick loss of strength and without the morphine I’d been on for the number nine and ten pain I’d been experiencing. I turned to the younger of the two EMT’s and asked, “Exactly how do you plan on getting me from here into that plane?” he was a nice kid and meant well as he smiled and said, “Sir, we’re going to grab the sides of that sheet you are on and carry you to the plane”. I don’t think so.
They helped me stand, my rear end flapping in the summer breeze from my barely tied hospital gown, no dignity left, not even a little bit at this point, they help me to the plane and up the four steps where I first realize how small it really is. On my knees and with the help of the onboard nurse, I crawl to my bench with my head hitting the ceiling of the plane. I am six foot two inches tall and on my knees, my head on the ceiling of the plane, it was a small plane and smaller when filled with me and the nurse.
They strap down on my left side, as my right had a tube protruding from my kidney about the size of the gas line on your garden tractor. They called it a ‘perc’ but to me, it was pain personified. They had done a great job in Montana keeping ahead of the pain. But for the ride down I had to be off the IV for some reason and little did I know I’d be chasing pain for the next eight hours.
The thirty something pilot boards and crawls by me noticing my USMC tattoo on my right arm. He touches my shoulder and says, “Marine?” and I respond, “Yes Sir”. He says, “Marine, thank you for your service”. That is a very common response to a vet in the Montana Healthcare system, nearly every Doctor or Nurse you meet tells you that. I was surprised when I first came to the VA four years ago, driven there by my $1,300.00 premiums for private insurance, but having someone say that to you after Vietnam was kind of nice. I didn’t realize that was about to go out the window on my flight to Salt Lake.
I settled in for the two hour ride to Salt Lake with my two urine bags nearby. I had one set up for my right kidney that was blocked, and the other for my left because, well, when the stones start happening to me I don’t go from anywhere, thus the catheter for my left kidney. I was heading down for emergency laser surgery to get the four large stones in my right kidney and the eight stuck between my kidney and bladder, no small task. Their efforts to break them with ultra sound had failed.
The flight down was pretty uneventful until we hit some turbulence about half an hour outside Salt Lake. The nurse was nice along the way but without the ability to administer my pain med’s I was falling fast. By the time we touched down in Salt Lake my pain was bumping a 10 on their imaginary scale, only it wasn’t imaginary to me. The pilot crawled out and back to open the door and said, “My apologies Mr. Kugler, when we bring people to Salt Lake the EMT crews are always at least twenty to thirty minutes late. Great.

Apparently on their usual schedule the ambulance arrived about twenty minutes later and the two EMT’s stood outside with their gurney as I crawled to the door, looking down at the four steps I would fall down without help. I asked the nurse behind me if she might summon these two to help me down lest I splat on the hot tarmac of a Utah summer. Almost reluctantly, these two public servants made their way to me and helped me down and onto the gurney.
As I was getting onto the gurney, large tube sticking from my back and clasping my two bags of urine, I asked the big guy to be careful putting that rail up on the gurney, lest he hit my tubes in the back which by this time were killing me. With that he slammed the rail behind me up hitting the tube in my right kidney, sending a lightning bolt of pain through my back.
“Don’t you ever touch me again sucker!” I screamed at him, pointing a frail white finger in his face as he disappeared, leaving the female EMT to deal with me in the back. There was no apology, no ‘I’m sorry’, just a slam of the doors and a rough ride to the Salt Lake VA. Once in the back of the ambulance and on the move the young lady on board, who turned out to be nice, said, “Sir, where are we going?” I took a deep breath, trying to keep my growing anger inside and said, “I hope the VA hospital”. She explained that she knew that but ‘where in the VA was I going’. I suggested that perhaps that two inch thick stack of papers they handed her might contain the answer.

PART TWO: TOMORROW