It was a chest pain, or something like it. You read all the warnings pasted on the advertisements in your latest “Enquirer” magazine, or heard the list of symptoms solemnly recounted by a sonorous, earnestly serious announcer on cable TV. Maybe he was a doctor, or maybe just an actor, but the information was surely to be regarded as factual and vital.

Even the latest commercial warned you about that secret piece of plaque, ready to move in on your weak blood vessel and cause a chain of reactions comparable to a nuclear reactor disaster, if you didn’t hurry up and buy their special medicine, which guaranteed safety from such dire outcome. But so much information, coupled together with the stress of dealing with the never-can-be-pleased mother-in-law and the boss whose sum total of words to you consisted of “have that project ready by tomorrow; I will need it,” and you are ready to believe that the chest pain means something and you should go to the emergency room.
“It’s just indigestion,” you tell yourself.

Then your left arm starts to hurt. Maybe that bowling ball was a bit heavy to haul around for your son, but he was having so much fun, and he couldn’t lift it himself, could he? Well, that’s why you have such a sore left arm. But wait-now you are dizzy. Dizzy spells. Left arm hurts. Chest pains. And maybe a little nauseated? That’s a sign, too. Didn’t that last magazine article you read warn you that even though it may seem like nothing, you should still get it checked out? After all, these direful diseases often creep up on you without any warning symptoms at all.
But you are uninsured.

What do you do?

Finally, after three days of arm pain, chest pain, dizzy spells and a “feeling of doom” (also a heart attack symptom), you can wait no longer. You check your bank account, see how much you have left, and deciding it is enough to at least pay for a hour of observation, you head for the emergency room. You go, tell them first thing that you are uninsured, and then that you have been having chest pains. You explain you will pay cash or credit. That being cleared up, they take you to a room with pull-around curtains, have you strip down, cover you with a hospital special, and then come after you with the IV tube. You can never go to the hospital for any reason without being staked with an IV tube. And of course you have little bitty veins, that the nurse can’t find, so she has to try again, and again, while apologizing, while you grit your teeth and wish she’d get the danged thing in there or forget the whole thing. They bring in the EKG machine, but the nurse is still struggling with the IV needle, and so off they go again, saying they’ll come back later because they don’t have time to wait for the IV experiment to achieve success.

Finally, the IV is in, and the nurse disappears. You still wonder about your chest pain, you still feel dizzy, and you’re reading a magazine, a hospital special about the government and all the political circus drama that is going on at that particular time. Well, it all seems far away, Washington, while you’re in the hospital wondering where the humans all went, but the same magazine has a feel-good article in it about a man who had a stroke, lost his power of speech, and then, with the help of his dedicated, loving wife, learned to communicate again and then got a job helping Little League or something like that. Of course it’s all very moving, but over and over it is stressed how difficult this loving couple had it and, oh, man, what if the chest pain means the same thing will now happen to you!
About the time this article really cheers your spirits, the emergency doctor finally shows up. He begins asking questions, and about that time they roll in the EKG machine, and its time to find out what that ticker is really doing.

This means sticky goo on bare chest, and electrodes, but unlike the IV, at least they don’t stick you. The paper is run, the machine coughs and sputters, and they have to do it again. You hope it won’t cost more money. But anyway, they have a reading. Now the doctor wants to take your blood. That’s standard, too, hospitalwise, along with the IV. If it involves having to be stuck with a needle, it has to be done. So you give the nurse your arm that doesn’t have the IV (your sore left one), tell it you’re sorry but you don’t want it to feel left out, and the needle goes in, drawing, hopefully quickly, the blood that is needed.
That’s it for a while. It will be you and the magazine. Washington, senators, health care crisis (duh), senior citizens worrying about their Social Security, the latest global war disturbance, and you are stuck on a white-sheeted bed, the IV dripping goodness knows what in your arm, and you don’t even have your clothes on. Just a paper gown that illustrates negligible quantity in pictorial form.

Time passes slowly, and then another patient is brought into your area. She’s crying and moaning, but at least she isn’t a vomiter. Even though they pull the curtains around, you can hear every word and every symptom. The body parts being discussed don’t usually come up in polite conversation, although their names often form slang terms for less than family rated movies. If it were you, you wouldn’t want it broadcasted where everyone in the room can hear.

But they must have IV’d her more successfully than they did you, because they are soon pumping pain medication into her and asking if it is helping. Meanwhile, you are still waiting for blood test results. Your doctor showed up once the entire hour-to let you know the tests were not quite complete.
Another hour passes, and finally the doctor shows up. Good news! Nothing is wrong with your heart. It’s nerves. Go see your regular doctor for a follow up. Meanwhile, here’s a prescription to be filled. As soon as your blood pressure goes down below 100, we’ll let you go.

After a while, the blood pressure obliges. The IV is finally taken away, making a nice blue bruise that will be discreetly covered with a band aid. Then the pile of paperwork that always finishes off these fiascos arrive, along with the prescription and several pages of warning about how not to take it. Then they demand more information about you than most countries will before issuing a passport, and after signing every paper in sight you are given your copies. Then comes the scariest part of this whole visit-going to the cashier’s office down the hall. You are just about to have chest pains again, just thinking about it.
You sit down, checkbook in hand. Well, you are told that normally that what you just went through costs around $2000. But if you pay $450 now, that will take care of the hospital costs. You still will get a bill from the doctor.

$450 is definitely better that $2000, so you pay the check. They don’t know how much the doctor will charge. But you will get the bill in the mail, and that you do not doubt. So you wait, and while you are waiting, another unexpected bill shows up. A bill for the lab tests. They didn’t tell you about that, but since it’s only around $100, might as well pay it. Then the doctor bill shows up. $600!!!

And you thought $150 visits were bad!

There is a note on that bill, though. If you pay $350 NOW, (within 2 weeks), then you will have a discount and that will take care of it. So you pay the $350, circle the “discount” part with a heavy dark pencil so the clerk entering the payment will know exactly what is going on and you won’t get any more bills, including the increasingly nasty and threatening ones. You want to be marked “paid” and be done with it.

The sad thing is, this is all relatively small change, compared to some illnesses. In some cases, the bills keep coming, one after another, and even though the poor patient thought everything was paid, something else unexpected would show up, like a hydra head that wouldn’t disappear. Why do men not go to doctors, you ask? I doubt it has anything to with fears of being poked at, or IV’s, or any other perfectly reasonable dread of unpleasantness, but they don’t want their wallets drained. Usually if there is a reluctance to see a physician, it is money-based, more likely than anything.

Yes, something similar to this did happen to me. And ironically, if I had been insured, I probably still would have paid just as much, in deductables and co-pays. Such is life.